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Verizon is bundling Netflix with AMC Plus now, too.

The new bundle comes with Netflix’s ad-free Premium plan and AMC Plus for a price of $25.99 / month (saving you $5.99 if you were to subscribe to both services separately). It’s only available to Verizon customers who combine “select” home internet and select 5G mobile plans now through March 31st.

Verizon started offering a $10 / month Netflix and Max bundle last year, furthering its bet on becoming a streaming middleman.


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Verizon says it’s doing just fine.

Its wireless network “remains fully operational,” the company wrote this morning. But its customers could have issues connecting to users of “another carrier” — AKA AT&T, which is suffering a widespread, ongoing outage.


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A Verizon employee gained unauthorized access to 63,000 employees’ data in September.

The company recently filed a data breach notification with Maine’s Attorney General’s office saying that the employee doesn’t seem to have shared the data, which included names, physical addresses, and social security numbers.

Verizon told BleepingComputer that it had contacted law enforcement, but that “there is no indication of malicious intent.”


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Verizon will switch to Google’s Jibe platform to support RCS messaging on Android.

Years after switching to Messages as the default texting app on its Android phones, Verizon says it is “leveling up” the next-gen text message support with a plan to move from its self-hosted servers to Google’s Jibe RCS platform.

There’s no word on when the shift will happen, but it follows similar announcements from AT&T and T-Mobile last year and should allow for a more reliable experience, which Droid-Life notes should enable read receipts and interoperability with RCS on other networks.


Get ready for Verizon legacy plan price hikes.

Starting March 1st, it’ll be an extra $4 per month to stay on the carrier’s Get More / Play More / Do More / Start 5G plans. Verizon confirmed rumors of the change to CNET on January 17th. On the plus side, it’s adding 5GB of mobile hotspot data to affected plans.

Verizon did away with those plans last year when it streamlined things with its “myPlan” offerings.


A screenshot of a Verizon email notifying about the price increase.
Verizon’s older 5G plans are getting a little pricier.
Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
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Verizon sees a future in streaming bundles.

Verizon already offers a Disney Plus package, along with its new Netflix and Max bundle, but the company plans on announcing “more bundles and perks this year,” The Information reports.

That includes bundles with “several services” and not just two. As more people cut cable for streaming, The Information notes Verizon is likely looking to act as a middle-man to help users manage their services — all while getting a cut of those subscriptions.


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Come get your Verizon settlement money.

Verizon customers who were charged an “administrative charge” in recent years might be entitled to a piece of a $100 million class action settlement. A lawsuit alleged that the company added a bogus fee to customers’ bills to squeeze money out of them.

The charge must have occurred between 2016 and last year. The deadline to submit a claim is April 15. Here’s the claim form.


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Verizon Visible Plus “35FLASH” promo cuts $10 from the price of its monthly mobile plan.

The Visible Plus plan offers access to Ultra Wideband 5G and other perks over its base $25 per month plan (taxes and fees included with both).

It’s usually $45 per month, but with the above promo code, it’s $35 until “Visible provides notice that the discounted rate has been discontinued.” Whatever that turns out to mean — it’s available to both new customers and “qualified” subscribers to the cheaper plan, but only until 6AM ET tomorrow, December 28th.


The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found — and the race to deploy the tech was costly in more ways than one.

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Verizon would like to remind us that it has a fiber network.

You know that nature is healing when Verizon issues a press release that doesn’t mention 5G. This one’s about a trial on the company’s fiber network that sent 1.2 terabytes per second of data over a single wavelength. In 2020, a similar trial achieved 800Gbps — in service of an impending “explosion of data” over 5G. How times change!


This makes me unreasonably mad.

It’s phone season. New flagship phones are coming imminently. But here’s Verizon trying to fake-FOMO potential upgraders like me into a “deal” on last year’s handset. Repeatedly. This is like the fourth or fifth notification I’ve received.


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Disney thinks about making the same mistake as Time Warner.

The Information reports that Disney, seeking a “strategic partner” for ESPN, has had talks with Verizon. This is a bad idea: mobile carriers are historically terrible at distributing content and software, because their only distribution idea is installing bloatware on midrange Android phones. You will recall that the entire thesis of the AT&T / Time Warner merger was distributing bloatware on midrange Android phones, a “vision deal” which produced a grayscale 4:3 Snyder Cut before collapsing into the arms of David Zaslav.


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Apparently, they were all losers in the race to 5G.

Wireless carriers haven’t been able to monetize 5G, and telecom companies are in crisis. Sean Kinney at RCR Wireless bears the bad news in a new report from an industry event:

The optimism around 5G as some sort of panacea to any sort of business problem is giving way to disillusionment. Cost pressure is mounting, headcount reductions are happening, and outright cynicism is in the offing. This raises a question: if operators, for whatever reason, cannot leverage 5G to grow revenues and deliver innovation, do they drop the pretense and face the harsh reality that connectivity is a commodity and should be sold as such? 

Guess we can look forward to even more creative new ways for carriers to charge us more!


Verizon’s new plans make sense to nobody except Verizon

A new way for Verizon to make money off of you just dropped.

“The This Changes Everything Plan is what you want.”

I wish this twelve-year-old Portlandia bit about buying a phone plan wasn’t still so on the nose, but it sure is.

Case in point: Verizon’s current unlimited plans. They’re so confusing that one retail employee had to make their own cheat sheet so their team could decipher them. Never change, wireless carriers.


Part of a Verizon mobile plan cheat sheet
Part of a Verizon mobile plan cheat sheet
Image: u/maxypantsyo / Imgur