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"Unlimited" in terms of Internet access/bandwidth has always been a contentious term. And I mean _always_ because back in 1995 I worked for an ISP and when we

by sbarre 6y ago

"Unlimited" in terms of Internet access/bandwidth has always been a contentious term. And I mean _always_ because back in 1995 I worked for an ISP and when we introduced our "Unlimited" dial-up plan, I can't tell you the number of people who got mad at us because they couldn't dial in and stay connected 24/7 all month long. We explained it in our terms of use (and actually had a really clear tl;dr in non-fine print in our ads) that customers could use as much as they could without worry of being charged for overages or getting cut off after a certain number of hours, but it was not a _dedicated_ account that promised 24/7 service. But certain customers insisted that _their_ interpretation of the word was the one that _we_ should be held to. One customer even took us to small claims court, and lost. For the rest, our typical response was to say we were sorry this wasn't the plan they were expecting, and we'd happily refund their most recent month and close their account. That's almost always when they would change their mind and suddenly be ok with the terms. ;-)

wtallis 6y ago
That sounds like you're talking about the distinction between an unlimited connection with a SLA, and an unlimited connection provided on a best-effort basis. But the modern corruption of "unlimited" doesn't even rise to the level of "best-effort".
- sbarre 6y ago
  I think the similarity (in my mind) is the "you can't be charged for overages" aspect of it.. Use as much as you can, you won't be charged any more than X dollars per month.. But past a certain point, you will be throttled.. Not cut off, but slowed.. And back in the ISP days, we would actively disconnect high-usage users to free up phone lines during peak times (which was typically 6-10pm on weekdays and 1pm to 10pm on weekends) Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember a time when ISPs advertised their "user-to-line ratios", meaning we didn't have a phone line for every customer - we maintained a 7:1 ratio which was considered good back then). So in order to allow the lower-usage customers to get online to check their emails or surf after dinner, we had to make sure that there were lines available. If you had already used more than (I think - memory is fuzzy here) 150 hours per month, then you were subject to being disconnected during peak hours. So in effect, we were also throttling them, which is similar to what wireless carriers do today I think...
  - wtallis 6y ago
    > So in effect, we were also throttling them, which is similar to what wireless carriers do today I think... No. Dropping a dial-up connection when all lines are busy is not the same kind of artificial limitation as throttling/de-prioritizing someone's traffic after X GB even if the network is uncongested, or unconditionally throttling specific types of traffic (eg. all video traffic, to prevent HD streaming).

by sbarre 6y ago

wtallis 6y ago

That sounds like you're talking about the distinction between an unlimited connection with a SLA, and an unlimited connection provided on a best-effort basis. But the modern corruption of "unlimited" doesn't even rise to the level of "best-effort".

sbarre 6y ago
I think the similarity (in my mind) is the "you can't be charged for overages" aspect of it.. Use as much as you can, you won't be charged any more than X dollars per month.. But past a certain point, you will be throttled.. Not cut off, but slowed.. And back in the ISP days, we would actively disconnect high-usage users to free up phone lines during peak times (which was typically 6-10pm on weekdays and 1pm to 10pm on weekends) Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember a time when ISPs advertised their "user-to-line ratios", meaning we didn't have a phone line for every customer - we maintained a 7:1 ratio which was considered good back then). So in order to allow the lower-usage customers to get online to check their emails or surf after dinner, we had to make sure that there were lines available. If you had already used more than (I think - memory is fuzzy here) 150 hours per month, then you were subject to being disconnected during peak hours. So in effect, we were also throttling them, which is similar to what wireless carriers do today I think...
- wtallis 6y ago
  > So in effect, we were also throttling them, which is similar to what wireless carriers do today I think... No. Dropping a dial-up connection when all lines are busy is not the same kind of artificial limitation as throttling/de-prioritizing someone's traffic after X GB even if the network is uncongested, or unconditionally throttling specific types of traffic (eg. all video traffic, to prevent HD streaming).