Are the Liberty Plans Still Available with Viasat Internet?
Before the advent of cable and fiber optic internet, Viasat was a leading satellite internet service provider that mainly targeted rural areas. Among all the plans that have been rolled out by FreedomPop, the Liberty plans are some of the most sought-after, as they have no hard cap on the data provided. Nonetheless, it has been a while since Viasat has altered some of its internet plans. Is the company continuing to offer the base known as Liberty plans, to which many customers subscribe? Let's take a look.
The Short Answer
Currently, there are no Liberty service plans, which were advertised as having unlimited data like before. The plans were ceased in 2020 when the company had re-strategized its internet offering plans. A few notes on current plans include: the new Viasat plans have tiered data plans, and all Viasat packages now come with data limits.
Drawing on past Liberty Plans
When it comes to the Viasat Liberty plan's major selling points, one of them was the provision of unlimited internet data usage. This made them popular among households with high data demands from streaming, gaming, and much more. While bandwidth could be constrained and speeds throttled during the busiest hours, customers had, for instance, unlimited data usage without quotas.
There were a few Liberty plans that they were offering, and each of them had their own price, which was between $70-$150 monthly. To be specific, the plans offered 12–25 Mbps at peak times and any time data allowances that weren't rolled over to the next month. The Liberty 12 plan offered at $69.99 was presented as offering unlimited data usage and up to 12 Mbps speeds. There were three packages: the Liberty 18 for $99.99 with speeds up to 18 Mbps, the Liberty 25 for $149.99 with speeds up to 25 Mbps, and the Liberty 600 package with 30 GB per month.
But with these older plans, though they did not have a hard ceiling on the amount of data to be used, the speed dropped at certain times of the day after the customer had consumed an incredibly high amount of data during those specific peak hours. But then again, speeds would get back to normality at other less congested overnight times.
Viasat's New Internet Plans
Viasat internet service plans were completely revised at the beginning of 2020. The new plans did not include the term 'unlimited data,' which had been part of the Liberty plan before. However, the new strategies have introduced monthly data quotas and reasonable speeds, which are not very constantly changing. However, they do still throttle video streaming resolution to reduce traffic load, to some extent.
The new Viasat plans available as of 2024 are:
Basic 12 Plan: Top-tier download and upload speeds of 12 Mbps, 40GB of data usage ($69.99/month).
Bronze 12 Plan: high speed of up to 12 Mbps with 65 GB of data at a rate of $89.99 every month.
Silver 25 Plan: 85 GB data package: up to 25 Mbps speeds ($109.99/month).
Gold 30 Plan: Ideal for those who want up to 30 Mbps speeds and 150 GB of data at $179.99 per month.
This was stated by the company to help them deliver enhanced internet speed since consumers gain more constant speed to meet the company's general performance. Since the previous Liberty plans offered 'unmetered' data, when there were several users who consumed a lot of data on the internet during peak hours, it would severely slow down the entire network.
Due to the introduction of the new plans and the given data usage limits per customer per month, congestion has been minimized. But even at the peak of the evening prime time—the time when customers are most likely to download video or play games at the same time—Viasat insists that the majority of users should receive speeds close to the packages they signed up for.
Again, these data allowances are still relatively high on most new Viasat plans. For example, the 150 GB per month on the premium Gold 30 package looks quite generous for HD streaming. However, if there is more than one high-level internet user in a particular household, then it would still be wise to keep a check on the data usage every month.
However, some viasat internet consumers who before now had not bothered too much about hard data cap restrictions are understandably disenchanted by the new development. Although it may mean that customers in heavy-data households may get enhanced average speeds as proposed in the revamped plans, the freedom to browse and stream endlessly is still lacking.
However, over time, the unrated unlimited Liberty plans simply no longer appeared to be a viable proposition to Viasat. As there are more and more customers and growing demands for higher-bandwidth applications, attempting to offer unlimited attempts with satellite data was a futile attempt that caused network overcrowding and unstable connection speeds. Thus, it can be ascertained that the future of certain original plans is unlikely to become operational shortly unless there are significant enhancements in the efficiency of satellites.
Considering Alternatives
Viasat satellite internet plans for rural households Today, Viasat does not have truly unlimited satellite data for $110 and above but some rural households still might not have a better choice in their region. This is because speeds and allowances are flexible enough to suit a normal working couple with children. However, customers who regularly consume more than 150 GB of data each month will need to monitor their usage to avoid going to the next stage of high tariffs, where data transmission speed will be significantly reduced or incur very high costs for data usage.
Some alternatives that rural households with high data usage can consider include: Some alternatives that rural households with high data usage can consider include:
Consider switching to a different internet service provider that may offer plans with more data allowances in the region served by this provider, namely HughesNet.
Incorporating satellite internet with restrictions to lighter use along with an unlimited LTE/5G hotspot on a cellular network.
Exploring new possibilities of wireless internet, such as fixed point-to-point networks, if these offers extend to them by Starlink and similar.
Transferring to a rural plot with access to Jul DSL internet, fixed wireless broadband, fiber, municipal broadband, or cable internet. This would ensure home-wired internet with no limits to the amount of data they use as compared to satellite.
We are looking for ways on how the company could transition to the higher residential Viasat business plans for even more data.
Explaining such measures as reducing the quality of streaming, downloading updates during the night, and others to possibly avoid going over new monthly data caps.
While the new plans from Viasat Internet are revolutionary, they also come with some benefits and drawbacks when it comes to data usage for consumers who were using Liberty plans previously. Albeit, getting fast unlimited satellite internet all the time may still be a ways off for now; perhaps utilizing Viasat or other satellites with second or even third additional unlimited providers might be the answer. However, progress in increasing the availability of broadband in rural areas persists in the future—more households can get the chance to subscribe to unlimited residential cable and fiber services.
Switch to Viasat Internet. Call (844) 778-1116 for more information!
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