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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.
According to folks who know a lot more about math than I, there are numbers greater than infinity. So maybe "unlimited" is simply a concept instead of an absolute . We need a Richard Feynman type to explain this to laymen. Or, at least, explain it to me.
and they are wording it to exclude the few people who want to use their smartphone as their home internet or have some continuous download on it 24x7 cause they want to feel special at using a lot of data
why would i care if at&t throttles my kids' youtube if they watch too much during the month on cellular? Same for myself, some of us have better things to do than stare into a phone all day long and "stream"
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.
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"Unlimited" is the amount of money that Verizon hopes to make from their customers.
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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Not only does 'logic' mean something totally different to marketing people, they're not even using the same dictionary as everyone else, as we can all clearly see here.
I have verizon unlimited and constantly go over 22 GB and don't think I've ever been throttled.
Maybe they have a peering agreement with PornHub?
I wish people would stop buying plans that say there are unlimited but really are limited.
Show me a plan that meets the "unlimited in every way" criteria. I'll wait.
T-Mo has for quite a while now been a lot more upfront about how the term "unlimited" includes a certain amount being your "prioritization point" after which you get throttled.
We got the whole extended family on board ( I think we are up to 8 people on this plan) so extra lines are something like $10 a month for unlimited plans, may just get an extra phone just to stick in the car so I can be lazy and not even take my regular phone out of my pocket.
A 150/150MBit fiber connection backstops the service at home.
Cable, monthly contracts, phone leases, and other silly shit from the major players, thanks but no thanks.
If the USofA had English as official language you'd have a chance of suing them, but alas, without legal standing for English the word unlimited is just a random collection of letters.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I guess there are not very many of us left who still have the original (grandfathered) Unlimited plan that doesn't have any data caps.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Without net neutrality you'll be buying packages of content and bandwith -- it'll be just like the old cable TV industry.
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