Verizon Wireless CFO Fran Shammo spoke at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference about LTE data plans and he mentioned that 4G LTE gives Verizon greater flexibility to price data plans.
“There’s a lot of innovation that LTE brings to give us the ability to price data very differently,” he said. For instance, someone asked him if data plans could eventually be priced according to how a customer uses it or even when they use it, i.e. the time of day. Shammo dodged those particular factors, but did hint at toll free data plans as in the foreseeable future, which switches the cost of the connection over to the service provider instead of the customer.
Shammo also talked briefly about Verizon’s upcoming shared family data plans. He said customers will be given the choice to upgrade to these plans, but if you are on an unlimited data plan currently, you’ll have to ditch it when moving to a shared plan because all the shared data options are capped. On the offering on general, he said confidently, “I think it’s going to be different and innovative for the industry.”
Lastly, Shammo had a few words on Verizon’s $3.9 billion acquisition of wireless spectrum which is awaiting federal approval as well as its sale of 700 MHz Lower A and B Block spectrum. “At the end of the day, this is not a fire sale. This is a fair market value sale. It will be our discretion, if we don’t believe we’re getting the value then we won’t go ahead with the sale,” he noted, seemingly implying the strategy’s palpability.