Verizon to Offer iPhone Users "Unlimited" Data
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
When Verizon rolled out its 3G data plan (EVDO Rev.0) in 2005, they initially sold an "unlimited" plan. Very few smart phones could do EVDO, so it was mostly the sale of USB dongles for use with laptops and similar.
In 2006, Verizon started terminating "abusive" users for downloading too much on their supposed "unlimited" plan, and after much wrangling, Verizon finally declared that using more than 5GByte/Month of network traffic is their line in the sand for "abuse."
The above resulted in a class action suit for false advertising. The way Verizon resolved the dispute is not very well known. They simply changed the terms for new customers so new customers would pay per KB fees for everything in excess of 5GByte, and the new accounts were no longer advertised as "unlimited."
The old customers were allowed to keep their "unlimited" status and use the connection as much as they want, but if transfers got too far past 5GByte, the connection would be throttled back to a slower speed. As the saying goes, the old customers were "grandfathered in" with basically the old terms. --The reason, of course, after a few years is most people would make changes to their account, like accepting a "free" new phone/dongle offer, and create a new contract under the new LIMITED terms.
Since I was an early adopter, I have an old "unlimited" account. I refuse to change the account, so it remains unlimited. Only on very rare occasion do I see it get throttled for a few days until the billing cycle ends.
With the new iPhone offering, Verizon might be using the same "unlimited" tricks to get early adopters. It will be interesting to see how this works out...
EDIT: precafinated typos
If there is a cap for the specific phone+web+mail package you found, I would bet the cap is hidden in their terms of service as their definition of "abuse."
It's only for phones and can't be used for tethering. Otherwise, there isn't any sort of 5GB cap like mentioned above.
Basically, AT&T was accused of false offerings and a class action suit followed. AT&T, in turn, claimed that people using their services agreed to waive their right to a class action suit and go to arbitration arranged by AT&T.
Of course, that screws the average consumer and lowers the risk to companies such as AT&T, Verizon should they get caught making dubious claims.
I'd like to establish what the "line in the sand" means from a use case perspective.
When I was healthy enough to tinker and test on my OS, the vast majority of my network transfers were due to downloading OpenBSD snapshots to test, binary packages, and updating CVS. Each snapshot is about ~280MB and depending on the arch/platform, they get rolled a couple times a week. I have a lot of different archs and I (used to) test on as many as time/health/bandwidth allowed. Unlike other open source projects, testing snapshots in OpenBSD is an important and continual process. Even when you're testing patches (i.e. compiling), the expectation is everything else should be at the current snapshot. The snapshots are essentially the baseline maintained so the patches/development are your only delta.
BTW, the open source stuff is mostly FTP/HTTP transfers.
Though I do have a bittorrent client installed, it maybe gets used two or three times a year, only for small files, and without upload reciprocity due to the caps.
There's also very simple web browsing (without scripting by default). These days, most all of my time is spent reading, and a lot of the reading I do is keeping up with tech developments on the web. Once or twice a week, I might indulge in a conference/talk video, but if the file is too large, I won't bother. Also, about once a week I'll pull a (legal) anime video that's about 250MB.
My total network transfer ranged between 5 and 8 GBytes a month when I was doing active testing, so by comparison to other home users, it's not that much.
I seriously doubt I need to remind you but for the non-network folks, file sizes do not accurately reflect total network transfer sizes due to protocol overhead. The Verizon bandwidth caps are based on total network transfer.
The most interesting, and sometimes frustrating, thing about the Verizon cellular network is the filtering. They do some fairly brutal things to reduce bandwidth usage and prevent "abuse" as per their unstated definition. For example, if too much ICMP traffic originates from your system to a particular host, it is silently blocked by their filters. Another example would be their handling of POP3/SMTP protocols. In minimal usage (i.e. checking mail six to twelve times a day), the Verizon filters insert delays. If mail is checked "too often" (i.e. idiots who configure their phones to check mail every 10 seconds), the destination address is blocked completely. Some of the things Verizon does in PPP are also wonky, but more or less it works well enough.
The "excessive use" throttle (filter) on old "unlimited" accounts like mine only kicks in when a rolling average (three months I think) of usage continually exceeds the 5GByte cap. I haven't seen it happen in months but if memory serves, it gets limited to 128Kbit/s and only lasts until the end of the monthly billing cycle.
Needless to say, Verizon refuses to divulge any information about their filtering rules/triggers but even a novice at network monitoring can see the results in action.
The latency can be annoying on EVDO ("3G"). Part of it is caused by the nature of wireless/cellular communications crossing the distance, but the other part is caused by spectrum resource limits of the towers and the corresponding on/off dance the radio in the modem does. A good way to grasp the problem is, you use a lot more spectrum when you're talking on your cell phone than when it is sitting idle in standby mode. It's an understandable limit of the engineering/design; Cellular data networks are simply not designed for "always on" operation.
I know some people are going to say its absurd to suggest Verizon should offer a truly unlimited plan, but in that case, they shouldn't be advertising their plan as such either.
It's like when the rumors were going around about AT&T offering $0 iPhone 3G units this past Christmas and the cry went up near and far: "OMG! Why would anyone want to buy something so useless?!?"
Really?
But yeah, "old"? I have a 3GS, and it's still running fine, and I'm still quite satisfied with it.
I think this works like shared hosting. Many people think they need unlimited bandwidth, and it sounds great, but they end up using far less than expected. This more than makes up for the people who use excessive amounts.
I only recently did the math with my phone and figured out that I could save a chunk every month by downgrading from the unlimited plan and actually using the WiFi in my house.
Several years ago they banned the use of the word "unlimited" on ADSL (or any Internet) accounts unless it truly was no unlimited. If the account had "fair use" limits, traffic shaping or overage fees.
The result? You buy the quota you want. Outside of Australia people seem to dislike the idea of quotas but the result is practices like surreptitious shaping. Quotas really are fairer and (IMHO) have the best end result.
As for Verizon, I have a DroidX and live in NYC. My iPhone is useless in a lot of places. My Droid isn't. I can't help but think the net result of the Verizon iPhone will be that my DroidX will become equally useless.
Haunting.