Comment Re:No surprise (Score 1) 319
With all due respect isn't that the point of a business...making a profit? Every business views their customer as purely a source of profit. If they didn't they wouldn't be a business. You think McDonalds care's if you get fat from eating Big Macs? Of course not, that's why they fought legislation to put nutrition information on containers. You think Wal-Mart cares that they're lowering quality expectations in retail while putting people out of work? Not likely.
I don't know of a lot of really successful businesses that don't view their customers as the source of profit. Viewing your customers as purely a profit source is called capitalism -- and for better or worse it is the most successful business economic machine in the history of the world. Don't take my word for it though, ask China.
As to squeezing your customer basis, as a person who is dependent on their phone for their work, I'd be willing to pay more per month for an unlimited plan, but chances are unlike AT&T this isn't likely to happen for quite a while on Verizon. Keep in mind AT&T's woes are from the abnormally large amount of smart phone users that joined their network for the iPhone. They did it to themselves though, they forced you to buy a data plan with an iPhone. I know a lot of iPhone owners who rarely if ever use their "data" features of the phone and would be perfectly happy not having a data plan.
Verizon could also probably do away with a lot of headaches not forcing smart phone users to carry data plans as they use to. My guess is due to contracts though, any of us that have had unlimited data from years earlier are likely to be grandfathered in provided we don't change our plans. I haven't changed my plan in over 2 years.
My father-in-law was paying $12 a month for 250 minutes a month. He had that plan from when it was LA Cellular. I just added him to my family plan for $12 a month -- puts it in perspective, they're going to have a hard time changing the old timers.