Verizon is jumping on the unlimited prepaid cell phone plan bandwagon, following Boost Mobile into the fray. Boost Mobile made waves when it released its “unlimited monthly” prepaid plan, which gives subscribers unlimited use of pretty much every function on the network.

Verizon is following suit and plans to release (on the day of this writing) a new prepaid plan that will cost $3.99 each day that the phone is used for dialed or received calls. If you use your phone for 2 minutes or 200 minutes in one day, you still pay $3.99. Text messages sent and received will cost one cent. I like the sound of that, but I’m not sure I’m on board with the $3.99 daily fee.

Comparing this Verizon plan with the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan, I’m not so sure Verizon matches up. For the Boost service, you pay $50 per month for unlimited data usage, talk time, and text. For the Verizon plan, you will hit $50 quite quickly if you use your phone everyday. And the truth is if you are using an “unlimited” plan, then you are generally probably the type of cell phone user that picks up their phone once a day.

I have a feeling people on this service would be deterred from making a call they want to on a certain day knowing that it will cost them $3.99. That’s an expensive call and I don’t like having that high charge if you are only going to use your phone for a call or two.

This plan might be good for you, however, if you use your phone merely for emergency situations or as a backup phone. If you are a heavy cellular phone user, you have other very competitive choices and this plan will be quite costly. Think $3.99 times 30. That’s a pretty big monthly bill.

Here are the details of the plan:
- New Prepaid Basic tier: 25¢/min voice, 25¢/SMS message, no daily access fee
- No changes to Prepaid Core
- No changes to Prepaid Plus other than Unlimited Night/Weekend for no additional charge
- Prepaid Power becomes Unlimited Talk and increases daily access fee to $3.99 in exchange for unlimited peak voice, Night/Weekend and Mobile to Mobile with 1¢/SMS sent and received.

Some source material found here and find more details here.

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