Verizon is breaking the barrier of high-cost calls and messages between long distance friends and family with its new World Messaging Unlimited plan for as low as $5 per month.  

Verizon is coming up with different ways to keep its customer-base intact. After introducing a new 250MB share data plan for $20 a month, the biggest U.S. carrier is upping the game with its new World Messaging Unlimited plan. Like the name suggests, the new plan offers unlimited text messages from the U.S. to "most of the world" for a mere $5 per month. The additional advantage of the plan is that the per-minute cost has also dropped to as low as 1 cent per minute to Canada or Mexico and also to Central America and the Caribbean.

Verizon stayed out of the spotlight for most of last year, while other carriers mainly AT&T and T-Mobile, fought to rake up their ranking in the U.S. With the New Year things have surely changed for not just Verizon but also for Sprint. The U.S. wireless industry is caught in a huge tug-of-war to win as many subscribers as possible even if it means covering the early termination fees for customers willing to switch carriers.

Verizon's latest offering comes as a promotional deal but does not have an end date, yet. To further promote the deal, the carrier is offering the add-on free for the first three months.

T-Mobile, on the other hand, offers free data and message roaming to over 100 countries without contract and AT&T also has various offers on global messaging and data plans.

The international messaging service can prove beneficial for those who do not use internet-based third-party apps like WhatsApp, Hangouts and others. These services have gained immense popularity and an earlier report even claims that WhatsApp has overtaken the SMS volume, as it processes more than 50 billion messages each day.