I wish they would just not say "Unlimited" if there is going to be a disclaimer, but the current situation is at least fairly clear.

Marketing and sales is the root of all evil.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that 'unlimited' in the case of data/telecom services should be a controlled and regulated word, much like 'organic' and 'natural' are in food.

You can't falsely advertise.

The only reason that "natural" and "organic" are regulated terms is because they are nebulous. But "unlimited data" is not nebulous, it's clear cut.

IANAL

1 month multiplied by the maximum speed of the technology, the actual capacity of the network, the fact that they throttle heavy users, etc.

And if such a small number hurts them in the feels, they could make their network better so that they could say a bigger number.

Sure, that's obvious.

> the actual capacity of the network

Shouldn't that be enough to handle at least the actual usage given that not everyone uses it at full capacity all the time? Probably there's some capacity at which they're mostly capable except the rare event that brings in an extremely large num of users. Probably not obvious?

> the fact that they throttle heavy users

This is definitely not obvious.

> Shouldn't that be enough to handle at least the actual usage given that not everyone uses it at full capacity all the time? Probably there's some capacity at which they're mostly capable except the rare event that brings in an extremely large num of users. Probably not obvious?

That sounds about right. I would expect to get my promised speeds the vast majority of the time.

Now if only we could get hard SLAs I would be really happy. (Max speed 99.9% of the month measured in seconds?)

I guess if you did somehow get one they wouldn't guarantee much of a connection.

[0] https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling