Verizon Reveals the Untold Truth About Family Phone Plans and It's Mind-Blowing

While a family plan might be your best option for saving money on your cell phone bill, it also means dealing with your family, as a hilarious new ad for the Verizon-owned Visible Wireless reminds us. As the holiday season reminds many why it might be less-than-ideal to sign a contract with your relatives, Visible offers a family plan alternative that's perfect for people who are happier making a commitment with their chosen family. 

"Wireless family plans save you money, but then you have to deal with family," a woman named Chloe who stars in the Visible ad reminds viewers as she enters her own chaotic family gathering. Asked by one family member about her love life within seconds of walking in the door, Chloe reminds the viewer that it's still possible to get a discount on unlimited data without having to sign anything with your family.

Get together with some friends for your own chosen family plan, getting unlimited data for as low as $25 a month. As the turkey turns into a fire hazard in the background, Visible promises "family plan savings without the family drama." Get more information on the plan here.

Meanwhile, Verizon continues to prepare to deploy its commercially available 5G core in 2022, with Adam Koeppe, Verizon's SVP of network technology and planning, telling SDxCentral earlier this week that Verizon is currently building out 5G core network functions and testing traffic and architecture on those functions. Koeppe added that Verizon has been incrementally moving its network functions and "directional technology" to a virtual cloud platform in a decision to lay the groundwork for this transition years ago.

"On the 5G front, the entire 5G core that's in development now will be on our cloud platform in a webscale architecture. 4G and 5G radio access nodes will have virtual basebands associated with most of them," Koeppe said, adding, "That is the progression you'll continue to see. As we look for the most sophisticated and efficient way to architect the network, you'll see a lot more virtual network functions running on our cloud platform."