Verizon’s new Share Everything Plans lets you pay for multiple phones, tablets, mobile hotspots with one single plan. It’s not exactly cheap — but it could be less expensive than buying separate data plans for all the smartphones and tablets in your household.
Here’s how it works.
• First you pay a monthly fee for voice and text on each of the phones you want to use. That will run you $30 per basic phone or $40 per smartphone.
• Then you pay a monthly fee for mobile hotspots or USB data sticks for notebooks.
• Tack on another $10 for each tablet you want to use.
• Finally, pay a monthly fee for a bucket of data that can be shared with up to 10 devices.
Smartphone users get unlimited voice and text while basic phone plans include unlimited text and 700 shared voice minutes.
Plans range from $50 per month for 1GB to $100 per month for 10GB.
In other words, if you have two smartphones, two tablets, and 6GB of shared data, your monthly bill will be about $180.
Previously you would have had to buy a separate plan for each device, which could easily lead to a much higher bill — although you also wouldn’t have to worry about your spouse or children using up all of your month’s data by streaming a few videos over 3G.
Verizon is also throwing out the extra fees for using your phone as a mobile hotspot. That’s now included in the cost of a Share Everything plan if you add a smartphone that supports the feature.
If you opt for a data-only plan, you could grab three tablets and 8GB of data for $80 per month, or a tablet, a mobile hotspot and 8GB for the same price.
Share Everything plans will be available starting June 28th.
