Carol DeNardo's List: shopping

• Validas, a company that examines thousands of phone bills to help people find the right service plan for them, says that the average iPhone user on Verizon consumes about 500MB of data per month and uses 900 minutes of voice calling.

• For example, if an unlimited data plan subscriber uses about 3GB of data per month, he'd have to pay $70 plus $40 for a total of $110 a month. With his unlimited plan he'd pay $30 a month for data and $50 for voice and text service. His bill could go up about $30 a month if he moved to the new plan. If he used 4GB of data per month, the difference in price would be $40 a month.

   

  But it's not just heavy data users with unlimited plans that lose out with these plans. Some individual subscribers on the tiered plans will also suffer, because they will effectively be paying about $20 more a month for a comparable service.

• This leads me into the next important question: Can I keep my existing family plan or individual plan if I'm already a Verizon customer?

   The answer to this question is "yes." A Verizon spokeswoman said that Verizon will not force anyone to switch from their current plans. So if you are a long time Verizon customer and you're happy with your service you can keep it as long as you like.

• Would I still be able to continue getting subsidized phones when I upgrade if I want to keep my existing plan?

   The answer to this question again is a big fat Yes! But there is one caveat. You can only upgrade and get a subsidized phone if you already have a tiered plan. In other words, if you have an unlimited data plan and you want the subsidized phone, you will have to switch to a tiered plan. You can either choose a new family share plan or you can also choose one of Verizon's current plans. That's right -- if you're already a Verizon customer, you can choose from one of the older plans even after the company stops offering those plans to new customers.

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