Verizon customers will soon see yet another fee increase on their next bill, a game that wireless carriers love to play. As spotted by Android Police, Verizon customers on reddit noticed the small fee bump — just 20 cents extra per line. But it comes only a couple of years after a bigger increase to the “Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge” the company tacks onto monthly bills, and Verizon’s claim that it’s just the cost of doing business seems dubious at best.
Verizon spokesperson George Koroneos confirmed the fee hike to The Verge, saying that “Starting December 18, the monthly Verizon wireless Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge will increase by $0.20 per line for mobile voice (basic phones, Second Number, smartphones, etc.) and data-only (hotspots, tablets, etc.) products. Verizon Home Internet services are not affected.” That takes the fee from $3.30 to $3.50 for each voice line on a plan and $1.40 up to $1.60 per data line.
According to a Verizon support page, the fee “helps defray and recover certain direct and indirect costs we or our agents incur,” including network operating and maintenance costs. AT&T and T-Mobile have slightly different names for the same fee, and all make basically the same claim about offsetting the costs of running a wireless network.
A more cynical perspective is that these wireless companies separate this fee from their monthly rate plan charges so they can raise rates without saying they’re raising rates. That was the basis for a class-action lawsuit against AT&T in 2022, which that company agreed to settle.
It may just be 20 cents now, but that small increase adds up to a lot when you multiply it across millions of users. After all, Verizon only made $3.4 billion in net income the third quarter this year, down from $4.9 billion in the same quarter last year. And while the fee creep is nothing new, it’s yet another reminder of of the levers these companies can pull in order to pad out their bottom line.