(QFP) It's "thinking" like this that's responsible for a good 40% of the outrage over net neutrality, IMO.
What grown ups understand "unlimited" to mean is that there is no bandwidth cap. There is no hard limit on number of bytes downloaded, beyond which the connection stops working until the next rebilling period.
But this doesn't get rid of the underlying problem. Thinking that it does, that it's just an advertising lie, is magical thinking unfit for adults.
Without a bandwidth cap, other mechanisms need to be used to deal with the fact that consumer internet is sold via contended lines. Some packets will need to be dropped; available bandwidth must shrink when there is more contention. What decides which packets get dropped and which ones get priority - complete randomness, or should your phone call be less important than the difference between a 1.9M/sec video stream and a 2M/sec stream? This is exactly where network neutrality comes in. It's a different way of dealing with the scarce resource, the contended lines.
So it is not a completely different discussion. It is in fact the same discussion, from a different angle.
Power companies have the exact same problem. That being said: how do power companies solve it? They make absolutely sure they have enough extra capacity - because if they don't people complain, loudly.
So: Here is what I read "unlimited data" as: The service provider has enough capacity that a customer has access to at least their full subscribed service normally.
In other words, I am challenging the preconditions of your response: I do not believe that consumer internet should be sold via lines that are contended to the point that "brownouts" (that is having bandwidth of < subscribed rate) are a normal occurrence.
Not to anywhere near the same extent. The range of power consumption of residences probably covers less than an order of magnitude. The range of bandwidth consumption of residences probably covers several orders of magnitude.
> how do power companies solve it?
By charging people for power consumed, directly. Power companies don't have flat-rate, unlimited-use plans. Everyone knows that if they use more electricity, they pay more, and if they use less, they pay less.
> if they don't people complain, loudly.
Yes, because electrical power is a necessity in a way that Netflix-level internet bandwidth is not.
> I do not believe that consumer internet should be sold via lines that are contended to the point that "brownouts" (that is having bandwidth of < subscribed rate) are a normal occurrence.
ISP's do have customers that get that kind of service. Those customers are called "businesses", and they pay significantly more than residential customers do, because they insist on actual service level guarantees.