Verizon Home Connect

Verizon Wireless has launched their “Home Connect” offering for customers in upstate New York and Connecticut. The new service basically is a home line replacement offering. Verizon provides you with a small box that you plug your home wiring or telephone set into. It provides normal ‘dial tone’ and you make and receive telephone calls using either a new telephone number or you can ‘port’ your existing home phone number to the service. The usage cost is $9.99 per month if you add this to a Family Plan (where it shares your available minutes) or $19.95 per month unlimited usage for any other plan.

The box you get from Verizon Wireless is basically a CDMA telephone that has a standard RJ-11 plug that you can plug your existing home telephone into. This means your phone calls ride over the Verizon Wireless Network. It’s fundamentally then a fixed wireless telephone. Got it?

Let me get the easy stuff out of the way. This offering is stupid. Verizon obviously missed T-Mobile’s great @Home offering that was killed. Why was it killed? Because no one was buying it. People so struggle with simple answers. Successful services keep getting sold, ones that sit on the shelf, get killed. The reality is most people don’t want or need a home telephone line anymore. The unlimited $19.95 per month is also high. Verizon is also playing the ‘you can’t get it here’ game (basically only available where Verizon doesn’t offer wireline service) which is also continued silly marketing. You can’t pick where you want to fight.

But what I found very interesting and the point most articles seems to miss. Verizon Wireless is willing to provide me with a fixed wireless telephone line with UNLIMITED usage for $19.95 a month. So why in the hell are they charging me $69.95 a month for an unlimited usage wireless service plan. Why isn’t this $19.95 a month as well? I have to assume Verizon is making money on the $19.95 and sure as hell making money on the $69.95.

Verizon would likely say, hey you can roam about, you’re paying for the mobility capabilities bla bla bla. But what if I roam over to my friend’s house 5 miles away. He’s got Home Connect as well, paying $19.95 a month. How exactly is this different? It’s not.

With limited competition, prices stay high. Verizon has just told us they can make plenty of money at $19.95 a month for unlimited wireless usage. What they haven’t said, but what we know, they’re screwing us at $69.95 a month.

Give it to the man. Switch to MetroPCS or Cricket.