Verizon customers with two-year contracts can keep and renew them, and still get phone subsidies
Verizon's New ‘Simplified’ No-Contract Prices Confuse Everyone — Verizon is reminding users that while the company recently announced that it was killing devices subsidies and long-term contracts …
Context & Ripple Effects
Three weeks after Verizon announced it was eliminating subsidized phones and contracts in favor of four flat-rate plans with a $20 monthly smartphone access fee, the company is walking back the implication: customers on two-year contracts can keep them, renew them, and still collect device subsidies. The clarification matters because the original announcement left existing subscribers unsure whether the 'simplified' pricing forced them off subsidized upgrades immediately.
First-order effects
- Existing Verizon subscribers on two-year contracts face no forced migration — they can ride out and renew their agreements with subsidies intact while new customers are steered toward the $30-80/month no-contract tiers.
Second-order effects
- Sprint's parallel retreat from contracts — its August pledge to abandon two-year terms by end of 2015 via the iPhone Forever leasing plan, followed by a leaked internal document confirming full contract elimination in January 2016 — now reads as a faster version of the same pivot Verizon is executing more gradually, leaving Sprint competing for upgraders with leasing instead of subsidies.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, grandfathering becomes the standard playbook for retiring the subsidy model without churn — and Verizon's 2020 decision to unbundle Fios TV, broadband, and phone into standalone 'Mix & Match' products suggests the same de-contracting logic eventually extends from devices to the entire service bundle.
The trend: US carriers are dismantling the device-subsidy-and-contract model in stages, using grandfathered legacy terms to soften a shift toward installment plans, leasing, and unbundled service pricing.