I was actually going to add a second paragraph about the throttling but figured my point was uninteresting so I deleted it.

I think the throttling is expected. Consumer wireless data plans are intended to handle stuff one is likely to do on a phone. If you start pumping gigs of torrents or something over the network, I'd expect the carrier to throttle you.

My problem with the way Verizon handled this is their lack of transparency. They've said their top 5% data users will be throttled. They should really publish an expected amount of data transfer that would put a user in that segment, and indicate how they'll throttle you. I also don't like that they said loudly "our plans are unlimited!" and then in a footnote that had to be pointed out by someone else, "oh yeah but we'll throttle you if you use 'too much'".

One more thing in the interest of full disclosure. I actually forgot that AT&T grandfathered in their unlimited plans. They're still available now if you never went off that plan?