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Comment by zkhalique | Hacker News Reader

If the throttling slows it down but not to the extent of asymptotically approaching a limit within the month, then I think the word "unlimited" really applies.

The limit might be, say, 5x less than what you would get with normal tower reception. But it's still "unlimited" in the same sense as being limited by cellphone throughput.

So I guess the lawyers can argue that truly being "unlimited" is clearly impossible anyway.

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No, because you're paying for unlimited 4G or HSDPA access, not unlimited access at any speed. AT&T is wrong, they know they're wrong, and they should pay the money. It clearly misleads consumers and that's the issue here.

How do you define "asymptotically approaching ... within the month"?

I read that as if to mean that it would be possible for the ISP to set a limit, say a 10 GB monthly cap, and once a lower threshold (say 5 GB) is reached, decrease bandwidth as usage continues to climb. As usage grows and bandwidth decreases, you could eventually reach a point where it is so slow (say at 1,000 bits per second) that it becomes more or less unusable for the consumer and therefore unfeasible to realistically exceed the 10 GB limit.

Sort of like halving the distance between you and a destination repeatedly ultimately leads you to a position infinitesimally separated from your destination, but never past it.

A formula, perhaps

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