Verizon Wi-Fi Program Bypasses Smartphone Users

Verizon has a new WiFi hotspot program where any of its "Mobile Broadband" customers get free access to hotspots across the country. The advantage is for the same price you were paying yesterday, you can now transfer more data without worrying about the typical 5GB per month limit since none of the hotspot transfers count against your monthly limit. The bad news is, being a Verizon smartphone owner doesn't get you any of these benefits.Fierce Wireless has the press release from Verizon. For this to work, you need a monthly Mobile Broadband plan and one of the approved devices associated with that plan, like a USB dongle, the MiFi, a PC Card or a netbook you've purchased through Verizon. To access the service requires a series of steps:

Once those steps are done, you should be online and none of your transfers count against your monthly plan limit. For all of the devices listed above though, owning a Verizon smartphone and the related data plan gets you nothing, even though it is very likely you paid more for the phone and the data plan than you would with one of the USB or PC Card devices. I presume the main reason is because the VZAccess Manager won't run on a smartphone, but really, that is no excuse. Hopefully Verizon is working on some sort of user account and password access, much like many other WiFi hotspots use - AT&T and T-Mobile for example. I'd use that service. Until then, I'll just stick with my MiFi data limits, or head to a Starbucks.