Verizon Upgrades Its Premium Unlimited Ultimate Smartphone Plan With More Hotspot And International Data

Today, Verizon rolled out a massive upgrade to its top-tier consumer postpaid smartphone plan, Unlimited Ultimate. Bucking the industry trend of instituting price increases over the last year, Verizon substantially increased the features of this plan without a price hike. The plan price remains $90/month with autopay for a single line. This follows Verizon's recent announcement of a 3-year price lock guarantee, which means these new plan terms and pricing should not change for at least three years.

While most of Unlimited Ultimate's plan terms and features stayed the same, two that are particularly interesting to our audience of mobile users who live, work, or travel in vans, boats, or RVs have been substantially improved: mobile hotspot data and international data.

The other lower-tier plans in Verizon's lineup, Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Welcome, did not receive any changes and remained the same.

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Plan Change Details

Let's dig into the details of what's changed:

Hotspot Data Increased

The biggest change is a massive increase in the mobile hotspot allowance. While Verizon advertises this change as "unlimited mobile hotspot," it actually has 200 GB of high-speed hotspot (an increase from 60 GB) and then unlimited hotspot at 6 Mbps. Previously, hotspot was throttled to 3 Mbps on 5G Ultra Wideband, and 600 Kbps on 5G/4G LTE after the high-speed allotment was used up.

This makes Verizon's Unlimited Ultimate the top plan for smartphone hotspot data, eclipsing the consumer and even business offerings from both AT&T and T-Mobile.

Verizon's myPlan system of optional perks allows customers to add an additional 100 GB of full-speed hotspot data for $10, for a total of 300 GB.

Should all this high-speed hotspot data get used up, unlimited data with a 6 Mbps throttle is perfectly usable for most common tasks customers use while hotspotting or tethering their smartphone. However, it is disappointing that the throttle doesn't match what Verizon's prepaid subsidiary offers, which is up to 15 Mbps unlimited hotspot. But Visible offers no full-speed hotspot at all - hotspot data is always throttled.

International Data Increase

For international data, Verizon increased the monthly allotment from 10 GB to 15 GB, a very nice bump for a plan that already offered more default international data than AT&T and T-Mobile postpaid plans. However, the kicker and more impactful change is that once the initial 15 GB of data is used up, customers receive unlimited international data at 1.5 Mbps speed - a massive increase from the previous limit of 2G (256 kbps) speed. 1.5 Mbps is comfortably usable for most internet uses on a smartphone and is even enough to support streaming at 480p.

International data in Canada and Mexico did not change - customers still get 2 GB per day of high-speed data, which is then throttled to 3G speeds (600 kbps). Unfortunately, for some reason, Verizon chose not to also increase the throttled speed for Canada/Mexico usage.

Overall, the change makes Unlimited Ultimate one of the best smartphone plans for international travelers.

No Price Increase

As the industry tries to maximize revenue, the various price increases over the last couple of years have been poorly received by affected customers. Verizon's major enhancement to Unlimited Ultimate refreshingly comes at no additional price increase - a single line of service remains at $90/month with autopay (additional lines bring the costs down even further).

Additionally, these changes apply to new and existing Unlimited Ultimate customers. Existing customers should already have the new features automatically on their plans. 

They are also not gated behind a requirement to upgrade to a new plan, something T-Mobile did when it added the Go5G Next plan as a new premium option in its lineup.

Verizon also recently implemented a 3-year price lock guarantee for new and existing customers that promises not to raise rates for consumer myPlan lines of service (note that this guarantee does not apply to taxes, fees, surcharges, and third-party services).

With the enhancements to Unlimited Ultimate, and no change to the lower-tier plans, Verizon intends to entice customers to move to its premium plan and keep them.

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Concluding Thoughts

After a long period of consumer-unfriendly moves by the major carriers, it's refreshing to see a substantial feature upgrade to an already great plan for no additional cost, especially coming on the heels of Verizon's underwhelming new business smartphone plan.

Unlimited Ultimate was already one of our Top Pick smartphone plans, and now with substantially better mobile hotspot and international data terms, it's even better. While still a pricey plan at $90/month (with autopay) for a single line, it offers a lot of value to our audience of mobile users. Additionally, the myPlan system of a la carte addons that can be enabled and disabled on a monthly basis gives customers a lot of flexibility to customize and adjust the plan as needs and wants change, especially the option to add an additional 100 GB of high-speed hotspot data.

The lack of any changes to Verizon's Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Welcome plans makes springing for the Unlimited Ultimate more compelling than those options.

We'll have to wait and see if and how AT&T and T-Mobile respond to this competitive escalation. Historically, the major carriers have all sought to keep features like hotspot allowances roughly aligned with the competition. Before this big Unlimited Ultimate upgrade, Verizon was at parity with AT&T's Unlimited Premium PL plan, offering the same 60 GB of hotspot. T-Mobile offers 50 GB on Go5G Next, with the option to add another 100 GB for $35.

Verizon's Unlimited Ultimate now blows these out of the water, and we would not be surprised to see AT&T and T-Mobile change their offerings to remain competitive.

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