(Credit: Visible)
Broadband shoppers looking for the lowest possible price for home 5G service on Verizon’s network now have a new option, which may require them to dump Verizon’s phone service first.
The 5G Home Internet fixed-wireless service from Verizon’s Visible prepaid brand, announced Wednesday, costs just $25 a month, taxes and fees included, when prepaid for a full year at $300. On a monthly basis, it runs $30.
Either price lands comfortably below the $35 discounted rate, before taxes and fees, that Verizon offers for its own 5G Home Internet service to customers who also have a phone line with the company. Like Verizon’s postpaid offering, Visible’s prepaid service does not require a contract or come with data caps, and it includes a free receiver and wireless router.
But Visible’s rate also requires a mobile line with that service—its three phone plans start at $20 a month—without the option of a pricier, standalone rate.
Visible’s sign-up experience for new customers, however, appeared to be broken on Wednesday afternoon. Checking service availability at an address, getting an affirmative answer, and following a dialog’s request to create an account dumped me on a page that said: "Your bag is empty.” Clicking the “Continue shopping” button below it and choosing home internet left me back on the service-availability lookup page, signed out.
A Visible PR rep said she’d pass on my customer-experience report.
Visible’s site also did not display the FCC-required broadband-facts label and only described download speeds as “up to 200 Mbps” while noting in a FAQ section that service could feature slower LTE rather than 5G.
A copy of a sample label sent by the PR rep listed typical download speeds of 85-165Mbps and typical upload speeds of 3-15Mbps.
The label for the fastest of three tiers of Verizon postpaid 5G Home at a Washington address reported typical downloads of 85 to 250Mbps and typical uploads of 10 to 20Mbps.
Even at advertised speeds well below what cable and fiber broadband can deliver, fixed wireless has proven remarkably popular because it’s cheaper than those options and sold without the complex and opaque pricing of too many cable-internet plans.
But the ease of signing up for and then leaving no-contract “FWA” plans seems to have led marketing types at wireless carriers and their prepaid brands to focus on ways to make those customer relationships a little stickier with bundling incentives or requirements.
Verizon was an early mover in that area, rolling out a deep discount on 5G Home in 2022 for people on its spendier wireless plans. T-Mobile offers a similar bundle discount on its own home 5G, and earlier in April, that carrier’s Mint Mobile brand introduced a $45 bundle of prepaid home and mobile 5G. And while AT&T launched its Internet Air fixed-wireless service in 2023 without a bundle, that offering now also comes with one.