When is an "unlimited" data plan anything but? When AT&T or Verizon is your wireless carrier. With the new year come new efforts to push legacy unlimited data customers onto more costly capped plans.
Ever since AT&T and Verizon stopped offering unlimited plans several years ago, the carriers have waged a war of attrition against users with grandfathered plans. The companies have tried all manner of tactics to make these users go away, including blocking certain services from working, throttling unlimited users' data speeds without transparency (for which AT&T was fined $100 million by the FCC), and consistently raising rates.
You say tomato, I say tomahto -- let's call the whole thing off
Verizon, which last summer cut loose customers who were using more than 500GB of data per month, this week set its sights on those using more than 200GB of data. Heavy users have until Feb. 16 to move onto capped plans or be disconnected.
However, International Business Times and Engadget note that Verizon customers who'd kept their data usage under 100GB were also complaining on several Reddit threads that they'd received letters moving them off unlimited data. It's probably only a matter of time before Verizon purges its unlimited customers entirely.
Gives a whole new meaning to "unlimited," doesn't it?
To add insult to injury, Verizon persists in spreading the fantasy that while users may think they want unlimited data plans, they're flat-out wrong.
"At the end of the day, people don't need unlimited plans," Verizon's then-CFO Fran Shammo said at an investor conference last September. "You cannot make money in an unlimited data world," he added.
Follow that logic? You don't need unlimited data because Verizon -- a company that raked in $31 billion last quarter -- doesn't make enough money. Carriers are "still struggling with the concept that in a truly competitive market, consumers tell you what they want (and hopefully, you provide it). In wireless, executives still apparently think it's the other way around," says TechDirt.
Show me the money
Last year, Verizon raised the price of its unlimited data plan by $20, to $50 a month. When text messaging and talk are figured in, the total can top $100 a month. But compare that legacy plan to the carrier's XXL plan: New customers are offered only 24GB and two lines for $110. Verizon last week also increased the "upgrade fee" it levies when customers buy a new phone from $20 to $30.
AT&T this week announced another $5 price hike on its unlimited plan -- the second in less than a year, amounting to a more than 30 percent raise since January 2016. But even with that bump to $40 per month, the unlimited plan is still a bargain for heavy data users. With voice and text added, legacy customers will pay $90 a month. Meanwhile, a new 30GB data plan from AT&T costs $135.
No wonder AT&T is dangling perks like tethering without throttling as an incentive for unlimited customers to give up their old plans. (AT&T throttles unlimited users' connections after 22GB; its capped data plans throttle customers after they reach their data limits, unless they switch to a more expensive plan.)
Verizon also slows the speeds of its heaviest data users, but said speeds return to normal "once the heavy usage eases or the user moves to a different cell site." It insists this is in no way throttling. "Our network optimization policy provides the best path to ensure a continued great wireless experience for all of our customers," said Mike Haberman, VP of technology for Verizon.
But as TelecomTV notes, Verizon's support page at the time stated: "If you're on an unlimited data plan and are concerned that you are in the top 5 percent of data users, you can switch to a usage-based data plan as customers on usage-based plans are not impacted [by network optimization]."
In other words, the throttling had little to do with congestion and everything to do with Verizon wanting to push unlimited users onto more expensive capped data connections.
The FCC and FTC went after AT&T for a lack of transparency about its throttling practices. AT&T claimed it needed to throttle unlimited customers to "prevent harm" to its network. But federal courts asserted "AT&T's throttling program is not actually tethered to real-time network congestion." Unlimited customers are throttled "even if AT&T's network is capable of carrying the customers' data." Customers who don't have unlimited plans are not ordinarily throttled -- even if they use vast amounts of data -- unless they exceed their caps.
It will be interesting to see if the new FCC is as willing to police the industry.