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Verizon's New Phone Plan Proves It Has No Idea What 'Unlimited' Actually Means (gizmodo.com)
Verizon has unveiled its third "unlimited" smartphone plan that goes to show just how meaningless the term has become in the U.S. wireless industry. "In addition to its Go Unlimited and Beyond Unlimited plans, Verizon is now adding a premium Above Unlimited plan to the mix, which offers 75GB of 'unlimited' data per month (as opposed to the 22GB of 'unlimited' data you get on less expensive plans), along with 20GB of 'unlimited' data when using your phone as a hotspot, 500GB of Verizon cloud storage, and five monthly international Travel Passes, which are daily vouchers that let you use your phone's wireless service abroad the same as if you were in the U.S.," reports Gizmodo. Are you confused yet? From the report: And as if that wasn't bad enough, Verizon has also updated its convoluted sliding pricing scheme that adjusts based on how many phones are on a single bill. For families with four lines of service, the Above Unlimited cost $60 per person, but if you're a single user the same service costs $95, which really seems like bullshit because if everything is supposed to be unlimited, it shouldn't really make a difference how many people are on the same bill. As a small concession to flexibility, Verizon says families with multiple lines can now mix and match plans instead of having to choose a single plan for every line, which should allow families to choose the right service for an individual person's needs and help keep costs down. The new Above Unlimited plan and the company's mix-and-match feature arrives next week on June 18th.
And this is exactly why I'm grateful I decided to switch to Google's Project Fi. None of this fake bullshit "unlimited", plus no international "only some days" restrictions. One shared data pool for the whole family. Once we hit our max, we can keep using data as much as we want, without getting charged more. Plus, no cost other than data sim cards that are data-only (no voice/text) are fucking AMAZING. Just keep adding devices like tablets, old cell phones, laptops, hotspots, whatever. Its all just on one shared data pool, and no fuss, no bullshit.
I had no idea that UNLIMITED could be so...well...limiting!
Back in the days of dial-up, "unlimited" meant "unlimited minutes of being connected", as there were places like Compuserve that would charge you $2/minute or something just to connect to their service. So back when small ISPs were still a thing, "unlimited" was clear to all as "unlimited minutes", which with dial-up was, amusingly, about the same amount of monthly data as today's "unlimited" plans.
Obviously the commonly-understood meaning of "unlimited" for data plans had changed, but there's no talking reason to marketroids.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In business, "commodity" is a dirty word. Nobody wants to be in a commodity business, because it's really, really hard to compete in a commodity business because there's only one number that matters to the consumer: price. If your customers see the commodity you're selling for a penny less, they're not your customers anymore.
Telecommunication bandwith is a commodity. Access to a MB/s is the same (except for perhaps minor differences in latency), so it should be the easiest thing in the world for consumers to buy. Consequently telecom vendors want to make pricing as confusing as possible. This is coming to ISP service too, with the end of net neutrality. Comcast and Verizon will make it impossible to tell whether Xfinity or Fios is a better deal.
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