> "We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan," Verizon said. "Like all customers, fire departments choose service plans that are best for them. This customer purchased a government contract plan for a high-speed wireless data allotment at a set monthly cost. Under this plan, users get an unlimited amount of data but speeds are reduced when they exceed their allotment until the next billing cycle."

So it was a government plan, not a consumer one. Judging by their response, it sounds like the Verizon rep that sold them the plan told them it was unlimited, and the fire department didn't read the fine print closely enough.

What I'm saying is, IMO there isn't any reason for a non-consumer plan to have such terms, with variable speed and limited by the transmitted total instead. Like, even if the client doesn't use the bandwidth today, they may need it tomorrow, so the provider still has to reserve the channel.

Or, even if the provider decides to offer variable-speed plans, which means the speed isn't guaranteed, why would you, as a company, buy such a plan? Tomorrow you need the bandwidth, and you discover you have 1 mbps instead of 50 mbps, because the total bandwidth is shared with some other folks. What, you sit back twiddling thumbs and wait for everyone else to go to lunch?

Even if such a plan is intended for one business person, to check email and look at stock charts, it makes more sense for it to always have minimum guaranteed bandwidth, e.g. 500 kbps, instead of random speed with a limitation on the transmitted total. The entire reason for the 'transmitted total' metric in the first place is to prevent people from downloading movies 24/7, while allowing for the bandwidth to swing wildly—which is a use case of a home consumer.

So IMO, by offering this plan the provider laid both themselves and the client a mine, through which they would have to poker-face sooner or later, with no benefit that I see. And now this all blew in their face on top of that.

> I don't even understand how the fire department was able to get such a plan in the first place.

Exactly! It almost sounds like someone designed and built the vehicle and forgot that it needs internet connection. So when the department got it, they popped down to the local tech store and purchased a USB 4G module and just slapped it on.