8:00 AM -- Today is the funeral for Verizon Wireless 's unlimited data plans, and the beginning of a new era of data monitoring and usage caps for its customers. (See Verizon Confirms the End of Unlimited and Verizon Sheds a Tier for Unlimited Data.) And, let's be honest, many of them are going to go over their caps faster than you can say gigabyte, especially on Long Term Evolution (LTE). This is essentially what Verizon wants so that it can encourage upgrades and eke more revenue out of its subscribers each month, but I doubt they'll stand for it for long.

Right now, Verizon has only outlined the pricing for its three new plans and noted that $10 will be charged per gigabyte of excess, but there has to be more the carrier can do to make its customers happy.

Outside of just adding more -- and cheaper -- choices, Verizon and other carriers moving to usage-based pricing could personalize the service plans to make them more worthwhile for certain customer segments. Promotions like offering a premium package for a music enthusiast that gives them 2GB of data per month but excuses Pandora from the tier. Or, a gold standard for a photography nut that increases the upload speeds for picture porting.

Other ideas include offering free nights and weekends, much like operators do on the voice side. Mike Manzo, CMO of Openet Telecom Ltd. , also suggests bundling in quality of service to a tier as an upgrade to guarantee it for video watching. Tiers could also be built around parental controls or utility functions for the enterprise.

The possibilities for sprucing up the tiers are legion, and they might help ease consumers into this new, buffet-less world.

I have no idea if Verizon will make any of these moves and the fear of net neutrality violations may stop them from even exploring them, but it just seems logical to me.

It is more logical, at least, than capping consumers' data, yet not letting them escape a two-year contract.

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Reporter, Light Reading Mobile