America’s largest carrier by the number of subscribers, Verizon, has introduced a new monthly prepaid plan for $40, which gives customers 2GB of high-speed data, ‘Always-On Data,’ unlimited international text messaging to over 200 countries, as well as ‘Carry Over’ data for unused high-speed data.

The new plan is similar to Verizon’s successful $50, 5GB and 10GB, $70 prepaid plans. After customers have used their high-speed data allowance, data transfer speeds drop to 128kbps, which Verizon notes may impact certain services such as video or music streaming. Verizon’s cheapest prepaid plan costs $30 a month and offers unlimited airtime and messaging, however, does not have a data allowance.

Verizon has refined and improved its prepaid plans over the last nine months, and has been more prominently advertising the service to reflect the changes. These plans offer customers greater value for their money. Before May of 2016, the U.S. carrier was not interested in prepaid customers and executives even explained to investors that they used TracFone as a proxy as late as April of 2016. However, we started seeing new plans in May of 2016 and later in the year at which time Verizon introduced HD Voice for customers on prepaid plans with compatible handsets.

Verizon’s decision to improve their prepaid tariffs may be because the carrier was losing huge number of customers to the competition. This of course also ties in with the carrier positioning itself as America’s best cellular network with its new unlimited postpaid plan. Ron Zanders, Director of Verizon’s prepaid division, explained: “We’re making it simpler for our prepaid customers to enjoy all of the benefits of a network that can keep up with their digital lifestyles. Whether you use a little data or a lot of data, we’ve got a prepaid plan that fits your needs.” This sums it Verizon’s purpose.

SOURCE [Verizon]