Verizon has just announced that they will be offering a new update to their ‘More Everything Plan’ which is part of the company’s overall new effort of offering more data to its customers. Their Why More Data Matters initiative means that they are recognizing that their customers are wanting more data without overages and to get more data for the same money. This can mostly be attributed to the competition from Sprint and T-Mobile who have had some of the most affordable and best data availability (unlimited) plans.

Starting tomorrow, users that want 10GB of data or 15GB of data per month will only have to pay $80 and $100 a month respectively, which is significantly better than AT&T’s offering. This offer is also available to existing Verizon customers who want to upgrade to this plan or are already paying more than this for the same amount of data. All they have to do is head on over to their My Verizon account and change their plan there.

In addition to all of that, Verizon is also launching a promotion where they will offer a $150 port-in credit to customers switching to Verizon that sign up for a 2-year agreement or Verizon’s Edge program. Both the pricing and the port-in credit are a limited time promotion, so they do not reflect a permanent chang of Verizon’s pricing or customer porting offers. So, if you are planning to switch to Verizon, tomorrow should be a perfect time to do so.

Clearly, Verizon wants to be competitive this holiday season and it will be interesting to see how AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint respond to Verizon’s promotion. After all, money talks and $150 is not small change in addition to fairly competitive data pricing.

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Even though the year is barely half over, the government has already sent Verizon 149,000 requests for clients’ data this year. This is a part of the company’s second ever transparency report which basically reports to the public how much information they’re being forced to hand over, or willingly handing over as part of a cooperation program with the government. The numbers only represent the first 6 months of this year, meaning that they will only be about half the amount of requests that one would expect over the course of the year. Below, we’ve copied Verizon’s table to show you a comparison from year to year and what kinds of requests Verizon is getting.

Verizon LEO Requests

As you can see, the numbers for this year are actually slightly down from where they were last year, with a significant reduction in warrants, which is actually pretty worrying since it accounts for the biggest portion of the reduction after subpoenas which are also important because both require a certain level of jurisprudence and usually a judge. The good thing is that emergency requests haven’t necessarily gone up, but I have a feeling that these numbers are overall higher than they need to be and that a lot of the customer data that is being collected may not actually be necessary or pertinent to the case at hand based upon evidence available.

Thankfully we’re seeing more and more companies showing their customers exactly how much and what kind of data Verizon is forced to give up on their clients. It sounds ridiculous, because to a degree it is, but it is also necessary when real law enforcement is needed and we aren’t relying on the NSA or CIA to do the dirty work. Sure, agencies like the FBI rely on the NSA to do a lot of their dirty work electronically, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is still real law enforcement going on and such requests are normal. Unfortunately, the Washington Post slightly over editorialized this story by making a big deal of the requests for the first 6 months of this year, even though the numbers are overall quite a bit lower than last year’s.

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In a somewhat unsurprising move, Verizon will be offering the LG G3 on their network starting July 17th. They will also be offering LG’s G Watch as an accessory to the LG G3 as well. However, thanks to the awesome 2-year contract price of the LG G3, of $99.99 the LG G Watch will actually cost most consumers more than double the money up front.

The LG G Watch (below) will retail on Verizon’s network as an accessory to the LG G3 (or any Android phone) for $229. Both this watch and the smartphone have been highly anticipated since their initial launches a month ago. Details about the LG G Watch have been slowly trickling out thanks to Google, as LG appears to have been holding a lot about the watch back until Google talked about Android wear features at Google I/O.

LG G Watch on Verizon

This means that LG’s G3 is likely going to bring some serious competition to Samsung and HTC who both currently sell their phones on Verizon at $99.99 as well (after originally selling for $199-ish back in April). The awesome part is that the G3 is already coming in at a lower retail price ($599) which enables it to come in at a more competitive on-contract price of $99.99 at launch. Additionally, you can also get this phone on an Edge plan for $30 a month, but then you’re basically paying a ton of money not to even own the phone. And yes, it will be XLTE (carrier aggregation) which will combine Verizon’s 700 MHz and AWS spectrum to deliver more download capacity.

Overall it should be great to see the smartphone companies competing with another and giving consumers really good choices. And it is also good to see that the carriers are also giving more affordable on-contract prices, which may make selling something like an iPhone 6 even more difficult at $199 or even the rumored $299 on contract.

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Boost Mobile, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprint, today announced that they would be offering new plans for those looking to get cheaper unlimited pricing. Boost Mobile has traditionally been Sprint’s budget carrier offering, offering cheaper devices and cheaper plans, so it comes as no surprise that they are now coming out with an offering designed to compete with T-Mobile’s latest ultra-cheap offerings.

Boost Mobile’s new unlimited plans

However, keep in mind that Boost Mobile is Sprint’s biggest pre-paid user base, which does not help with post-paid numbers but does ultimately affect the bottom line. In the past, Boost Mobile offered users to lower their bills by $10 a month until they reached a certain low price if they paid their bills on time. However, that plan appears to have been thrown out the window in favor of these new “unlimited” plans which effectively mimic T-Mobile’s unlimited plans that offer a certain set amount of high speed data followed by an unlimited amount of slower 2G/3G data. With Boost Mobile’s approach, they appear to be considering 4G/3G service as high speed (which Sprint’s CDMA network is not) and 2G as throttled, which is really worthless.

By coming in $10 cheaper than T-Mobile, Sprint is enabling themselves to gain more users even if they are only offering 500MB a month, which in today’s world is only possible for older people or people that haven’t discovered the internet yet. Either way, 500MB will get evaporated quite quickly which is why AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all offer different prices for all of their plans. For AT&T prepaid, you can get 500 minutes of talk and unlimited texting and 500 MB of data for $40 a month, but this does not compare with Boost Mobile’s service because it is capped data and you don’t get unlimited talk. For Verizon’s prepaid, you pay $45 a month, but you get unlimited talk and text as well as 500 MB of data, which is very comparable to Boost Mobile’s plan, especially when you consider that you’ll effectively have worthless internet once you’re kicked off 4G/3G on Sprint. So, here, Sprint and Verizon are equally as competitive in my eyes. And last but not least, you’ve got T-Mobile, which offers a $40 plan that has unlimited talk and text like Boost Mobile and Verizon, but also offers 500 MB of high speed data with no overages, perfectly mimicking Sprint’s plan. Except, T-Mobile’s plan is probably better because you will get better throttled speeds than what Boost Mobile has to offer, and you can basically buy any phone and it’ll probably work on T-Mobile, unlike Boost Mobile, which has to be CDMA.

However, if you go for the $50 plan, Boost will give you the better deal, because you get 2.5 GB of 3G/4G data rather than 1GB, which is what most of their competitors are offering. The same goes for their $60 plan, which gives you 5GB of data, which T-Mobile only gives you 3GB of data for. But, let’s also remember that Sprint’s network is VASTLY slower than T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon’s networks and the probability that you will be able to even achieve 5GB a month of data on that network is probably as possible as finding a unicorn under a rainbow. But there is still no denying the fundamental value of Boost’s plans if you want a little more than 500MB of data, which is admittedly a joke for anyone doing any real internet usage on their phones. The 2.5 GB plan is the most attractive at $50 a month and is without a doubt the best value in mobile, if you have decent speeds on Sprint in your area.

Either way, we’re glad to see that Boost Mobile has adjusted their plan pricing to properly reflect the competition within the industry and we have to thank T-Mobile once again for forcing their competitors to wake up and be more competitive because they’ve been stealing so many subscribers, they’ve basically forced them to react. I really hope that this trend continues and that T-Mobile is able to continue to check AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and this is a perfect example of why Sprint should not be allowed to acquire T-Mobile. If it weren’t for T-Mobile, Sprint wouldn’t be forced to change their pricing on their Boost Mobile prepaid subsidiary.

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