Various customers of the Big Red who are based in the New York and New Jersey have reported seeing limits on their dashboard on Verizon Wireless’ official website. As recently reported by consumer group Stop the Cap, Verizon’s high speed Internet plan displayed a data limit of 150 gigabytes, while its high speed Internet enhanced plan showed a limit of 250 gigabytes. Among those who reported the data caps, some of them were planning to change or upgrade their existing DSL package.
However, a spokesperson for the largest wireless carrier in the United States has since issued a statement that claims the data caps spotted on Verizon Wireless’ website are merely part of a series of tests that the company is currently conducting in order to properly evaluate the level of data usage for a specific group of subscribers located in Virginia. As a result, the said data caps are being displayed in the customers’ billing.
As pointed out by Ray McConville, the representative for Verizon Wireless, it is indeed true that customers were given the 150 gigabyte and 250 gigabyte allowances displayed in the screen shots, but the national mobile operator has never actually billed these users, even those who have gone beyond the allowances. According to McConville, the main idea of the testing was to devise an effective way of correctly gaining information with regards to data usage, and potentially showing that usage data in the billing. He stresses that the Big Red has no plans whatsoever of billing customers who exceed the allowances.
But wait -- if the tests are being conducted in Virginia, why is it that Verizon Wireless customers who are based in New York and New Jersey are seeing the data caps? As explained by McConville, these users were not supposed to see the allowances, and it is quite possible that this is a result of a system error. He has promised that the IT department of Verizon is now actively looking into the matter.
Of course, most of today’s mobile users are no strangers to the idea of data caps. But such allowances are primarily associated with mobile data, especially on those nearly ubiquitous unlimited data plans that most wireless carriers are offering nowadays. The data caps seen by New York and New Jersey are linked with the wireline side (i.e. on DSL packages).
This may be nothing more than an unfortunate accident on Verizon Wireless’ part and hopefully, an isolated incident in the mobile industry. Still, customers can not be fully blamed for sounding unhappy. With mobile users (not only in America, but across the globe) consuming more data than ever, the sight of data caps should understandably cause an unpleasant reaction.
