Carolyn Schuk, who I always enjoy reading, at Voxilla has a story about Verizon’s so called “Unlimited” EV-DO data services banning customers that use more than 5GB of bandwidth in a month.
This is not unusual in the industry. Ev ery “Unlimited” plan I’ve ever seen, whether wireless, broadband, VoIP, or whatever, has an asterisk (or two, or three). The terms of use always leave some wiggle room for the provider to set limits. In this case, the Verizon EV-DO service is not our service, but rather we are served at the pleasure of the Verizon CEO.
Most service providers offering an “Unlimited” service have been accused of this kind of thing before, including Comcast, Verizon’s own Voicewing VoIP service, Broadvoice, Rogers Wireless, Rocket VOIP, etc.
So they all do it. This is not unique to Verizon. They all have lawyers, after all. The question is, how is it being enforced and how are the bans/limits impacting the real-world practicality of the service.