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This has been bothering me about Verizon’s current marketing push around every individual on a family plan being able to get ‘the unlimited plan they need’. I h

This has been bothering me about Verizon’s current marketing push around every individual on a family plan being able to get ‘the unlimited plan they need’. I haven’t been in the market for a ‘family unlimited plan’ and frankly understand little about mobile billing in general, so I have no idea what pain point Verizon is claiming to address with this model - but the concept on its face makes no sense to me. How can there be different ‘unlimited’ plans? On what dimensions do plans vary if not ‘limits’? If the plans are all unlimited, yet different, then why do you still identify them as ‘unlimited’ plans when that is clearly not a distinguishing characteristic?

robterrell 8y ago
> I have no idea what pain point Verizon is claiming to address I recently shopped for an "unlimited" family plan for my kids. The pain point is "can I watch video?" As best I can determine, "unlimited" has become a marketing term for "yes, you can stream Netflix, to some degree." There might be a cap on the number of GB of transfer, after which you pay a fee for more; or you can have no cap, but a limit after which your transfer rate drops precipitously. Several providers do a thing where they'll force Netflix (and I assume other streaming providers) to use a lower bitrate stream variant, to help you preserve you data. There appears to no longer be an actual unlimited plan in the US. Even my grandfathered iPhone AT&T plan with "unlimited" data now has a cap after which it is rate-limited.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  I'm kind of surprised the FTC or FCC hasn't made any more of a stink about the clearly deceitful use of 'unlimited' on these plans.
- yial 8y ago
  My grandfathered AT&T plan is still unlimited data, no cap, but they aggressively try to get me to change it frequently anymore, and recently started charging me some legacy maintainence fee. (I’ve had essentially the same plan since 2007).

robterrell 8y ago

> I have no idea what pain point Verizon is claiming to address I recently shopped for an "unlimited" family plan for my kids. The pain point is "can I watch video?" As best I can determine, "unlimited" has become a marketing term for "yes, you can stream Netflix, to some degree." There might be a cap on the number of GB of transfer, after which you pay a fee for more; or you can have no cap, but a limit after which your transfer rate drops precipitously. Several providers do a thing where they'll force Netflix (and I assume other streaming providers) to use a lower bitrate stream variant, to help you preserve you data. There appears to no longer be an actual unlimited plan in the US. Even my grandfathered iPhone AT&T plan with "unlimited" data now has a cap after which it is rate-limited.

rtkwe 8y ago
I'm kind of surprised the FTC or FCC hasn't made any more of a stink about the clearly deceitful use of 'unlimited' on these plans.
yial 8y ago
My grandfathered AT&T plan is still unlimited data, no cap, but they aggressively try to get me to change it frequently anymore, and recently started charging me some legacy maintainence fee. (I’ve had essentially the same plan since 2007).