Verizon has announced new “unlimited” calling plans that are, not surprisingly, a little less than I would have hoped for. The plans range from $100 to $140 for single-line phones but unlimited only refers to the calls you make – the $120 plans includes unlimited texting, the $140 unlimited data. How are those news-worthy? $120-$100=$20 for unlimited texting… Seriously? As for the unlimited calls, the number of minutes on calling plans has gone up so much in the past few years, does anyone ever go over their minutes? Even with AT&T, Christina and I never go over and have accumulated some absurd number of rollover minutes.

More telling is why they’re doing it. Sprint has been testing the waters on similar plans and it’s likely AT&T and others will follow suit. Since the actual benefits to the customer are negligible, it’s certainly more of a marketing ploy than anything. It appears the cell companies new customer rates are dropping and so the only way to grow is to steal customers from each other. Thus, promoting new, marginally different, plans.

Sorry, Verizon. For now, I’ll stick w/ AT&T – I like them better as a company and I might want one of their exclusive iPhones soon. You can change my mind very quickly if you ever get around to deploying FiOS to my house, though…

Update: Geez… that was quick. AT&T will be offering “unlimited” plans for about the same price starting Friday.