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Verizon's new prepaid plan offers rollover data, but still no LTE

Verizon's new prepaid plan offers rollover data, but still no LTE

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Verizon Wireless is working to simplify its approach to prepaid with a new Allset plan that costs $45 a month and includes unlimited voice minutes, unlimited messaging, and 500MB of data. Obviously some smartphone users will need a higher data cap than that, but rather than offer several different plan tiers, Verizon now wants its prepaid customers to add data a la carte. The carrier refers to this as Bridge Data, and as the name implies, one benefit of the new approach is that unused data will roll over from month to month.

An extra 500MB of data can be purchased for $5, but that will expire within 30 days as is typical for prepaid plans. However, spending $10 for 1GB or $20 for 3GB means you'll be able to carry over that data for up to 90 days. Any remaining "rollover" data won't be used until you run through the initial 500MB of data included with the Allset plan each month. Unlimited international texting to Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico is also packaged with the plan, and for a limited time, Verizon is including 1,000 voice minutes for calls to Canada and Mexico. Verizon's previous prepaid plans packaged unlimited voice and texting with 2GB of data for $60 each month; paying $70 bumped that data cap up to 4GB.

Unfortunately, the major downfall of Verizon's prepaid service is that you won't have access to the carrier's robust 4G LTE network. Instead, prepaid customers are stuck with 3G data speeds. The difference between LTE and 3G data on Verizon's CDMA network is significant, to say the least — and rival carriers AT&T and T-Mobile don't have such restrictions in place. Then again, if you can't live without Verizon's LTE coverage, the company would gladly point you towards its More Everything plans.