No Such Thing As 'Unlimited' Data (wired.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According to an article at Wired, the era of 'unlimited' data services is coming to an end. Carriers don't give them out anymore unless they're hobbled, and they're even increasing the prices of grandfathered plans. Comcast's data caps are spreading, and Time Warner has been testing them for years as well. It's not even just about internet access — Microsoft recently decided to eliminate its unlimited cloud storage plan. The big question now is: were these companies cynical, or just naive? We have no way of evaluating their claims that a small number of users who abused the system caused it to be unprofitable for them. (A recent leaked memo from Comcast suggests it's about extracting more money, rather than network congestion.) But it's certainly true that limited plans make costs and revenue much easier to predict. Another question: were we, as consumers, naive in expecting these plans to last? As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Unlimited data plans clearly won't work too well if everybody uses huge amounts. So did we let ourselves get suckered by clever marketing? T-Mobile plans may also be dropping unlimited data in 2016.

Comments

How can there be?

[SuperKendall]

The real question is why someone could ever pay a flat fee for an infinite resource. It was obvious that could never last.

The people that scream the loudest about it, are of course the ones abusing the system and hastening its demise...

Re:How can there be?

[cahuenga]

How do they abuse an offer of 'unlimited'?

Re:How can there be?

[Kohath]

These services are built around the idea of a normalized distribution of usage. If one user uses a million times the average of the rest of the users, then "unlimited" offers can't be economically sustained.

You don't have to agree that it's "abuse". It just makes "unlimited" service models impossible -- one user can ruin it for everyone else. I'm sure you and some others think he has a "right" to do that. Maybe he does. It's still sad for everyone else who has to worry about usage caps as a result.

Re:How can there be?

[DigiShaman]

The entire economy is predicated on the concept of over subscription; be it traffic and the amount of cars on it at any point in time, water, natural gas, electricity, food, money (banking and loans)..etc. If everyone simultaneously tried to obtain as much of the aforementioned resources at any given time, there would be a massive shortfall of said resource. Bandwidth is not an exception

Re:How can there be?

[Anonymous Coward]

These companies knew damned well they were lying when they sold it. Now I say "too fucking bad".

Don't be a moron. I agree that the marketing people never should have ever started using unlimited. So now they're fixing it because the technical limitations of offering "unlimited" are slapping them in the face. But I don't understand what you want. Them still to give you true unlimited? Well get ready to pay up. The FTC to slap them with fines? Pfft. It's water under the bridge, how would you prove anything? At any rate, they'd just cut a check and move on. Stop stomping your feet and holding your breath about this issue like a little kid. This is the way business works nowadays, for right or for wrong, and eventually it corrects itself - which is what we're seeing.

Re:How can there be?

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, the people abusing the system thought they found a loophole, so they eagerly began exploiting it. The companies, realizing that they created a loophole, are working to close it. However, the companies aren't fixing it for anything to do with their customers. They absolutely know that they could be making more money off of these abusers, and it galls them that they aren't able to do so right now (that's why they call it 'losing' money to justify their actions). And the abusers absolutely know they're abusing it, but they just don't want to give up their stuff.

Personally, the abusers that I've heard from always brag about how much bandwidth they're using and even about how much they're taking away from all the other users in their area, full-well knowing that bandwidth is limited and they're trying to keep as much of it as they can for themselves.

Re:How can there be?

[vux984]

"How do they abuse an offer of 'unlimited'?"

Normal people understand that an 'unlimited' offer of a resource that is actually both limited and communal should not be unreasonably monopolized.

If you are the guy that goes downstairs and takes the entire 'continental breakfast' plate of danish up to your hotel room your abusing the fact that the hotel didn't place a 'limit' on the number of danish you could have.

If you show up every morning at dawn and claim one of the beach volleyball courts, and then keep it to yourself all day, every day. You are abusing the the fact that the park has an unlimited first-come first serve policy.

If you walk into a chinese buffet for brunch at 11am, plunk down your $8 for all you can eat, and then promptly take the entire tray of sweet and sour chicken balls depriving everyone else of any. You are abusing the all-you-can eat offer. If the restaurant brings out a second tray of balls and you immediately rush up and help yourself to all of them too. Then sit back down, sip on unlimited pop for 6 hours, and then start serving yourself dinner. Well, your the kind of customer they invite you to "leave and not to come back".

Do you really need this explained to you?

Furthermore, the 'unlimited' with broadband is even more special because it's origins come from the limited -connection times- that we generally had with dial-up. No more 50 hours of dialup! No more busy signals! "Unlimited internet" initially meant 24x7 connectivity; you're always online!

It has never meant, "Go ahead and max out your download speed 24x7" except to people looking to abuse the fact that they weren't metering bandwidth.

Re:How can there be?

[gstoddart]

Executives and sales people of companies who lie to the public being sent to jail?

That helps everyone except the lying bastard executives and sales people. And then the other lying bastards know they're next if they do the same thing.

Know what doesn't help anyone? Letting the lying bastards keep being lying bastards without any penalty.

Then the message to the other lying bastards is "it's OK to be a lying bastard, nothing will happen".

But let's stop pretending this is "customers abusing corporations", and remember that it's really "lying bastard abusing customers".

Re:How can there be?

[SuricouRaven]

A more accurate comparison would be an all-you-can-eat restaurant. The business model is founded upon a simple physical limitation: Humans have only a finite stomach volume. ISPs likewise are founded upon the assumption that if you promise unlimited data, most people can only sit through so many youtube videos in a month.

The problem for ISPs are the outliers. There are no humans with a fifty-gallon stomach, but there are plenty of customers who will see unlimited data as an invitation to download every song produced in the last century, or as a cheap alternative to a business service.

Re:How can there be?

[Anonymous Coward]

But none of the other resources are sold as unlimited. Your statement is entirely unrelated to this issue.

Re:How can there be?

[Anonymous Coward]

These services are built around the idea of a normalized distribution of usage.

Piffle. The services are *marketed* on the basis of enticing the customer with the best case scenario possible. UNLIMITED in giant bold faced font, the reality in tiny illegible print. You might have the slightest hint of an argument to make if the services were presented as they were from the start, honest and true. What really happened is that the services were created with as little investment as possible under the assumption that a crude estimate of normalized usage would hold true, then they were sold on the promise of exactly the opposite.

If one user uses a million times the average of the rest of the users, then "unlimited" offers can't be economically sustained.

You don't have to agree that it's "abuse". It just makes "unlimited" service models impossible -- one user can ruin it for everyone else. I'm sure you and some others think he has a "right" to do that. Maybe he does. It's still sad for everyone else who has to worry about usage caps as a result.

Nonsense. The other part that you are conveniently ignoring is that the 'unlimited' services were *also* sold with limitations in the form of speed caps (as they still are this very day). Slow internet for a lower price, if you want faster speeds you pay for it. And those speeds were also marketed as 'best case' speeds which in reality were never achieved - actual speeds are always quite a bit less than the promised speed.

The end result? There is a built in limit to how much bandwidth can be used over time. Using the connection 24/7 at the speeds they are limited to means there is a finite limit to the amount of data transferred by definition. Why is it considered 'abuse' to actually transmit and receive the limited number of bits you actually pay for in a given time period? Why isn't it considered fraud to sell a service on the basis of limited speed as unlimited when your infrastructure can't possibly handle the demand if people actually used what they bought?

Stop being an apologist for deceptive businesses that deserve no sympathy.

Re:How can there be?

[iamgnat]

I'm not sure why people have been clinging onto these ideals of "unlimited data."

Maybe because the tiered plans they offer as an alternative are ridiculous?

All these plan switches I've looked into offer a couple cheap options with ridiculously low caps then some larger (which still aren't always enough) plans for a non-comparative increased price. Often you find that the plan that would fit your needs is more expensive than what you are already paying for the unlimited plan. Finally if you end up going over the plan cap, the overage charges are obscene.

Then factor in if your usage isn't predictable and can swing by 50% or more each month you then start talking about wasted money (paying for a big enough plan to cover your "bad months") or are getting screwed by the overages on the months you run high.

This push for caps has nothing to do with any small subset of user's usage outside of the PR spin. It is all about getting us to pay them more money either upfront (too big of a plan) or after the fact (picking too small of a plan and then getting hit with overages with no effective warning or way to prevent it). If this was really about resources they would automatically throttle you after a certain point or these would be hard caps that cut you off until you took action (e.g. upped the limit) rather than just start adding dollar signs to your account. I have also yet to see one that offers easy to use/find tools that let you control what happens as you approach and hit the cap (e.g. notifications, throttle the bandwidth, cut it off) and that's the biggest indicator that this stuff is just to line their pockets while emptying yours.

You also have to ask just how many residential users have any idea how much data they are consuming on regularly basis?

Re:How can there be?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how much is Comcast paying you to shill for them? People pay for 'bandwidth' which is a measure of size (not speed) already, if I choose to use a 30 Mb/s bandwidth for 1 second a day or 82,000 seconds is of no never mind. I'm paying for 'size' already, so limiting how often I could use that size is double dipping, stupid & not what I signed up for.

Re:How can there be?

[thegarbz]

If one user could run it for everyone else then the provider flat out lied about their capabilities and tolerance to data use. It's not sad for the people that are now capped, it's providing then with restrictions that have been there all along, just this time in writing.

The only sad thing is that you blame someone for something they used in accordance with their contact that they paid for.

Re:How can there be?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Because they misjudged how badly outliers like people with Bittorrent servers would affect total data usage?

They were going after normal users who wanted to surf with a mind unfettered by worries of overage charges.

You are like a lardass suing an all you can eat buffet because he can't sit in his booth gorging steadily for 18 hours. And people have done that, and won. Like phone companies, now they have to compensate by raising prices, or stopping calling it all you can eat.

Re:How can there be?

[DarkOx]

Yes but words have meanings. "All you can eat" means just that how much food can you proccess through you gut while you are willing to sit there and do that. I am not aware of an "Unlimited food!" restaurants.

Re:How can there be?

[laurencetux]

the big problem (and source of the outrage) is ISPs have been given federal funds to expand and upgrade AND THESE FUNDS HAVE NOT BEEN USED TO DO SO.

Re:How can there be?

[Coren22]

This is more like an all you can eat buffet that has you pay a price to enter, then charges you per plate even though they didn't advertise it that way.

Re:How can there be?

[operagost]

The problem for ISPs are the outliers.

Calling them outliers suggests they make up only a small percentage of the entire group of customers. That means that ISPs should be able to account for them when determining what they can afford to charge their customers... or whether they can afford to offer unlimited service at all. Obviously, if "everyone" is a "data hog", then no one is a "data hog". That's become common usage. So if every customer's demand has outstripped the technology and economy (supply), then perhaps unlimited plans have to go for now. But you can't call them "unlimited".

Re:How can there be?

[StikyPad]

To be pedantic, a bittorrent server serves small .torrent files, not the actual files indexed therein.

Secondly, let's call "unlimited data" what it is: unmetered data. And unmetered data works in many other scenarios with lower costs to the end-user and equally large data, like VPN and NNTP services for $10/mo. Further, many countries have ISPs that profitably offer unmetered data. Indeed, Comcast has never been close to unprofitable in its years of offering unmetered data, and its 400GB (or whatever) cap has seldom been enforced.

The real reason corporations are pushing back against unmetered data is that it's non-billable data. It's a revenue stream that they're naturally eyeing in a never-ending push to increase margins quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. It's not because unmetered data is unprofitable, it's because it's not as profitable as metered data. The apologists who defend these corporations are either being duped by their marketing, or are heavily invested in their profits.

There are accounts with unlimited access

[It doesn't come easy]

Example, calls within the US. I have not paid "long distance" charges in years. On the other hand, everyone accepts the idea of paying for electricity at different tiers of usage. Of course, (at least where I live) there is a lot of competition between middle men (the actual producers are still heavily regulated). I would predict that there would be a lot less resistance to tiered internet usage IF we had true competition.

Bait and switch

[Bugler412]

That's what it would be called in any other retail environment, and it's illegal. The providers called it unlimited and therefore it should be unlimited. It's not the fault of the consumer for taking them at their advertised word.

Often a small number of users /do/ use a ton ...

[Wrath0fb0b]

We have no way of evaluating their claims that a small number of users who abused the system caused it to be unprofitable for them.

Anecdote incoming, but when I helped out on college IT it was fairly consistent that the top 20% of users (well, network ports) were responsible for 80-90% of the usage. And further the top 2% (which was two dozen or so) were responsible for about 50-60% of the usage. This was pretty consistently the same few ports too -- not just that at any point the usage was skewed but that over time those users were using a ton. Since we didn't have a huge pipe to the internet, those super-users would, from time to time, really degrade everyone else's connection. That lead to the idea that we could mitigate this situation by a fair and objective set of rules:

(1) No data "caps" -- we are not interested in aggregating data over long periods of time
(2) A byte is a byte -- we are not interested in packet inspection, only counts
(3) Traffic shaping only kicks in during actual congestion -- we are not interested in doing anything until service is actually degraded

What we ended up doing was that when the pipe to the internet was 75% full or more, any user that over the last 15 minutes was in the top 20% of traffic and consuming more than 5x the average use for that time period would get shunted into the lowest QoS bucket. This classification continued until either the usage dropped or (most likely) the outbound pipe was no longer congested.

What the fuck does this have to do with Comcast? Well, as much as I hate them I do have to admit that there is a plausible case for a small fraction of users degrading service for the rest of their paying customers (or necessitating costly upgrades that will be passed along to everyone). And they have implemented their congestion control in the most indefensible way I can imagine -- monthly caps cannot possibly solve the issue of overloading on short time-scales. So I'm left with the idea that, instead of sperging about "unlimited", the tech community actually try to be productive in endorsing a fair set of guidelines (maybe not at all like those above!) on how to manage networks to ensure that a minority of users don't degrade service for everyone. Not that Comcast doesn't deserve sperging of course ...

They advertised it as unlimited

[sjbe]

Normal people understand that an 'unlimited' offer of a resource that is actually both limited and communal should not be unreasonably monopolized.

Normal people understand "unlimited" to actually mean "unlimited" when used to promote the service. If it isn't unlimited it should not be advertised as such. But these companies very clearly said that you would have "unlimited" bandwidth so any changes after the fact means that they lied. That is called bait and switch among other things.

If you are the guy that goes downstairs and takes the entire 'continental breakfast' plate of danish up to your hotel room your abusing the fact that the hotel didn't place a 'limit' on the number of danish you could have.

Did the hotel advertise the number of danishes as "unlimited"? My guess is that they did nothing of the sort. They merely said a free breakfast was available, not that you could take the entire buffet back to your room.

If you walk into a chinese buffet for brunch at 11am, plunk down your $8 for all you can eat, and then promptly take the entire tray of sweet and sour chicken balls depriving everyone else of any.

It's all you can EAT. Not all you can take. You seem to be fuzzy on the difference. Stomachs have a finite capacity and restaurants know this. (Well, unless you are the late John Pinette)