Seems fair to me. Unlike wired internet, wireless carriers can't just throw money at the problem and get more bandwidth. A certain spectrum can only carry a certain amount of data.
Even building more towers and having each tower serve a smaller radius won't help in a really congested area like a football stadium.
I'm not saying it isn't fair, I'm saying it's false advertising.
I also know the technical limitations on the radios on the towers (worked in the industry). But suggesting that it's unlimited, both from the ISP side and the Bloomberg side, is disingenous at best, and suggesting it can replace wifi in that implementation, even more so.
That said: You can get unlimited 4G in both Tokyo and Seoul, and those are pretty dense. Again it technically couldn't work if everyone got it and used it as much as they could, but arguing that the US ISPs can't do better is patently false.
1. It is "unlimited" - not "unlimited full speed"
2. They tell you about the deprioritization.
On an anecdotal note, my family was in an extended stay for a few months while we were waiting to get our house built. The hotel wifi was abysmal. We were tethering our phone to our AppleTV - Binge On allowed us unlimited video tethering - we were using 80-100Gb per month successfully without a noticeable slow down. We were not in a congested area.
But part of the problem isn't the carriers fault. It takes years to get approvals from cities to build towers sometimes.
It is "unlimited" - not "unlimited full speed"
I'm planning an internet service that provides unlimited 600 Mbit/s wireless internet. But it'll only be available from 3pm-4pm on the day of the first full moon of every month in one building, in the basement, inside a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.
I think we can both agree that calling my product "Unlimited" would be false advertising.
Their "unlimited" plan doesn't seem to have that clause, but it does say that after 30GB you'll be prioritized behind other customers and might see a drop in speed.
> Hotspot tethering — up to 10GB at LTE speeds — is included, as are calls and texts to Mexico and Canada.
That's certainly an alternative take on the definition of "unlimited" than the one I'm accustomed to.
Curious: What's the reduced speed? Is it less than 1Mbit/s? If so, good luck doing anything other than reading/checking mail/look at a map. And yet the articles are discussing "watching videos" without connecting to wifi.