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Verizon customers who run up against the limits of their cloud-storage plans are getting a new option: unlimited storage.
The telecom giant has previously offered consumer cloud storage with a top total data limit of 2TB, or about enough room for 1,000 high-definition movies or 620,000 photos.
But on Wednesday, Verizon announced a new unlimited cloud-storage plan for $20 monthly, $5 more than its 2TB plan. It’s the only unlimited storage plan available to consumers from major services such as Apple, Google, and Dropbox.
Any Verizon wireless or Fios customer can sign up for the new tier, which can be used on an unlimited number of devices and offers backup apps for Apple and Android phones and tablets, plus Windows and Mac computers. The initial subscriber can share the unlimited storage with up to four other people, who don’t have to be Verizon customers.
“We heard from customers that they were bumping against storage limits and that’s a pain point for them,” says Todd Oberstein, who heads Verizon’s consumer mobile products business. “We know with 5G people are going to be using even more storage, and we wanted to get ahead of it.”
The move comes as the consumer cloud-storage market continues trying to keep up with a growing appetite for storage. The photos from improved phone cameras, and higher resolution 4K videos and movies, require far more storage space than files from a few years ago.
In 2018, Google introduced its Google One offering, upping its old 1TB plan to 2TB, while holding its price steady at $10 monthly. It also now offers consumers up to 30TB of storage for $150 monthly.
Meanwhile, Apple last year doubled the maximum amount of storage it offered. It had topped out at 2TB for $10 monthly. But subscribers to the Premier tier of the new Apple One subscription, which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, and other services, can now get up to 4TB for an extra $10 a month on top of the $30 Premier charge.
Dropbox’s consumer plans are still limited to 2TB, costing $10 monthly for a single user or $17 for sharing the space with up to five other users.
There are a few mostly minor nuances to Verizon’s unlimited plan that you should pay attention to. Customers can’t use it to back up computer system files, settings, applications, external drives, and “uncommon file types.” Single files over 10GB also can’t be saved.
