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Roaming data use makes customers unprofitable, so Verizon will cut them off.
Verizon is disconnecting another 8,500 rural customers from its wireless network, saying that roaming charges have made certain customer accounts unprofitable for the carrier.
The 8,500 customers have 19,000 lines and live in 13 states (Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wisconsin), a Verizon Wireless spokesperson told Ars today. They received notices of disconnection this month and will lose access to Verizon service on October 17.
"These customers live outside of areas where Verizon operates our own network," Verizon said. "Many of the affected consumer lines use a substantial amount of data while roaming on other providers' networks and the roaming costs generated by these lines exceed what these consumers pay us each month."
"We sent these notices in advance so customers have plenty of time to choose another wireless provider," Verizon also said.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:14PM (8 children)
They are at least accepting some responsibility here, they are waiving the contract, releasing any claim on the handset, etc. Looks like they got themselves into some bad deals with small carriers to be able to show a bigger footprint in their advertising materials and they aren't a .com company that will be rewarded by the equity markets for ever greater losses in exchange for customers. If they are losing money on an account they have to draw the line somewhere.
The problem for the customer is the hardware they are releasing generally isn't very useful on another network but there ARE some options. Straight Talk usually offers CDMA, just make sure they don't try to resell Sprint's bands to ya. Are these people going to find unlimited plans ever again in these deep rural areas? Nope, and that was a silly concept to begin with so this is just reality hitting. No you CAN'T drive all over America streaming music and other bandwidth wasting practices. They can't build enough towers for it, they struggle to keep up with the ever growing demand for bandwidth in the profitable dense urban environments.
Would be interesting to see how many of these customers originally signed up in these areas vs how many have moved and now find themselves outside Verizon territory. Most cell carriers will allow you to roam for a bit, they know people vacation, visit family, get sent to work somewhere for a project, etc. But once they decide you are outside their territory for a long duration they have always tried to push you off.
And the "poster child" the story found was a family averaging 12.5GB / device and was held up as a "low volume" user? See the problem here? I'm smelling streaming video. But as usual, the story was a lot of noise and not much hard info. Is the underlying "small rural carrier" that Verizon was paying the roaming fees to offering to directly serve these customers? No idea. How many other carriers offer service in these areas. No idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:37PM (7 children)
Verizon can't take a loss on average, but they sure can take a loss on some customers as long as they make it up elsewhere.
If the total revenue for unlimited customers isn't enough to cover the total costs, then Verizon needs to fix that. Legit methods include raising prices, fixing the roaming issue (get better deals, buy out companies, drop service, install own towers...), and so on.
Maybe they raise prices, the most profitable users leave Verizon, they raise prices again, more users leave... but this doesn't go on forever. It ultimately stops with users streaming video 24x7 and paying the full cost to support that. If not enough people pay, then the service is doomed, but that needn't be the case. It is possible that there is a price at which this service can operate with a profit.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:39PM (6 children)
I got this: "Filter error: Nah, I already thought of that."
I had to mess with "they raise prices" to get past the filter. WTF, it is totally legit to repeat a sequence of 3 words.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:52PM
Buzzard done gone insane trying to regex the lameness filter to keep out us Dick Νiggers. We hopes Buzzard gonna stop the madness when he get the professional help he need.
Dick Νiggers. Never fuckin old pussy. Still fuckin young pussy.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:12PM
I hit the lameness filter the other day as well. I ended up just not commenting because I had no idea what it objected to about the two short paragraphs.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:13PM (2 children)
Yup, the lameness filter is really getting annoying lately.
Why does it apply to logged in users? Users with stars?
Its like you repeat three words and all of a sudden you are a Verizon customer.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2017, @12:19AM (1 child)
Try adding "niggers" to bypass the filter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2017, @01:50AM
Well let's see. Well let's see. Well let's see.
(hmmm, didn't need it)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2017, @01:54PM
Haha, "it's not censorship, it's a filter for lameness!". Pretty weaselly way around the ideological violation. I've been saying for a while that TMB is full of shit and only holds to his personal ethics when it is convenient.
Hahaha lamesness filter!