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AT&T Threatens To Shut Off Service of Customer Who Won Throttling Case
suraj.sun writes in about the recent small claims case against AT&T's throttling of 'unlimited' plans. From the article: "AT&T has about 17 million smartphone customers on 'unlimited' plans, and has started slowing down service for users who hit certain traffic thresholds. Spaccarelli maintained at his February 24 small-claims hearing that AT&T broke its promise to provide 'unlimited' service, and the judge agreed. In a letter dated Friday, a law firm retained by AT&T Inc. is threatening to shut off Matthew Spaccarelli's phone service if he doesn't sit down to talk. Spaccarelli has posted online the documents he used to argue his case and encourages other AT&T customers copy his suit."
I have no love for AT&T and I'm glad the guy won, but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I mean, I'll try anything to improve AT&T signal reception, but I'm skeptical. I tried sitting, standing, and even lying down, and it doesn't really seem to change anything.
He violated his terms of use with AT&T by accessing the internet tethered. That violation alone warrants termination.
In TFA, it is stated that AT&T's threat to discontinue his service is based on his admission of tethering, which is against the TOS he agreed to. Not that their tactics here aren't shady, but they do have a contractual basis (excuse) for the threat.
Game, set, match. I have NO love for AT&T, but if this guy admits to violating their ToS, he doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
What would victory look like? Forcing them to acknowledge that they're genuinely incapable of delivering what they promise is really about as much as can be achieved...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Welcome to SXSW. Hope you enjoy your stay.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
"We don't care what some judge said. You either do it our way, via arbitration, or we ban you forever."
Damn corporations. Sound similar to how Paypal operated in the previous decade, until a class action lawsuit was brought against them by the States. Well at least corporations don't have power to throw me in jail forever, or draft me to serve in some foreign war (like government can).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I do have a right for words to be used properly though don't I? The word unlimited means that there are no limits...you know UN-LIMITED. If they want to sell plans based on bandwidth, then just do it. All the other carriers do. If I go to T-Mobile right now, they tell me I can get different tiers of data at high speeds and after I hit my limit, I get bumped down to 2G. It's called, not lying. AT&T should try it some time.
Of course the whole idea of limiting our bandwidth is fucking ridiculous to me, but that is a different discussion that I'm not going to bother with right now.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
For those that don't RTA: "Spaccarelli's victory in small-claims court is similar to that of Heather Peters, a California woman who won $9,867 from Honda last month because her Civic Hybrid did not live up to the promised gas mileage. She, too, is helping others bring similar cases."
I'm surprised she won. Perhaps it was because Honda *reprogrammed* the car after purchase, and that immediately made the MPG drop by ~10. I own a Honda Insight and am happy with the results (90mpg at 50 mph; 70mpg at 60 mph). Nice little car.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Just as he is free to not renew, AT&T is also free to not renew.
I have no problem with a business telling a customer "you cost us too much, we don't want you as a customer anymore." At the end of his current term, drop him like a hot potato.
Let Verizon or Sprint deal with him....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Maybe it's not a right, but it's what AT&T agreed to sell these people.
Unlimited, def:
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.
If it has a limit, tier, cap, or threshold, it's not unlimited. Unlimited is not newspeak for limited.
Dangerous, sexy, turing complete: Femme Bots
If it's about the wording then you can bet if it was an issue of wording in their favour he would be beaten over the head and made to stick to the letter of the law.
I don't understand why a company isn't held to the same rules.
If the contract said "and the customer will pay $20 every payment interval" without specifying the interval you can bet they would argue the right to change the interval to their favour and they would be within their rights to do that. Now you could argue that would be an unfair contract and as such not legally valid, but that is not what they're saying here.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
This is a cut-and-dry case of corporations pushing around the consumers. Given it is over internet service, this would make a great case of 'cyber-bullying' (as much as I hate that whole concept).
If American customers have any sense, they will file these suits in droves and this guy will never talk to AT&T again.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Since they guy admits he violated the Terms of Service by tethering, is it really a surprise?
AT&T just needs to clearly indicate that you get X gigs of data at 4G or 3G speeds, then anything after that is subject to lower speeds.
You don't have a "right" to unlimited data, sorry. The only issue I see is AT&T hasn't been clear with how it works.
I think that unlimited needs to mean truly unlimited or face false advertising penalties from the FTC. Let's just state what the hard upper limits are and be truthful in advertising. All of the cellular telecom companies have mudied these waters enough and there is no harm by just calling it what it is. It has become a war of words between companies when in actuality they are all equally poor.
But AT&T doesn't say Unlimited but Unlimited* :-)
*For very low value of limited
>>>Of course the whole idea of limiting our bandwidth is fucking ridiculous to me
I don't know why? The wireless spectrum only has a limited amount of space, so a single tower can only stream a maximum amount of data in a month (deviced by thousands of customers).
It's the same as my dialup connection which is also limited (~12 gigabytes/month max) because of technical constraints. Wireless/cellular internet is not different.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The issue is not that they were unclear, it's that they LIED about it.
I have an iPhone. I have an unlimited data plan. I expect that means whenever I try to use it, AT&T will not impose limits on how much of that data I use. Now, there are a couple ways they might limit me. They could impose a cap after which I get zero data. They don't do that. They could restrict my data rate after I reach some threshold. They DO that. I know some people don't get that it's a limit, but it is, especially if they're throttling you to 1% of your normal speed. That's a cut off in all but name.
I'm not saying AT&T needs to provide me a Gb/s or infinite bandwidth, but if they sell me an "unlimited" plan, I should be able to get whatever their network is technically capable of delivering whenever I ask for it. I can accept that it may be slow if 10,000 other people are on the same pipe. That is not AT&T limiting me. When AT&T singles me out for using too much data on an unlimited plan and artificially restricts how much more data I can use, that's a limit, plain and simple.
The part that really galls me is how aggressively they advertised these things. Come and get an iPhone, they said. Browse the web! Stream music and video! The entire intarwebz are at your fingertips! NOW they want to back away from that. No. Honor your contracts, AT&T.
If you offer me unlimited Bar-B-Que in exchange for fifty bucks, and I pay the fifty, you have to keep serving the chow until I call it quits. If you don't want to stay up all night serving spicy sauce covered meat, then you had BETTER make it clear in your offer that I have to consume all my food before your 9:PM closing time. And - if you don't want me to be waiting for you when you return to open in the morning, you had BETTER make it clear that I can only eat what I'm capable of consuming in one sitting.
In short - offer what you intend to deliver. Or, be prepared to deliver what you offer.
None of the telcos wants you to have unlimited data. They need to make that clear in their advertising, and in their contracts. Stop offering unlimited to induce people to sign up for overpriced 5 gig contracts.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's all semantics. He still has unlimited data, just not at the speeds he was accustomed to. Only number 3 comes close to this. They never promise any speed with any service contract. Even when they adverstise for their 4G network it says "Not available in all areas." It's not false advertising, but it is. It's amazing what you can get away with a disclaimer.
As much as I hate AT&T, I have to side with them on this one. This guy broke his part of the contract, and they are now calling him on it. As has been stated before and after, I'm not even sure how this guy won his case. Don't look at too many more of these working. At best, it'll be changed to a class action lawsuit, and then only the lawyers will win.
21st Century Renaissance Man
It's in the contract. Point, Match, Set.
And it's nuts.
A company should be on their knees begging customers for business. Customers are the lifeblood for a company.
Ahh, but I suppose I'm just too old fashioned for this world...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
cellular internet is not different.
What is it about the term "cellular" that you don't understand?
When a cell tower starts getting saturated with connections, you build several more towers and make the cells smaller reducing the xmit/recv power requirement to reduce interference.. The "we need more bandwidth" argument is and always has been maximally Bogus. They are just to frakking cheap to upgrade/build out their infrastructure because it would cut into all that wonderful grant money from taxes we paid that they were given to do just that. Asshats.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Well that's a pretty big fucking issue right there.
Here, buy my old car. The $20,000 asking price might seem high for a '93 Mazda, but it comes with unlimited gasoline. I don't have AT&T's army of lawyers, so I'd better tell you how it works: As long as you only run the engine 3 minutes a month and keep it in neutral, you can use as much gasoline as you want until the fuel that came in the tank when you bought the car runs out.
What, you thought you had a "right" to unlimited gasoline just because I used the word "unlimited"? Hah! What a maroon!
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
You don't have a "right" to unlimited data, sorry
I do when that's what they were advertising, and that's what they sold me.
There's a huge fucking difference between technical constraints, and arbitrary, "We want more money!" bullshit constraints like those AT&T puts on their service.
He still has unlimited data, just not at the speeds he was accustomed to.
Nope. That's still a limit on the data, thus making AT&T in violation of their contract.
This guy broke his part of the contract, and they are now calling him on it.
What part? The part where the judge agreed that no tethering was an arbitrary limit on the service they sold as unlimited, and was therefore null and void?
I don't get this. They don't have as a good a network, and where they do have coverage it is spotty and calls drop. They seems to be hostile to their own customers, and people don't seem to get what they pay for.
I run a web service for firefighters that sounds like thousands and thousands of text messages each month -- and does using using the US providers' preferred method of sending them via SMTP. AT&T is the slowest at receiving the messages and getting them out to phones in most places by a long way. Verizon is usually a matter of a second or two, where I've seen AT&T regularly take 5 minutes or more and occasionally much longer.
Why do people put up with this crap?
I'm going to sound like a commercial for Verizon here -- but I swear, I'm not in any way tied to them other than as a customer.
I've been a Verizon customer for years and years. While it is true that recently they changed from an "unlimited" service to some reasonable (IMHO) caps based on price, the plan isn't bad at all and it's spelled out pretty clearly. I pay 50 bucks for up to 5gb in a month, and if I go over that it costs me about $10/gb -- which is in line with my service pricing. Most months, I'm way under. Once or twice in a year if I'm travelling a lot and using slingbox over LTE I may go over -- but it's no big deal. My calling plan has a contract length, but I can reduce the monthly minutes and cost or increase it pretty much at will with no penalty so if I care to I could manage the bill to save a bunch of money. My kids phones use my minutes so they don't cost much to add to my plan, and because I'm a volunteer firefighter, they give me 20% off everything plus free unlimited text messaging.
I'm not 100% happy all the time with them, sure. Their international data plan is unusable these days (where it used to be a good deal) but overall -- I don't have the kinds of problems I see people with AT&T complaining about.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Anyone read the letter of resignation of Greg Smith over at Goldman Sachs? Me thinks AT&T is NO different.
Yes true but there's a limit to how many towers you can add per cell, unless you intend there to be 1 tower for every block. At that point you might as well just forget the tower & run fiber optics to each home (cheaper with faster throughput).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Unlimited can actually mean less than you think. Unlimited bandwidth is a violation of the laws of physics, so it's clearly not that. Unlimited connection time at a certain bandwidth is possible. This is what they offer. Throttling simply sets a (probably unreasonably) low level for that "certain bandwidth" after a given amount of data has been transferred. eg You are buying unlimited service at 56kbps, with a GB or two of service at 1.5Mbps.
Not a sentence!
Unlimited, to me, in this context, means "as much as our network can support". That means that if I connect to a cell tower, I expect to receive 100 / (number of people actively using data) % of their service or the max my phone will allow, whichever is lower. If the problem were at the spectrum level they wouldn't have to artificially limit data speed, the waveform implementation in the phone and the tower would do that automatically to support all the connected users.
"Unlimited Data"... I honestly and dearly wish people would QUIT running that tired old argument up the flagpole- it's flatly false. Let's run some numbers...
Presume, if you will the theoretical max AT&T is providing in their non-HSPA+/LTE areas. This is 1.7Mbit up/ 0.7Mbit down. You get billed for any data transferred. If you're mostly streaming, the upstream will be negligible. So...
In 1 second, you will pull down roughly 217 kibytes of data.
In 1 minute, you will pull down roughly 12 Mibytes of data.
In 1 hour, you will pull down roughly 783 Mibytes of data.
In 1 day, you will pull down roughly 18 Gibytes of data.
In 1 week, you will pull down roughly 126 Gibytes of data.
This presumes no throttling whatsoever. Now, presume they throttle to EDGE speeds at 5Gibytes transferred.
In 1 second, you will pull down roughly 217 kibytes of data.
In 1 minute, you will pull down roughly 12 Mibytes of data.
In 1 hour, you will pull down roughly 783 Mibytes of data.
In less than 1 day, you will hit your cap- in fact, it'll be somewhere around 6 and a half hours in.
With this, you'll pull down the following:
In 1 day, you will pull down roughly 6.82 Gibytes of data.
In 1 week, you will pull down roughly 21.9 Gibytes of data.
126 != 21.9 Quite simply it's not "unlimited data" in the slightest as they're limiting just how much data you CAN get through the link by limiting your speed. It's why AT&T LOST the case in the first place.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
THIS!
Heh... It utterly amazes me how many people buy into things begin legit, just because a company put it in the contract- and how few understand any aspects of contract law, but will say, "it's in the contract or terms of service," and therefore claim the company's in the rights. Especially here.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I don't "OMGZ HATE AT&T!!!"
But my contract is up at the end of the month.
To keep the same plan limited to 3gb per month I have with them now, they quoted $120 per month with taxes and only 900 minutes per month.
To get the same thing with Spring is going to run me about $90 but with truly unlimited data, unlimited texts, unlimited minutes cell to cell and 450 minutes to land lines.
I'm not mad, but man it seems like I would have to be stupid to stay with AT&T.
Both Cheaper per month and truly unlimited data. Coverage is the same in the areas I live and work in (we have sprint transmitters in my building).
I pretty ruthlessly switch to which ever cell company or cable company has the best deal.
Now that Dish Network is up to $90 a month for almost nothing (I cut service twice and they just raised rates by $10 shortly afterwards), I'll be leaving them too.
Cable TV should be $50 a month max in my opinion.
And Cell Service should definately be cheaper than AT&T and include truly unlimited data/etc.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
... that your phone isn't your internet provider (even though it connects you to the internet).
I know that people will say that you shouldn't watch TV and videos on your phone (even though t-mobile and ATT both have apps on their front page to do this, and run ads constantly like the ones that show the guy watching the game in the restaurant with his girlfriend).
I know that people will say that it isn't fair to the other users if one user hogs up all the bandwidth.
To which I say, fine. In that case, don't fscking call the plan unlimited, and don't advertise the use of streaming aps as a major feature. Lying isn't cool, ethical or moral, and that's exactly what the snake oil telecoms do.
And if the networks can't support the usage, then stop selling the usage. Invest in the networks, instead of attempted mergers for the sake of acquiring someone else's spectrum (instead of investing in infrastructure to increase your own bandwidth capabilities).
And just because others are absolutely guilty of the same thing (I'm looking at you, t-mobile) - it doesn't mean this sort of fraud is right.
Check your premises.
I am surprised nobody has come out with a antenna per utility pole and/or streetlight solution to increase cell density. Connect the antennae with fiber and drop it on the doorstep as well. Although if they do, ATT and the other providers wont pay to deploy it and will continue to moan about "bandwidth".
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Yes I believe there is precedent, in the 1992 Homer Simpson vs. The Frying Dutchman case.
And then he really owns AT&T with a breach of privacy, emotional trauma, slander of character, breach of contract case, and probably wins several million.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
What's your point?
They're still selling "unlimited" data. That is the problem here; it's deception.
No one here is going to argue that there are technical limits, and that infinite bandwidth should always, in all conditions, "just work". What you will find argued, however, is that if they should not be allowed a free pass to bait and switch.
Check your premises.
They don't want to do that because it would be a substantial change and so leave a bunch of people free to terminate their contract without a fee.
Many people do have a CONTRACTUAL right to unlimited data.
What have spectrum limits got to do with monthly data caps? At 3:00am, the spectrum is not being used, but if you are over your monthly limit, AT&T will still throttle you. The monthly limits are arbitrary constraints.
Also, if you are going to offer an "unlimited" service, you should make sure you buy the necessary equipment and spectrum to provide it. Otherwise it is a fraudulent offer.
AT&T should just drop this guy and pay up. There is clearly nothing to be gained from doing anything else (unless they are going to give him a large amount of cash to stay quiet).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
T-Mobile is actually quite clear about this.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
They are lucky if they can sustain 100% of their theoretically viable signal at every possible location in their network. Oh wait, they can' t.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I do have the right.
They gave me contract terms that stated very clearly 'unlimited data' and we both agreed to that control.
There is no issue in whats clear other than AT&T doesn't want to provide what they agreed to. I didn't agree to silly terms I didn't want to deliver, they did. Its not that they can't make good on the terms of the agreement, its that they don't want to because its not AS profitable for them.
Simply contract law, they are breaching it.
(As far as TFA is concerned, so is the douche bag who was tethering with his phone, which is a valid reason fot AT&T to tell him to go fuck himself)
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
t-mobile is pretty deceptive as well. Not as bad as ATT, but their throttling is basically a full kill on any real use of the phone, too.
And they certainly played up the whole grandfathered into full "unlimited" thing, even when they imposed the caps and throttling.
(And no, the argument that they're all unethical scumballs doesn't mean it's right that any of them is an unethical scumball).
Check your premises.
I had wondered about this idea in college. I thought when studying for finals it might be great to head in to a buffet place in the morning and sit through all 3 meals while studying and eating 3 meals for the price of one. I never tried it, though.
The problem is the AT&T and other carriers have oversold network capacity. They should build up to make sure the bandwidth is there. And until that happens I'd be OK with them throttling only on towers that are in danger of being swamped. Maybe even send out a notice to users saying, "Yes we suck at providing you with bandwidth, but there are a lot of users on this tower and we have to throttle the data speeds so others can use it. Consider laying off sucking up bandwidth for the next 15 minutes or so."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I think that it should be noted that an "all you can eat" deal is usually a bit expensive to start with. There is - or at least was, not sure if it's still there - a restaurant in Oklahoma that offered a gigundous steak dinner, for free - IF you could eat it all. If you couldn't clean your plate up, then you had to pay something like $50. The value of the meal changed over time, but it was a HUGE dinner. I met several people who tried to eat it all, and failed. They could have eaten a meal of similar quality at any of dozens of other restaurants, closer to home, for half that price or less. But they thought, or hoped, that they could get a free meal.
Personally, I seldom opt of an "all you can eat" deal. I just can't eat a whole lot at one time. Although, I will do buffets and smorgasbords if there is good variety of foods available. I LOVE to fill a plate with just a table fork full of dozens of items! Just a taste of everything, but I'm stuffed when I leave.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Same idea here - I'm always doing silly things like cutting food in half because I often get dozens of bite-size portions. The real value in a buffet is the variety, not the amount of food.
http://lasvegasblog.harrahs.com/las-vegas-casinos/caesars-palace/this-is-huge-all-day-citywide-buffet-deal/
Unlimited has always meant, in the best of times, "as much as we can give you within reason". AT&T just has a lower breaking point than most companies that do this so it's more noticeable.
I still don't understand why data coming from the phone itself and data from a tethered device is treated differently. I can suck down 2 GB over the air using any number of pre-installed apps I'm not allowed to remove, but the second I want to tether my laptop to my phone to use a MB or two to check my email on a screen bigger than 3", I have to pay $20-$60 more a month with no pro-rated cost, or risk having my service cancelled. I just need to use it for a day or a week when I'm on vacation or off site. How is the data different because it's coming through the phone from another device than if it was coming from the phone itself?
It's no surprise with policies like this designed to deliberately make it difficult, annoying, and expensive to their customers that many would look to bypass their carriers mandatory second (or third) data plan required for tethering.
Do they even realize how much money they are loosing to pay-for-access 802.11 providers if they would just offer what customers want for a reasonable price and not feeling like we're being raped?
This à la carte sale of minutes, texts, and data is the biggest racket in history. How about this: $10/month per phone to cover your record keeping and base data prices to cover things like the phones tying up the network to ping pong the towers and servers all the time, then a reasonable per minute/MB/txt charge (i.e. 2-3 cents a minute/MB/txt regardless of it being sent or received) and everyone pays what they use. I'm ok with having a $20 bill one month and a $160 bill the next if that's what I used. I would much rather see that then the same $120 every month if I used 5 of everything vs 5000. This would also hopefully lead to more responsible use of phones in the first place. If base costs were reasonable to where a kid could pay for it with their allowance as long as they didn't go over board, then we probably wouldn't end up with quite so many people glued to the screen while "driving"/loosely aiming their vehicles down the roads.
If you're a corporation and you want to count on the bill being the same every month, than sure you can opt in to the current system we're using now so you have the same number of dollars every time it comes to pay the bill, but I really don't think many corporations would go for that kind of thing if it wasn't such a rip off to do it any other way.
I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
Can you point me to anything from AT&T that guarantees the speed you will get from your mobile device? No? You can''t? Case closed.
That said, I agree AT&T should just clarify and make very clear exactly what you're getting.
I'm unaware of anything in AT&T's advertising materials that indicates the speed at which your mobile device will download data.
Huh? T-Mobile is very clear, at least with my plan. $30 gets unlimited texts/voice, and unlimited data where the first 5G of data is at 3G speeds, and anything beyond 5G is subject to throttling.
Can you show me anywhere where AT&T indicates _anything_ about the data rates you will see on your phone?
It is? AT&T guaranteed somewhere in your contract the bandwidth you would get from your phone? Yeah... no, they didn't. Rematch.
Can you find anywhere in your contract the bandwidth that AT&T guaranteed you? Physics itself literally precludes unlimited (infinite) bandwidth, so surely you can point to the clause in your contract that says AT&T will guarantee you 4G speeds at all times?
ATT (and others) didn't arbitrarily add the 3 gig cap. They did it because customers were complaining about slow connections or dropped connections (like my hotel Wifi). Their network had reached max capacity.
Oh and I agree about the false-advertising "unlimited". I hope the government nails them to the wall with a class-action lawsuit. But if you expect wireless internet to always be unlimited, forever, then you're fooling yourself. There is only one spectrum and it is shared with ~1000 other people per cell.
Plus TV and radio and emergency band. There's not enough room for everyone to be watching Bluray quality videos at the same time.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Except that it isn't a free market, given that the spectrum is a publicly shared and owned asset.
Check your premises.
It's clear enough on their website, and they don't even seem to be offering the "unlimited" plans anymore (except for non-smartphones).
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/data-plans.jsp
http://www.att.com/esupport/datausage.jsp
But in any case, at best, you should be able to cancel your contract prematurely, after paying for the balance of your phone. You shouldn't be able to get arbitrary amounts of data for free in perpetuity, which is what you seem to want.
>>>
unlimited data at the advertised speed, the only limitation being time itself. If you offer a 100kbps plan that doesn't let you download 259gb per month, and call it unlimited,
>>>
I've posted this many times before and it gets ignored, I agree with your point wholesale. There are inherent limits as you have rightly highlighted. There is a natural limit in all this stuff. We are human, all our stuff and our selves have limits: Of time (consciousness/consumption) + Of bandwidth (throughput/time as you've noted) + Of routing speeds + Of cabling speeds + Of peering agreements? So WTF am I saying.
IOW, I could argue that X Telecom is prevaricating in its -unlimit- when I request say a download/ refresh of the entire Internet! Fuck, youz crazy you say! Maybe, but that's what "unlimited" ultimately means---ZERO limits.
To wit, I should be able to ask with -certainty- for God to download the entire Multiverse to my God-device, and it shall be so. He's perfect, yes. Inhuman, thus perfect.
This is a non brief way of saying, what telecoms/anyone-else should advertise is UnMetered service. For, unless you are Vishnu or some omnipotent deity you can not provided anything in Un-Limited quantities. It's not semantics, man.
I know they swear up and down "No caps no limits" but how do you actually know that. And how does anyone distinguish that from what carriers claim is just a coverage problem or a local congestion? Because I swear that in Raleigh NC Sprint caps me. I know they do. Either that or '4G' is really 0.001G because speed test on 4G yields maybe 400Kbps the best ever but usually half that and 3G is barely 90Kbps. When I talk to Sprint all I get is 'who knows? we don't show any technical problems in your area."
Customer throttle YOU!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
My AT&T contract on my 3G expired last December. I am now a Sprint customer with the 4S. Most of the iPhone users I know are leaving AT&T and droves for Verizon or Sprint.sticker printing services
with AT&T the data is unlimited is sucessful. How The speeds ?? :).
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