> That is completely understandable because where are they going to store all of this data.

AT&T doesn’t store the contents of your data usage; The NSA might, though...

But seriously, an unlimited data plan should be exactly that: unlimited. No throttling. If you’re gonna include throttling over a certain limit: say that; Don’t hide it in the fine print that no one but lawyers read. That’s deceptive advertising, and is illegal. The FTC should go after them for that.

There has to be some form of throttling at some point. Otherwise one person can consume all the bandwidth.

Yeah, don't claim that the data is unlimited then, problem solved. Either you say that you offer unlimited data, and you allow unlimited data, or you don't say or allow it.

I seem to recall that something similar as this case happened in Sweden (10+ years ago?), where a operator was forced to not claim "unlimited data" unless it truly is unlimited and without throttling, but I can't find any references to this right now...

Looking at ARN's past judgements, there doesn't seem to be any restrictions on marketing "unlimited data" plans with throttling in Sweden, as long as that's in the contract. There was one case in 2011 where the consumer was awarded a victory as the contract only said unlimited data and nothing about throttling.

Can a service ever offer unlimited data when there is a hard cap on the amount you could download 24/7?

Does it really matter if they change their branding to be unmetered rather than unlimited?

> Can a service ever offer unlimited data when there is a hard cap on the amount you could download 24/7?

No, not honestly.

There is a natural "hard cap", though. If you're paying for a certain speed, then the natural limit would be however much data you can pump at that speed over a set period of time.

I think it would be fair to call that "unlimited", in the sense that the service provider would not be imposing an artificial lower limit from what physics allows.

If a service provider isn't allowing that, then it's hard to see how they can characterize a service as "unlimited" without it being an outright lie.

Network management is allowed under most definitions of “net neutrality.” But if someone is consuming all the bandwidth, maybe you should upgrade your equipment? Maybe don’t sit, whine, and ask for more subsidies that you won’t use for that purpose.

Most people aren’t upset about network management throttling, but about the deceptive advertising that says you get unlimited, but in fine print: “limited to EDGE speeds (128Kb/s) after 2 GB”

T-Mobile solves this through de-prioritization, so your service is only degraded when there is congestion AND once you've crossed a certain threshold (53GB right now I think).

That's my understanding of AT&T's current implementation of unlimited at the moment

Is there any way to verify that that's what they're actually doing?

It'd be hard to prove it, but in practice it gets noticeably slower at peak usage times after exceeding the cap and stays fast at off-peak times, which matches the expected result of deprioritization.

Bandwidth is finite. On mobile LTE networks, about 35 Mbps is currently pretty average.

The problem is that mobile operators are incredibly underprovisioned. If your plan offers 1 GB of LTE data, at 35 Mbps, you can burn through a monthly allocation in 3.8 minutes. That's an average utilization of 0.0087%, or an underprovisioning by a factor of 11,500.

They sell it as if you're buying 35 Mbps access to the network all month long, when really, you can't use that for more than a few hours even on 'unlimited' plans.

I don't expect 1:1 access so that everyone can use their full bandwidth full time; I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars a month for that. But I'd pay a tenth of that for 1:10 underprovisioned access, and I'm sure that plenty would pay a few cents for the current 1:10,000 underprovisioned service...

Amazingly you can get cheaper cell plans including more data than these unlimited plans in the socialist bastion of Europe. I don't think the bandwidth is the problem it's the company and the regulatory capture. It's only this bad in the US and Canada.

Sure, that might be necessary, but I don't see why AT&T couldn't explicitly say "after 20GB, you're bumped down to a lower speed". Surely, AT&T engineers are smart enough to know how much bandwidth they can afford to give out, and if they can't afford to provide the service that they advertise, they should be in trouble, and they should stop advertising it.

If you are the only device in the network, yes.

Yes. But wouldn't it be better to deal with that individual when it's necessary? Give everyone what they pay for and if someone abuses it, deal with that person.

Hence the policy to throttle users that consume (comparatively) a lot of data. Typical metered data plans are 2GiB and throttling kicks in somewhere between 20 and 50GiB depending on the network.

Not good enough?

Not if they're advertising "unlimited" service.

In my view, the entire problem is that they want so badly to say "unlimited" while at the same time not allowing actual unlimited use.

The problem could be easily resolved at no cost -- all the companies have to do is stop using the word "unlimited".

isn't that exactly what throttling is...

"unlimited" means that there are no limits. Period.

Unlimited means no limits to speed, and no limits to quantity. If there is any type of artificial limit, then the thing ceases to be "unlimited". That is just straight up common sense, based on dictionary definitions.

I’ve long thought this is an issue of changing definitions. To anyone who was buying cell phone data plans when it was charged by the byte (and later in tiers of bytes with insane overage charges), “unlimited data” was easily understood to mean no overage charges, no per byte fees.

But somewhere along the way (or perhaps as an unfortunate consequence of not seeing far enough ahead to always throttle unlimited plans) the definition in consumer minds also seemed to include no speed limits either.

Cell phone plans are purchased with the speed of service. Unlimited data at 50 mbps, for example, stops being unlimited when the speed is no longer 50 mbps.

Cell phones are never sold with a speed of service. How could they be? Your speed is determined by congestion, the proximity of the tower, etc.

Those are natural limits, though. If I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet but just had my wisdom teeth removed, it's not their fault that I'll cry in a corner while delicately nibbling a small bowl of pudding. They were willing to let me eat more, even if I wasn't capable of it.

If the same buffet made you wait 2 hours between plates, then it's no longer realistically an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Taking the analogy to an extreme, if you went to an all you can eat buffet, it would only be open 24 hours a day and there is only so many times you could go through the line and the kitchen can only cook so much food.

If the restaurant is crowded, you’re going to have to both wait longer to get through the line and the kitchen won’t be able to cook enough to satisfy all of the customers.

There is also a known limit of how much data can be transmitted over a certain frequency and only certain frequencies are amenable to data.

For instance, T-mobile was infamous for not working well in buildings because the spectrum they were using couldn’t travel through buildings.

>I’ve long thought this is an issue of changing definitions.

Yes, everyone understood that unlimited meant "not limited". And then telecoms started trying to change that definition to mean "limited".

An artificial speed limit is, be definition, a data limit. If you have X time and Y bytes per time (artificial limit), then you cannot get more then Y/X bytes. Now obviously it's limited by the technology to some amount of Y bytes/time, but that's accepted. When it's limited by policy to lower than that, it's no longer unlimited data.

I think this is a reduco ad absurdum.

If AT&T didn't throttle, I suppose "unlimited" would still be a lie because there is still a limit to how fast your phone will download it. If you remove that it's still a lie because there's a limit to medium bandwidth, and so on.

All of these things are artificial! Should AT&T upgrade all users to phones with the latest modems because otherwise they are "artificially limiting" their experience? The impact on AT&T would be the same as stopping traffic shaping: spending more per user.

> I suppose "unlimited" would still be a lie because there is still a limit to how fast your phone will download it.

I disagree. In my view, "unlimited" means that the service provider will not introduce artificial limits. Of course there are natural limits (the speed of the devices involved, network congestion and signal quality, etc.). None of those are the service provider imposing an artificial limit, though.

"Pro" means that only professionals will use it. Period.

Or wait a minute...

Not sure if you're trolling or have no clue how ISPs work. They provide a pipe for data to travel through ( which can get congested ) however there is no requirement to store any of that data.

>That is completely understandable because where are they going to store all of this data.

Who is "they"? If it's the users, simple. Either on your harddisk or RAM (temporary).

Shopping in the US, is akin to asking the Genie for 3 wishes.

It is deceitful, regardless.