VZ and ATT don't even pretend to care about their customers most of the time. Sprint sort of does but its network is supposed to be significantly worse than Verizon's. I managed to grandfather my (Verizon) plan before they shut it down so I was pretty lucky. Unfortunately it will only last until I get my next phone and/or the contract expires, so 2 years I suppose. :/
It sounds like you're going to be stuck with Verizon then since you get that discount, and it has the best combo of price and phone selection. It really boils down to how much data you think you'll be using. If you're going to be consuming quite a bit of data, then I personally think you should go ahead and purchase the phone at off-contract price in order to continue your unlimited data plan. This way, you get the best network, a passable price, and likely a pretty good phone. The price of the phone is practically a drop in the bucket compared to the price of the data plan on-contract, though off-contract, it definitely $#@!ing expensive.
Verizon has actually publicly said that this "tiered plan" (i.e. paying more for each GB, ridiculous because overall costs don't scale that way at all for them) is the way they want to go in the future, saying that as people discover the power of 4G, they'll become sort of hooked on the network; they're suggesting that people will have to keep jumping up the tiers and paying more. This is why a grandfathered plan can be REALLY valuable. Verizon made record profits last year, yet they want to go this way in order to rake in more cash...just unabashed, shameless greed. Their CEO or CFO also said that they wouldn't be averse to the idea of only one or two networks in the US...terrible really ;_;
In terms of a physical qwerty keyboard, consider trying out apps such like swype (swipe finger around to form words instead of typing, after having used it, I personally no longer use physical keyboards at all  ). Most phones with physical keyboards these days are significantly crappier than the flagship/big-name devices.
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