Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

When someone offers you an unlimited plan, or says that you must sign a contract, watch out. The former means that there is a limit, and it is low and they don't want to tell you what it is. The latter means that their service is so crappy, the only way they can keep you is by legally obligating you to keep paying them.

We've seen this with "unlimited" web hosting: practically it means that you can only store a certain amount of data and only have so much bandwidth, and when you start "abusing" the service, you get booted. Calling it "unlimited" gives the provider a license to change the rules whenever it sees fit.

I welcome data caps and limits. If AT&T tells me I can only use 2GB of data and at what speed I can make an informed decision on whether to go with their offering or not. I would like to see the limits be more near a 20-30 GB mark as that is my usage, but that is better than "unlimited, but if you do something we don't like we limit you". Please, if you run any kind of service, put a limit on it an make sure you can meet the demand, unless the resource is not constrained on your part in any practical sense. For example, I say "unlimited email notifications" on Ping Brigade, but there is no real constraint in place. However, I put a hard limit on how many services/servers you can monitor because I know the limits of my system and I have planned for capacity (and have a plan to expand the capacity if all of a sudden the service gets popular).

Contrast that with AT&T, who sold first and build the service later. I guess though that it works out for them: they have billions while I can only buy noodles with my earnings.

I think you're off base on this and are looking at the issue from a single side.

The "Unlimited Data Plans" are cooked up through marketing departments that take a broad look at the numbers their network can ideally handle and conclude that when matching up customer usage models to these numbers they can offer a service that exceeds the average user's need. If they evaluate the market and determine that the average user is a 2GB/month type user and their network is supposed to be able to handle upwards of 7GB/month per user at their projected service rates they make the offer that "unlimited" is what is offered.

From the consumer's P.O.V. an "Unlimited" data plan looks much better than a "7GB/month" data plan. Smoke and mirrors.

What happens is the power users or edge cases to these hypothetical usage models break down that service offering. A lot goes into a mobile network and heavy users CAN cause issues to the equipment out in the field. What happens is the tech side of the provider begin to scramble to make things happen, project budgets skyrocket and everything suddenly looks terrible on paper.

The next step is then to realize that "unlimited" is a pipe dream and is really only available to those people who check the weather and read their emails on a daily basis.

/rant

tl;dr - its not a malicious decision by the provider to make these offerings. They work with models and offerings from a business perspective that aren't ideal from a technological perspective and the disjoint creates problems on the bottom line. To the end user however it looks like a planned event.

"marketing departments that take a broad look at the numbers their network can ideally handle and conclude that [...]"

"the power users or edge cases to these hypothetical usage models break down that service offering"

I don't see how you can write the former and then get the culpability so wrong in the latter. It's not the "power users" or "edge cases" that broke the model, it's that the model was wrong. AT&T thought they could offer "unlimited" service at a certain price, and they were wrong. And rather than honor it and lose money, or change their pricing and lose customers, they are cheating with a throttle.

I'm sorry, but that is malicious. They're playing with the dictionary definition of "unlimited" instead of offering their customers the service they promised.

My apologies for my poor explanation. You're entirely correct with what you've said. The model they employ certainly is broken if it doesn't account for the possibility that not everyone falls into their ideal customer. When I said that "it is not malicious" I really should have stated that it is not with malicious intent. A marketing manager doesn't create offerings that they feel will piss off the customer base because a child could tell you that unhappy customers == churn and by extension churn == less marketing jobs as the company shrinks.

I merely wanted to provide a perspective as to what sort of train of thought is followed regardless of how logical it may be.

OK, agreed. It's not a bait and switch. AT&T honestly believed their pricing was sound. I believe that too.

I don't, not for a minute. Look at how the AT&T iPad plans changed a month after launch. That was not a usage based decision, and it takes longer for a company their size to create the materials than the time between launch and the change.

They've known what they were doing, and considered these actions a viable contingency.

I think it's more like those "permanent laser hair removal" things. They can call it permanent if it works for 6 months. If after 6 months you grow all your hair back, that doesn't make it non-permanent according to marketing laws.

It is not planned. I don't care if they make decisions out of malice or out of good intentions. The reality is that AT&T did not do their capacity planning and are still not doing it. The other point is that when anyone offers anything "unlimited" that you know is scarce, you should ask for hard contractual limits. Imagine saying "OK AT&T, so you tell me this data plan is unlimited. Can I stream 500GBs of movies over this connection? Yes? Can I get that in writing?"

"Unlimited" gives the seller an unfair advantage over the buyer, at least the way it has been used. My advice is to avoid anything "unlimited". Simply mentally substitute "variably limited" and see how you like the sound of what you are about to sign.

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