Verizon sees a way out of unlimited data plans through its upcoming shared plans, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said at a JP Morgan conference on Wednesday. Shammo said that as customers with unlimited access to 3G networks start to move to 4G, they will be forced to move to the new shared data plans.

Verizon and AT&T have both dropped major hints that each network provider plans to start offering shared data plans, where multiple devices can draw from a single pool of data that is paid for in one big chunk (Verizon announced it would drop unlimited data plans for individual phones in May 2011). Not only would multi-device families possibly gain from this, but multiple-device owners would too; for instance, an iPad and an iPhone belonging to one person could be allowed to share a few gigabytes between them.

But from the sound of Shammo's comments, customers currently subscribed to unlimited data plans won't be able to benefit from sharing without switching to tiered plans. Likewise, Shammo implied that customers switching from unlimited 3G plans to 4G LTE ones will be forced to start using tiered plans. "A lot of our 3G base is unlimited," Shammo said. "As they start to migrate to 4G, they will have to come off unlimited and go into the data share plan. And that is beneficial for us for many reasons, obviously."

Shammo also noted that shared data plans have the potential to increase activations of smartphones in general—that is, if a family is paying for a sizeable chunk of data, shrewd heads-of-household everywhere aren't going to let those bytes go to waste just because Junior doesn't have a cell phone yet. Presumably, the math will still work out so that several phones sharing data is a financial boon for Verizon.

Shammo said that the Verizon plans are set to debut in mid-summer. In response to a request for comment, a Verizon representative said the company "had nothing to add."