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Verizon To Disconnect Unlimited Data Customers Who Use Over 100GB/Month
Verizon Wireless customers who have an unlimited data plan and use significantly more than 100GB a month will soon be disconnected from the network unless they agree to move to limited data packages that require payment of overage fees. Ars Technica reports: Verizon stopped offering unlimited data to new smartphone customers a few years ago, but some customers have been able to hang on to the old plans instead of switching to ones with monthly data limits. Verizon has tried to convert the holdouts by raising the price $20 a month and occasionally throttling heavy users but stopped that practice after net neutrality rules took effect. Now Verizon is implementing a formal policy for disconnecting the heaviest users.In a statement, Verizon said: "Because our network is a shared resource and we need to ensure all customers have a great mobile experience with Verizon, we are notifying a very small group of customers on unlimited plans who use an extraordinary amount of data that they must move to one of the new Verizon Plans by August 31, 2016." a Verizon spokesperson told Ars. "These users are using data amounts well in excess of our largest plan size (100GB). While the Verizon Plan at 100GB is designed to be shared across multiple users, each line receiving notification to move to the new Verizon Plan is using well in excess of that on a single device." FYI: The 100GB plan costs $450 a month.
to finally have found out the limit of unlimited!
"Unlimited" to Verizon means "unlimited as long as you use less than 300 kilobits per second continuously". Which just happens to be almost exactly the minimum bandwidth for a Skype video call. Ponder that for a moment.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
But I do not think it means what you think it means.
What does unlimited mean? And why do you get penalized if you actually use it as such?
Depends on whether he's posting from Japan, where AFAIK children at birth since 1970 have been given 2.5 terabyte data plans at 100Mbps up/down.
Combifoutuien? Baise le pape!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If they didn't want unlimited use, they should never have offered it. It has pretty much always been a lie from many of these companies, and they should be fined for it. Unlimited with an asterisk defining the limitations of unlimited is not acceptable.
. . . .that contracts are one-way. Now, if **I** had unilaterally decided to walk on a Verizon cell contract mid-way, I'd be paying termination fees, etc.
Guess some Corporations are More Equal than the rest of us.
Not that it's really news. . . .
/Oblg. You keep using this word "unlimited". It doesn't mean what you think it means
If Verizon is advertising their services as unlimited but it is not then it is fraud plain and simple.
But I guess accurately calling it Nearly Unlimited won't get as many suckers ^H^H^H customers as they want.
I hope they get sued.
--
Note to Redditards: The downvote button is NOT for disagreement but that "this post adds nothing interesting to the conversation."
In 2005 you probably didn't have a phone even capable of decent world wide web access let alone a network that you could pass 100GB in one month.
Everyone had a phone capable of web access in 2005 (decent depends on your browser: windows mobile was ok), but you could also get an EVDO card that would give you acceptable data rates. Thinkpads had an option to have a card built into the laptop (bad idea, but it was available. I chose to have an external module instead).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Their unlimited plan is unlimited. But if your unlimited usage is exceedingly high they can decide they don't want to sell you an unlimited plan anymore.
I know people who setup a wifi hotspot with their unlimited Verizon plan and then serve dozens of people on job sites for months on end uploading media and video. They're not normal users. I can understand why Verizon wouldn't want them anymore.
Similarly I use 10TB of backblaze for $50/year. I'm I imagine not-profitable. So I could understand if they told me that I have 2 months and then they don't want me as a customer anymore even though it's Unlimited. It's unlimited but not every unlimited customer is one they want. Maybe you go over one month and they allow you to spike for free. But I can see how a sustained money loser is not someone they are interested in keeping on. (Then again with backblaze I've converted numerous people to be customers and became a cloud storage customer at work so I imagine their generosity has paid off now.)
Pray I don't alter it any further.
- Someone's dad
This doesn't surprise me from a company that can't comprehend that there is a difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents.
So in essence..... fraud.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
merely 120 movies a month at .7 ish gig a movie? Streaming is now hammering these tosspots who failed to invest in infrastructure (i.e. laying fibre to the home)
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"In a statement, Verizon said: "Because our network is a shared resource and we need to ensure all customers have a great mobile experience with Verizon, we are notifying a very small group of customers on unlimited plans who use an extraordinary amount of data that they must move to one of the new Verizon Plans by August 31, 2016.""
Try upgrading your networks. It's what every network admin worth their salt inevitably does, because it works. Traffic spike? Sure, trace it, maybe limit it if it's questionable or unwanted, block it if it's illegal, etc., etc. However, as a general rule, taxes will rise, as must network capacity -> anyone here complaining that 10/100 network is perfectly fast enough, and Gig-E is overkill, would be laughed at for eons. In a few years, 10 Gig-E, or 100 Gig-E will be the norm.
What more, if I remember correctly, Verizon has received kickbacks, tax reductions, etc. to help them finance upgrades for their networks so that this would never be an issue. I could check Verizon's financial performance over these past ten years, then look into their book-keeping (Hollywood accounting), but me thinks they have not been running at a loss. So...in the black + gifts from the US / State / Municipal governments + not upgrading their equipment = a lot of spare dosh. Has Verizon issued some dividends, or should we be looking at embezzlement charges?
At the very least, failure to use working capital correctly (maintaining / growing the business, by buying the equipment that allows them to keep / expand their dominance in their current area) is a failure of corporate duty, and a reason for someone to be fired.
FTA: "These users are using data amounts well in excess of our largest plan size (100GB)."
Well duh, isn't that the whole point of getting an unlimited data plan? Using more data than the capped ones?
Same as the US IRS's definition of voluntary... Unless you "volunteer" to pay "income tax", we will hound you/put you in jail... Thats their definition of "voluntary compliance"....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
This will replace DSL in non fios areas as they profit big time with 100 GB at $375
Around the Nordic Countries, I'm able to get *truly* unlimited LTE for around $30/mo. Hurts to think of all the fellow nerds across the pond who have to pay themselves sick for something like this.
-SR
Same as the US IRS's definition of voluntary... Unless you "volunteer" to pay "income tax", we will hound you/put you in jail... Thats their definition of "voluntary compliance"....
Yeah, I always liked that one, too...
>The 100GB plan costs $450 a month.
Jesus christ people are suckers. I want to find the first consumer who looked at an internet plan with a monthly cap and overage fees and thought "Hmm, this seems fine to me." and slap them in the face. For a stupid scam like that to catch on there needs to first be an alpha idiot.
Meanwhile I'll be over here on my ~$80/month cap-less dsl connection using 100 gb per *day* when the need arises with no retarded fees or price gouging.
I received a phone call from the vzw loyalty team this morning they wanted to do an account review but as was on the way to work (talking on cellphones while driving is still legal here) I said not right now and they left it at that.
I suppose this must be what they wanted to talk about.
My home line is over 133GB this month and I still have 23 days left on this billing cycle. So I suppose i'll be switching to one of att's unlimited plans this month I figure that will run me about $2,000 to buy one but still no one else will bring internet out here for that price so oh well.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Look, there's nothing wrong with being a rational actor on both sides here. The original contract is over and every single person on one of these plans is month to month. A partnership or business relationship not otherwise restricted will only exist for as long as it makes sense for both sides.
You idiots abusing a shared resource have pushed Verizon into accepting a PR hit in exchange for not having to deal with your douchebaggery any more. So be it. This is why we can't have nice things.
Anyone who's ever worked at an ISP knows about the predictions network engineers have to make when deciding how oversubscribed one network segment will be, and what kind of utilization can be allowed. These are consumer plans, not business SLA hookups, and if they can save themselves headaches by kicking the %.00001 off their network, it's fine by them. If you want to pay $500/month for 100GB of transfer, find a local ISP who can metro-link you an Ethernet hand-off and be done with it. Wireless networks were not meant for that level of individual usage.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
In 2005 you probably didn't have a phone even capable of decent world wide web access let alone a network that you could pass 100GB in one month.
In first world countries, this was utterly common by then. For example:'
The number of Internet users in Japan accessing from cell phones exceeded those using it from personal computers in 2005
And talking about home internet speeds in 2005:
"Such connections are generally capable of speeds of 100M bps (bits per second)."
This was the status over a decade ago in Japan, Korea, much of Europe, and others.
You may live in a country with more backwards infrastructure, but do not confuse your local situation with the rest of the world, who very much was enjoying 100+ MBit broadband and mobile internet access in 2005.
OK, I am the first to say VZW is the worst, but in this case people can't complain. They were stupid enough to sell "unlimited" data, so they would now be in the wrong if they made the "unlimited" have a limit (yes, they would love to do just that of course), but instead they are just deciding it makes no financial sense to them to keep these customers on. Similar to how you decide VZW makes no financial sense to you and you drop them, a company can do the same (following the terms of the contract), the aren't obliged to give you what you want, so in this case they are right to do that instead of finding a more sneaky way to limit or charge you.
And 100GB is of course quite a lot of data, if you want that much data of your mobile connection, sorry, nobody will give it to you cheaply.
In fact, it goes the other way around, they are giving you increasingly faster mobile connections (at least in cities, forget more rural areas), without making data cheaper. You simply have less time to run your connection at full speed, before you hit your data cap - in the most common max speed / included data combinations you can max out monthly caps in just a few minutes. No, it makes no sense, the only things that would actually help customers are signal coverage and some modest 3G in places where you currently have no signal or just GPRS/Edge, plus some reasonably priced data packages, and the only thing really advancing is max speed at a sweet-spot in the city...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
telcos:bandwith::Lucy:football
When are we finally going to wise up, put all these useless marketing pukes up against the wall, and shoot them?
My sister-in-law had a voice-only plan that was $15 per month and kept it for over a decade. While using the toilet at work, her phone slipped out of her pocket and fell into the toilet. Of course, it was an auto flush toilet. Bye-bye, phone. The carrier refused to sell her a new phone on the old plan. That's how she got an iPhone and became a data junkie like the rest of us.
I've downloaded 95GB since 11pm yesterday, purely because I happened to buy the latest Humble Bundle, which includes (amongst others) NBA 2K16 at over 44GB of downloadable game.
100GB per month? Per day, perhaps.
The truth of it is that there's no contract in play here any more. For those who still have the unlimited plans, their contract ran out some time ago, and Verizon has been letting them keep the same plan instead of forcing them to sign a new contract and move to the newer plans.
Verizon are adding insult to injury by resorting to such puerile tactics, that will fool very, very few of its customers, actual or otherwise.
Most Americans are not financially literate. If they were, they would recognized that there is no such thing as an "unlimited" resource, "unlimited" is a marketing term, and, sooner or later, "unlimited" has to come an end.
While it is true that in 2005 I had a phone capable of doing something line 280kbps tops, or whatever the multichannel GPRS topped at, I had two connections at home, one of which was 24/7 256kbps (50% guaranteed, always achievable in practice), and came with 45 or 50 catv channels, for something like $17/mo, and a secondary connection over copper LAN that provided 100mbps in country peering traffic and 25mbps international traffic with 30 simultaneous TCP sessions limit (shared but in practice 98% achievable) on pay by the hour basis. 10 hours were $6.
That was somewhere in Europe.
2005 was just the time when fat pipes across the ocean and DWDM was installed an masse at carrier networks and CAT5 copper became cheap enough to pull to residential.
FFS... They did many years ago... For a two year period only. After that those sticking around were on a month to month contract that wither could walk away from at anytime and for any reason.
I'm on Verizon and have an unlimited data plan (currently)... I also haven't been under contact with them for 4 years now... The entire time knowing that they could cancel my data plan.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
If you people would wean yourselves off your compulsive over-use of your phones instead of being glued to them 24/7/365, you probably wouldn't even need any of their overpriced dataplans to start with, and none of you would be faced with this problem in the first place.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If it's really "a very small group of customers", why do Verizon care?
contract would have been "Unlimited" in data use but as far as duration they would only have had a minimum term, likely followed by monthly extensions. They are likely free to terminate ALL the Unlimited users if they wanted at this point but are choosing to only terminate those that they are losing significant money on. Seems like they are trying to be as customer focused as the economics allow them to be.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
And when they claim data hog, show them European prices - they are MUCH MUCH cheaper than American.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Who the fuck uses verizon anyway?
You're kidding, right? With 141.4 million subscribers as of May 2016, Verizon Wireless is the largest wireless telecommunications provider in the United States.
Their unlimited plan is unlimited. But if your unlimited usage is exceedingly high
By definition, a usage "exceedingly high" implies there is a limit. If there is no limit, you cannot exceed it.
If they don't want you to have multiple users on the plan or use it for business reasons, fine--put it in the terms. There are already ways of doing that without lying.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I'm quite certain it would be illegal in my country, not so sure about the US, though (even without going into local laws).
Ezekiel 23:20
ie; cell phone usage.
Where did you hear this? Maybe they got the price difference, or maybe the telephone company settled, but I've never heard of a small claims court being able to force anyone (telephone company) to do anything (provide service).
I love these PR things where it's just flat out contradictory statements: such a small portion of people *but* they are causing such a big problem *but* if they pay more money the problem is solved.
Although, they must have a pretty good network if people can get over 100gb per month. On my provider that would probably take a year.
All you can eat, should be all you can eat.
Yet, another failure of the federal trade commission.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Verizon agreed to give you unlimited data for 2 or 3 years, and you agreed to continue to use (and pay for) that service for 2 or 3 years. After that term, the agreement became month-to-month. Either side can choose to cancel it at the end of any month for any reason (actually I believe both sides have the right to cancel service at any time in the month, the company just prefers to do it at the end of the month to keep their bookkeeping cleaner).
Verizon did not agree to give you unlimited data for $x/mo until the day you died. And even if they did, I suspect you wouldn't have signed up for it since it would've required you to pay Verizon $x/mo until the day you died.
So THIS explains how my Super was selling Internet to everyone in my building for $50 bucks a month (he called it the "grandfather plan"), and why the service crapped out whenever he took his mobile outside to take a phone call!
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Sweden: Roughly the size of California with only about 1/4 the population.
The United States: ~21x larger area and ~34x more population.
Infrastructure scale. That's what's up with mobile broadband in the United States.
What do the contracts say?
Verizon hasn't offered unlimited plans for years, so all relevant contract terms have expired.
If they can't kick them off because the plans are obsolete, how can they kick them off with a retroactive policy?
To be clear, Verizon could disconnect everyone on an "unlimited plan" if they wanted to. The original contracts are all expired.
Technically, they would only have to wait until the end of the customer's billing cycle---since these plans are prepaid, the customer has already paid for this month's service.
I see popcorn and lawsuits.
Then you're hallucinating. Because they absolutely can do this.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
So Verizon is basically saying they are unable to provide adequate service unless they kick off some users. They should lower their prices then. In the last couple of years the quality of my Verizon services has gotten noticeably worse. Dead zones, slow response (should it take 24 hours for an SMS to be delivered to someone 10 ft away?), etc. I have actually wondered if they are removing cell towers in the area because coverage is so spotty, where before it seemed excellent. Verizon used to be good but they are turning into a third-rate provider. I'm considering cancelling my mobile altogether since U.S. technology companies seem unable to provide the service they charge me so much money for. As a benefit I would no longer have a phone number so so more cold calls. Ugh.
They *are* two-way.
Obviously. All contracts are two-way, or else it's not legally a contract.
You're missing a little detail though. Both parties must get something out of the contract, but they may have completely different obligations.
They agreed to sell you unlimited bandwidth, if they don't you can sue them in court.
Since unlimited plans haven't been available for years now, everyone on an unlimited plan is grandfathered.
Verizon is not legally obligated to continue offering the same plan after the contract expires.
People have taken cell phone companies to small-claims court for violating these contracts and have won continuation of their service.
That can happen during the original contract term.
Once the contract expires, Verizon does not have to offer the same terms anymore.
The people on unlimited plans can either put up with it or leave Verizon. They have no legal recourse.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
What was your phone 12 years old? IIRC the motorola talkabout had a wap browser back in 2000.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
"Because our network is a shared resource and we need to ensure all customers have a great mobile experience with Verizon,"
So you're saying wireless isn't as fast as wired and is like cable. Thanks for being honest Verizon. Now let's stop pushing this wireless crap down peoples throats and roll out some more fiber. Now stop preventing Google Fiber from competing and sell off you FIOS division so someone else can do it spread fiber since you won't do it.
Yes-- according to Verizon, "unlimited" has its limits.
The point is, if you get cut off after reaching a limit... it really isn't unlimited, is it?
I really do hope somebody hits them hard for false advertising
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In 2005 my phone was still tethered to the wall of my kitchen.
Are you a lawyer or do you just play one on TV?
They *are* two-way. They are, de-facto, in material breach of contract.
Wow, material breach of contract. Sounds serious.
All V did was decide not to renew a contract. If they turned off their service in the middle of their cycle, that would be breach of contract. That's not what happened. They used their 100GB. Contract is over. Business transaction complete. They are welcome to sign up for a new V contract / plan under the same terms offered to any other user.
Really though that's been capable of web access for almost as long as the web's existed
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Where? There used to be that all operators offered this but at the moment only Net1 (in Sweden that is) offers unlimited data. Myself I happened to sign an unlimited deal with Telenor when they had it so even though they don't sell it anymore they apparently cannot terminate my contract, which is fortunate since I'm around 300GB per month without doing anything special (no torrents, no servers and so on).
This reminds me of a restaurant much favored by my crowd when we were in college. It had a prime rib buffet at a very reasonable price. It had a sign over the slicing board, "All you can Eat - $7.99" (it was a long time ago). One of my pals had an unquenchable hunger for prime rib, and would eat pounds and pounds of it at a sitting there. After a month of pretty frequent visits, one night, he finished a big plate of it, and ankled over to get his second serving. The owner was standing in front of the station and said "You can't have any more". "But the sign says, all you can eat!" my pal complained. The owner said "That's all you can eat" and just glowered at him until he left. That's pretty much what Verizon is doing.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I've heard the "density" statement so many times and I don't buy it.
94.6+ percent of the United States is rural open space. Most of this space has no or little cell phone coverage.
What matters most IMHO is to have great coverage with high quality in areas with high people density.
However, even in most of the cities in US the mobile call quality and coverage is subpar compared to many European/Asian cities.
If you want to compare oranges, in Norway we have a population density of about 14 persons per sq km. I don't live near a city or anything like that, and for $70 a month I have a 80/80mbit fiber connection going directly to my house. No size limitations what so ever, and the speed is always what I pay for.
You are comparing apples to oranges.
Population density of Denmark: 130 persons per sq km.
Population density of USA: 35 persons per sq km.
He said "Nordic Countries", not "Denmark". It's not hard to understand why you would conflate those terms when we look consider the other Nordic population density numbers.
Population density of Sweden: 21.5 persons per sq km
Population density of Norway: 15.5 persons per sq km
Feel free to explain again how Manhattan's population density in not high enough to secure the sort of internet access pricing that people in Finland enjoy.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Fraudulent advertising has consequences in real countries.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Some months, I use less than a gig on the unlimited 4g plan I am a part of. This is because I use wi-fi when available.
Surely, Verizon has enough of this type of situation that it really does even out.
...
I think Telia had one. Or if not Telia, you could always get yourself a subscription from Sonera, which I at least know has one (for ~27-30 euros per month). Should work in most Nordic Countries and at least in Estonia without any restrictions.
-SR
Your post makes absolutely no sense. Population density and LTE coverage do not correlate the way you think they do. There's fresh data about the subject you can search if you really want to know the truth. The reason people in the US have to pay so much for their mobile plans is because there's very little regulation that applies or is applied to them. There's an illusion of 'free markets' in the telecommunications markets when in fact the only freedom those markets have is the freedom to be anti-competitive. Small and innovative players are ousted from the markets. Fast.
-SR
or is applied to them
Meaning of course the operators. And also to be more specific: population density and the cost of establishing sufficient LTE coverage don't correlate the way you think they do.
-SR
Since unlimited plans haven't been available for years now by Verison, everyone on an unlimited plan is grandfathered.
I fixed that for you. There are plenty of carriers that still have unlimited data plans, Sprint and T-Mobile come to the top of my mind.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
T-mobile just deprioritizes users that went over a certain amount of data compared to the rest of the users. This way service for these other users is not degraded. But if the network has spare capacity? Knock yourself out!
They also throttle you to slower speed rather than charging overages if you exceed your cap on a limited plan. So you can still check your e-mail/facebook till you get to WiFi or pay/wait for more data.
Disconnecting is drastic and customer hostile. What if you just have a buggy app that keeps using data?
Wow, material breach of contract. Sounds serious.
All V did was decide not to renew a contract. If they turned off their service in the middle of their cycle, that would be breach of contract.
What is a "cycle"? Are they under contract or not? The OP I'm responding to is talking about phones under contract.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I disagree. They should switch them all to contracts specifying the amount of data they are allowed to download without paying extra, and the costs/KB for each each KB over the limit. Say switch them to a plan with a limit of 110GB/month, and some reasonable cost for excess downloads. But be honest and specific.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I wonder how they use that much data on a cellphone. The only way I can think if it's a hot-spot and they are torrenting 24.7.
It was definitely possible in the US, and don't ask.
The US definitely has a pretty backwards infrastructure. It's slow to pick up the new improvements, and even slower to deploy them. I'd just about swear that in some areas it's actually gotten worse.
It's rare to say that Australia has better internet but I'm guessing Verizon sets the bar quite low.
Anyway, I'm on a mid-tier ADSL plan with my ISP iiNet for AU$60 per month. Initially it started around 100+100GB monthly quota, but every year or so they email me to let me know they are increasing the quote. First it went to 200+200GB, then 1TB anytime.
Just two days ago they emailed me to let me know they were removing all limits. Apparently 1TB per month wasn't competitive enough and want to give me extra!!
Because they've always been horseshit, that's why. The "but but Amurica is ruuural" argument might explain why you have slow, expensive internet in upper Alaska, where you could fly a helicopter for a hundred miles in any direction and not see another person.
It does not explain why internet access is slow and expensive in San Francisco or Manhattan, which have high density populations.
Ah ok, Yes Sonera seams to still have that option. Telia however no longer have it (at least they don't offer it in Sweden anymore).
Verizon is basically saying "go away" we don't want you as customers anymore.
A) You use "significantly" more than 100 GB.
B) Our largest plan is 100GB (and costs 450$ a month!!!)
Verizon is just stupid. I had an unlimited plan that I had kept for over eight years.. Without notice they decided to raise my price. I considered that a breach of contract but they did not. That was enough to move me to another carrier with unlimited data. But the stupid part is, I rarely use a lot of data. Once in a while I am on a drilling rig location and have to transmit a lot of data over my phone, because our satellite connections tend to suck, so I will run my computer through my phone. So maybe once a year I use a lot of data, for a week or two. Then I rarely use any. But I can't afford to be throttled or to be limited when the time comes that I need the data, and I can't afford to be stuck renegotiating with a moron at customer service when I need to use it. I am sure I use less data overall than the average kid playing Pokemon Go, but Verizon only cares about being greedy. It has nothing to do with bandwidth. I will never go back to Verizon in my lifetime.
I still have the unlimited plan for myself and my daughter. This month I used 14.5 GB and my daughter used 7GB so it looks like we will be left alone. But on my bill is states " Unlimited Plan" in several places online and on paper bill. Just saying .......
advertisement
noun
a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy.
So no, they aren't advertising "unlimited" anything.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
What is a "cycle"? Are they under contract or not? The OP I'm responding to is talking about phones under contract.
Well then you are misinformed. All V did was fail to renew their contract. During their contract, they received unlimited data as specified.
" Since unlimited plans haven't been available for years now," Not only are they still available (I have one from another carrier) Verizon still offers them and tried to get me to come back on an unlimited plan when I left them early this year. The problem was simple, they wanted more money than the other carriers offering unlimited plans, and after they ended my unlimited terms on my eight year old account, I no longer trusted Verizon.
Nobody has ever said that the threshold is 100 GB! Verizon reps specifically danced around saying the exact number in every statement they've made.
The article claims the 100 GB figure as fact, which is extremely intellectually disingenuous.
In fact, there are compelling rumors (but still not facts, so please don't update the article claiming this as the truth) that only users with 500 GB or more data usage per month (on average, per-line) will be disconnected or forced to go metered. The original guy who leaked the info on Reddit is now saying he heard from Verizon management that the threshold is 500 GB.
But until people start getting letters and we can collect a representative sample of who did and did not get letters and chart that against their monthly usage, STOP claiming that you know any number to be true and accurate. This is the first step in being an ethical journalist and Slashdot can't even do this.
I'm not saying it would go down better, and I'm not saying that if they are in a monopoly situation they should have the right to do that. (Are they?) But promising unlimited service is promising to do the impossible, an should therefore be considered fraud. And anyone damaged by that fraud should be able to sue them for damages, court costs, lawyers fees, and a bit for the uncertainty of getting a reasonable verdict.
So they should switch people to a generous, but specific, level of service. But they shouldn't have the right to coerce them unless they are not a monopoly. So if they are this would require them petitioning the state utilities commission (or some such) to implement their solution.
Maybe all this is what's going on, but it sounds as if they are still promising unlimited service...only also limited. Which sounds like fraud to me. I'll agree if you say that only a fool would expect actual unlimited service, but there are a lot of fools*...and it is, or should be, just as illegal to practice fraud on them as on someone who knows better.
*Most people are fools outside of their areas of expertise. You and I as well as others. I, e.g., have to trust a car repairman who says he has fixed some problem...or that some problem needs to be fixed.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
As I understand it, Verizon has not had an "unlimited" plan for many years! It was stopped a long time ago.
They just let people continue as they were to avoid controversy.
So now they say: Hey, that was stopped years ago. And also, you are being a dick. So stop or we cut you off.
Sorry, but they have a right to do that. They are not your parents...
I presume Verizon has an "Infinity" plan which maxxes out at 80Gb? The competition must be rubbish (speed, quotas) because surely this sort of "customer service" makes Verizon highly unattractive to consumers?
The whole aversion to unlimited plans on the provider side started with the introduction of the iPhone that insisted on repeated calling home. Then there came "streaming services" as a way to keep DRM on content as you weren't allowed to download but required bandwidth heavy handshaking the whole time a display was in progress.
The end result was that business users who loved the unlimited plans because they allowed not only working from home but a wholly un-tethered work model were left out in the cold.
AT&T kept the unlimited plans but if you wanted to use your data for a laptop you were left wanting. You could pay through the nose for an addition limited plan to "allow tethering" to your plan. In other words; you had to pay for your data twice with their model.
Verizon simply deleted all their unlimited data plans and forced users to plans that had HUGE charges for data overages if you used your data for computer access.
Thus was the promise of technology turned into a false hope yet again. One can only hope that the regulators will someday get hit with a clue bat and use a regulatory model where data is data you can use in any fashion you want once you pay for it. Yeah, clueless regulators, voice minutes is just one use for a data stream and NOT something separate except for in the delusions of the greedy.
NRRPT/RCT