Verizon has echoed the new pricing models of rivals T-Mobile and AT&T with its very own, called Edge. The plan will offer customers more frequent upgrades, and also ease the cost of smartphone subsidies on Verizon’s balance sheet. Verizon says the Edge device payment plan spreads the retail price of a smartphone over 24 months, and allows customers to upgrade their phone after just six months, if they’ve paid 50% of the retail price of the phone. The 24-month payment period then begins again. The program works with all of Verizon’s available smartphones, including the iPhone, and becomes available to its Share Everything customers on August 25. Shares of Verizon were down 1.7% to $49.87 on Thursday afternoon in New York. On a conference call Thursday Verizon’s chief financial officer Fran Shammo described Edge as “yet another choice” for Verizon customers, though he was light on details about how the plan would work.
