I had an ATT unlimited data plan, grandfathered from way back in 2004 or something. It was wonderful while cellular data was still only available in limited amounts. I only finally moved off it about 3 years ago. ATT never seemed to care much. The only problems I had were when I had to make certain changes to my account, the staff could never find my plan in the system -- on more than one occasion we had actual ATT database admins on the line to resolve things.

I had the exact same situation. I stuck with it through the limited data plan era with my grandfathered ATT plan and only changed it once we got the unlimited data plans again. It was great, the only problem I had was even though the data was unlimited, the grandfathered plan had a 400 text messages limit which wasn’t enough.

Had the same idea from 2004 to 2010 at T-Mobile in Europe before they were bought out by VC. They just canceled the plans and switched me over but due to their special "after 6 years you triple the data and call volume and it never expires" I had booked enough minutes (which were exchangable for data on the new plan) to have free internet for another two. Of course the new contracts all had expiring minutes as soon as they figured that out.

I have one of these old grandfathered accounts from many years ago (< $20 / line for unlimited data, 5gb tethering, unlimited sms, and unlimited voice). What's weird is that they've actually upgraded the plan over time while keeping the price the same. It originally didn't include tethering, and was capped at 3gb of data.

I would hazard a guess that backend upgrades made keeping your plan as-original became impractical if not impossible, but hiking your price up and losing you as a customer was also wholly unappealing because any money is better than no money.

So presumably AT&T did the next best thing for both you and themselves by silently(?) upgrading your plan to whatever was the new minimum of the new hardware while keeping true to the price lock to keep you as a customer.

The unlimited data but limited tethering is one of the more scummy moves by telecoms IMO.

Is it? When you pay a certain amount at a buffet for unlimited food, they let you eat as much as you want at the buffet, but they don't let you bag it up and take it home. True unlimited costs a lot more.

There are ugly ways to cheat the system by replacing your stomach with a food sack and not chewing.

The buffet analogy isn't very compelling when ordinary people will watch video on their phones for long periods, easily using 3GB+ per hour.

I don't want more data, I just want flexibility.

(If we really want to force a buffet analogy, it's like living in a dorm with a permanent buffet, but you're not allowed to bring buffet food into the lounge or back to your room.)

This makes no sense, it would be more akin to buying a meal and only being allowed to eat noodles with the left side of the mouth.

You paid for X amount of data, why does it matter if you are using it for a work VPN or browsing HN?

Except you didn't? You paid for all-you-can-eat-on-a-phone, and 5 GB extra. So it's a dormitory with unlimited dining hall, but you can only take one plate a week outside of the dining hall.

For the provider, the point of this design is that there's only a certain amount that people are willing to download on a phone or eat in a dining hall. For the consumer, they don't have to count their data or their servings as long as they follow a simple rule - they get predictable billing.

> So it's a dormitory with unlimited dining hall, but you can only take one plate a week outside of the dining hall.

You see how that's bad, right?

My phone service, a utility, should not be micromanaging me.

They aren’t, they manage their spectrum you are agreeing to use.

They should not even know when I'm tethering.

That's one point of view, but you just banned unlimited-on-your-phone plans that a lot of people presumably enjoyed. If they change them to simple unlimited plans, you'll be popular. If they only offer limited plans now, you'll be unpopular.

They would never get rid of unlimited. It's marketing gold.

No one banned unlimited, you suggested.

We have a number of mobile services in the UK who explicitly offer routers with WiFi slots for replacing your home broadband with unlimited SIMs. I have used them in the past to replace the wired internet when there has been line maintenance that took out the broadband for a couple of days.

4G alone can get you a nice stable 100Mb/s.

You seem to be defending a shitty deal that happening in North America, without any clear reason.

I'm not in the US, but I've not heard of this.

My 60Gb can be consumed by YouTube, HN or tethering. It doesn't really matter to them.

Is this common in other countries?

It's less common for limited data like you have, it's more common for unlimited data. Essentially they don't want people using tethering as a replacement for home internet on these plans

I could have got an unlimited plan, except that it costs more and even with tethering I don't go through more than 40GB so I saved a bit and downgraded to a limited plan. The data limitations was a personal choice.

I don't see any of the providers here in the UK with different amounts for tethering Vs data.

One of the reasons I used to swap out the OS on my android phone. Back then I used CyanogenMod (now LineageOS) and they weren't able to track when I was using tethering and when I was just using my regular data.

AT&T did it by just turning off their old network haha. Then you had to pay to migrate. A friend of mine did this. I just stick with Google Fi which I like for simplicity.

Most people won’t go through the hassle of cancelling. They will bring in a LOT of money, and pay out a few of the pathetic “last bill” refunds.

This whole thing though is like thinking you have wedding vows and not realizing there was fine print. It’s like “forsaking all others, till death do us part” but at the end of the vows it says “and if I break these vows I’ll pay you $75.”

> “and if I break these vows I’ll pay you $75.”

Depending on the financial circumstances one party might receive much more than $75 while breaking the vows. ;)

While I was thinking it's a good thing, I just remembered of a tangential question -- home ownership.

Do you think it's fair when someone bought a house long time ago, and hence pay just a small fraction of the property taxes of what newcomers pay, but get the same services (roads, schools, utilities etc) that are paid by property taxes?

Tmobile is not a representative government. It is a highly profitable company that arguably acts in a cartel fashion with the other two national providers.

That's not how property taxes typically work in most places. An assessor updates the values on some period, taxes go up, and they pay their share. That actually became a huge issue in El Paso. Their property taxes range 2 - 3% of home value, which was fine when everything was worth 150k 5 years ago. Today it's nearly tripled, and some got tax bills in the 5 digits for homes they've had forever. Some states, like FL, prevent that from happening, which sounds nice on paper but is essentially what you describe. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it was intended for retirees so I kinda get it.

If your question is, is it fair people who bought before 2020 have an awesome interest rate and pay way less than newcomers, I'd say no, only because I'm angry I sold in 2019 and regret it!

In most places geographically speaking no, but a number of US states including California and Florida which account for a disproportionate number of homes have passed laws protecting existing homeowners from property tax increases by capping the rate taxes can be raised to well below the rate of housing price inflation.

So as a new buyer you're paying not only a higher price and higher interest rate, but also higher taxes than the people you bought it from.

Higher property taxes generally would lead to lower home prices.

But really, this applies with anything that you purchase. If the sales tax inceases, you may be taxed more for an identical item that was purchased prior to the sales tax increase.

States and cities have a variety of ways to tax people. They don't need to rely on property tax.

>Higher property taxes generally would lead to lower home prices.

this is not my experience - since property taxes are generally related to the desirability of the house and updated periodically (so often years after a price rise in area)

It's definitely influencing my home buying decision. In Philadelphia area, Delaware County property taxes are a significant amount higher than neighboring Montgomery county. I am looking in both, but my budget is about $30k higher in Montgomery county because of the taxes. I would venture a guess that similar houses in Montgomery county generally sell for more than their counterparts in Delaware county.

the claim as I understand it is that the higher taxed houses will decrease in price in order to attract buyers, but property taxes are generally determined by prices, this would mean that house value should increase in Montgomery because lower taxes, and prices should decrease in Delaware because higher prices, and then in a few years the property taxes in Montgomery should increase and the taxes in Delaware should decrease.

I of course am aware that property taxes change over time, but I don't think this kind of strongly observable see-sawing of the property taxes actually exists - so probably more data than just guessing would be useful.

Iirc housing is pretty inelastic

I actually like how FL handles this. They don't stop it from increasing, they just slow the rate of increase. I'd say it's not fair for someone who budgeted appropriately to get forced out of their home for something out of their control, like the historic explosion of house prices.

In time it'll work itself out, assuming they stay long enough, as it still allows increases in a falling or stagnant market.

That’s also what CA does

CA lets your kids inherit the tax treatment and allows corporations the same benefit. Once you do those things, it’s off in a whole other realm than normal homestead exemptions.

The rapid run-up of home values in the US has led other states to follow, but they generally have higher caps on increases and limit the treatment to your primary residence.

Interesting, seems CA is 2% and FL is 3%.

Both should probably be pegged to the inflation rate nationally each year, which would probably bring them up a few ticks, but otherwise seems reasonable to me. For owner occupied of course, -not- landlords.

> Both should probably be pegged to the inflation rate

Yes I agree...but not the CPI, it should be tied specifically to housing prices. You could even have the state hire appraises to figure out the value of each specific property and peg the rate of increase to that for each property owner.

I know this comment is tongue in cheek, but I still disagree. When you purchase a house, you look at principal, taxes, PMI, and insurance before making a decision. If you're responsible, I guess.

If your little city blows up, and your property value in the market is now 3x what it was, why should you be punished and even forced out if you can't afford the new taxes? New buyers do the same math, and decide they can afford it.. Yes they're paying more, but voluntarily on a likely overpriced asset.

I'm not saying the original owners should just pay less and that's fair, screw the new buyers. I just think the increase should be capped realistically.

The fair way to handle this would be to reduce the tax rate across the board in response to housing inflation. Somehow. Governments around the world are more than happy to see housing prices rise, as are existing property owners, so I am not exactly holding my breath for this to happen.

I get the idea, but I do not like the outcome. It ends up being a largely regressive tax that hits people hardest and often at the worst possible time (e.g. just before or shortly after becoming a parent).

Of course any program if you look only at the beneficiaries is going to look good. We have embraced this attitude that broadly favors the sustaining the already established in their current condition in perpetuity, regardless of the cost to anyone else.

Interesting example. But I can't help to think that, if that was to be the case, but in place of homes appreciating in value to the point they're primarily used as investment vehicle, then local community might be better off with such deal.

I'm 100% convinced that all telecoms are bastards.

Fortunately, regulation seems to help at least a little bit, but you kinda have to be prepared to wage some war - or eat your losses.

(Just lost a phone number that has been my primary for over 7 years; that's after losing another one that I held on to for 11 years... Not to mention all the smaller stuff, like how contracts/extra packages are structured once you go over the month's limit.)

Competition is what helps even more. The Sprint/T-Mobile merger should never have been allowed to happen. Mergers are never good for consumers, despite Chicago School propaganda that says otherwise.

Preventing mergers is regulation.

Chicago School?

> I'm 100% convinced that all telecoms are bastards.

The one I use literally just increases how much data is included with my plan, rather than increasing the price. I quite like it. (I don't think it's available outside of austria though)

https://www.hot.at/

This is one of the reasons I get annoyed at services that require a phone number for an account.

As such, I am never going to switch to Telegram or Signal unless you let me have an account that's not tied to a number. I've lost shit in the past because of this, a phone number is only a temporary identifier.

Signal supports usernames now.

It is still tied to your phone number though.

Went to Signal to sign up and it is requesting a phone number. How do I give it a username instead?

Not for nothin, but it is not an uncommon opinion that regulation is the root cause :

Regulation = high barrier to entry in industry = monopoly/oligopoly = all telecoms are bastards.

Isn't there kind of a fundamental issue here that spectrum is a limited resource? How many competitors can there be when youre initial investment has to be a massive amount for a usable section of it

Regulation isn’t the root cause, and it usually never is the root cause as regulations are always made in reaction to, not usually proactively.

You don't have to limit that first statement to telecoms.

I believe they are losing money on some of these contracts, which changes the calculus significantly. During 2020-2025 some people even got multiple $5/mo plans for added lines, which T-Mobile is now regretting. They've already tried once to force-change some people's contracts (but backed down).