"A lot of these services are simply too expensive, still, for what you get," Castonguay said. U.S. carriers need to follow the lead of European operators and drop data prices, but also introduce tools for subscribers to easily see how much data they've used, he said.

Verizon's introduction of the new, limited plans just highlights a core dilemma the carriers face, analyst Gold said: How to price data plans low enough that they're attractive to consumers but not so low that subscribers swamp the network and degrade its performance, leading to complaints about both voice and data performance.