Verizon is one of the major providers of wireless Broadband. The Verizon EVDO product is one of the fastest services available in North America. One can imagine the many uses for such a service.
Marketed as an “unlimited” service, the limited nature of the service has surfaced.
Advertising is a laughably deceptive industry, so much that a common joke is ” How can you tell an advertiser is lying? Because his lips are moving.
I do have a problem with this practice. If a service is billed as unlimited, then by all means, it should be without limits.
This article isn’t to protest the misuse of the marketing-speak term “unlimited” in the context of advertising. In the wise words of a popular “As Seen On TV” host, “Wait, there is more!”
The terms of the Verizon EVDO service state the following:
examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine to machine connections or peer to peer (P2P) file sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections.
Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice.
What sticks in my craw is the presumption of using prohibited services SOLELY based on the bandwidth used. We, in America, have a long tradition of “Innocent until proven guilty” which the Verizon terms certainly subvert since any monthly use of <5GB transfer is indicative of pirating movies, songs or something similar.
So not only is “Unlimited” service, in fact, limited, but if you use more than an arbitrary 5GB/mo, you are presumed to be a Thief of copyrighted materials. Does anyone else find this trend annoying?