To Verizon, "Unlimited" Means 5 GB

Jason writes "For years there have been stories about people getting their unlimited Verizon EVDO Wireless accounts terminated because of excessive data usage, but Verizon never explicitly said that there is a limit. Now if you dive into the terms of the Unlimited Data Service plan they have put a section in that specifically states that anything over 5GB of data usage in a one month period is considered prima facie evidence that you must be downloading movies, and you will be cut off."

What the hell?

And what if you paid for those movies?

Re:What the hell?

Somehow, I don't think they care.

It is just easier for them to sell something called "unlimited" than it is to sell something called "limited to 5GB".

Re:What the hell?

At least they are consistent. Verizon gives you 2GB for your FIOS email account, but will not allow any emails older than 30 days to remain in one's email folders. They are simply deleted after 30.00001 days. Thank goodness for Gmail, and all the rest. Verizon email is simply a waste. Perhaps they really don't want anyone to use. it.

Re:What the hell?

A true geek would write a script to forward all of their e-mails to themselves after 29 days so that the e-mail all remains fresh.

Re:What the hell?

One word: Accessibility

I have 2 computers at work, a laptop and a desktop at home, Blackberry, and I occasionally find the need to check my e-mail on a friend's computer. With my e-mail stored on a remote (GMail) server I can get to my current mail from anywhere.

-----
WP
http://www.wperry.net/ [wperry.net]

"just simply?"

just simply get a nice mail system running on a home computer that gets email via POP from Verizon/whoever and has its own webmail interface (e.g. getting an MTA running on a home computer with Apache and PHP running Squirrelmail or the like and having a dynamic DNS service)

How is this simpler than "www.gmail.com?"

Dynamic DNS, fer Pete's sake. The average /.er maybe, the average Joe Six-gig computer user, no way.

Re:What the hell?

All ISP email accounts are a waste. Why would you want something as important as email tied to a service you may quit?

Re:What the hell?

Totally agree. I have friends constantly sending me their new email address because they switched from Bellsouth to Comcast. Then a year later they switch to another ISP and I have to change it again.

Re:What the hell?

Whereas if you are AT&T they expect you to use their email service. While I have about 6 or 7 domains and an account at each of GMail, Yahoo and Hotmail, I thought I would not need to use the free email account they provided me. During a dispute over billing, they implemented a "soft shutoff" which involved nothing more than blocking the email account. As I was oblivious to this move I had no idea they had given us the soft shutoff so when they pulled the plug, it came as a surprise. Idiots. Even more idiotic, after crediting me the $99 breach of contract charge (even though I didn't sign a contract) and the remainder of my bill for the aggro, they realised they had over-credited me and sent me a check for $0.09. The whole billing argument was about the so-called $11 per month landline service which cost me $25. As a foreign national, US resident, they couldn't say I knew or expected the bill to be that much higher including all the taxes. Or it might have been my first phone bill after leaving home. It's crap like this that needs to be clamped down on in this country, not the illegal (or legal!) downloading of movies, music and software.

Re:What the hell?

I don't think it's "easier", it's "lazier".

If I were Verizon, I'd be plugging the hell out of the 5G limit. I'd call it "Data 5G" or something similar, I'd describe the kinds of things you can do with 5G. I'd use the term "Effectively unlimited".

And then after the sheer enormity of that number had sunk in, I'd create a new plan, costing $10 a month more, called "Data 20G".

Verizon isn't merely being dishonest in calling it "Unlimited", they're also being very, very, stupid.

Re:What the hell?

No, marketing friendly would provide you with the opportunity to grow, as described above. It's just plain idiotic.

How, exactly, is Verizon supposed to market its bigger and better service in the future if its describing its current one as "Unlimited"?

New! The "Infinity Plus One" plan from Verizon!

Even better than unlimited - this one goes to 11 !

You get the idea.

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the America public." - H. L. Mencken

Re:What the hell?

Yeah, I totally agree.

In Australia, no plans are truly unlimited (I think it's because of the high cost to connect us to the rest of the world). For example, I'm with Bigpond. We have the plan called ... surprise, "Unlimited". It's actually 10GB broadband, and after that, capped at about 14kbps or some ridiculous sub-modem speed, and that is truly unlimited.

It isn't as draconian as Verizon (you don't get "terminated" or charged extra). It just isn't *really* unlimited because the Internet these days is pretty much unusable at 14kbps.

Re:What the hell?

Verizon isn't merely being dishonest in calling it "Unlimited", they're also being very, very, stupid.

That's what rocks about the cellular service industry. Everybody's mouth-breathing stupid so it's not a competitive disadvantage.

I read Verizon's TOS a couple of months ago when evaluating the service and said "no thanks". They say in no uncertain terms that the service is for web browsing and email only, and if you go over the 5G they'll assume you're using it for something else and cut you off with no recourse.

While web and email are probably what I spend the most time doing, I still download iso's with bt, use ichat with my mother, stuff that uses more bandwidth. I might also use a vpn or something like that.

I look at my mother as the quintessential "normal user", and even she is doing stuff that's outside the realm of email and web. Thankfully wifi hotspots are common enough that I'm not too worried about it.

Re:What the hell?

Now think about how a company like Verizon is going to act when there's no Net Neutrality. How long you think it's going to take before you are so limited by their TOS that you can ONLY do email and web browsing, and only using their email and approved web sites?

Re:What the hell?

5GB is the upper limit. Here's the TOS:

"Unlimited Data Plans and Features (such as NationalAccess, BroadbandAccess, Push to Talk, and certain VZEmail services) may ONLY be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). The Unlimited Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. 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. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services and/or redirecting television signals for viewing on laptops is prohibited. A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month."

Re:What the hell?

that's me stuffed then... I took a peek at my Azureus stats... and over the last 250 or so days, I've downloaded 325 GB and uploaded 340 GB... and thats with a paltry 50KB/s upstream... That's a lot of Linux distros... mind you, there's an awful lot of public domain films and music that I download and seed as well.

Mind you, I'm with an ISP that does not have one of these stupid "fair use" policies tied to their "unlimited" accounts... I have broadband via my cable account... and there's a fibre optic feed to a splitter thingy in the basement and I get a short coax run to my flat from that. That coax also carries my phone and TV signals.

Just marketing...

Here in the UK the same thing happens. I am always wary of those services providing unlimited *anything*. That is why I am more comfortable with Google's 3GB or 4GB or whatever space they give against say, yahoo's unlimited, because ALWAYS (show me an advertisement that does not have it) the word UNLIMITED comes with the corresponding '*' attached to it, and in the case of the broadband services they use the "Fair use" policy to trivially limit the bandwidth.

I have also read a lot of times people assuming that the people that download a lot is *pirating* stuff. But with the current rise of multimedia content (VoIP, VoD, online gaming, and the massive amount of flash crap in the web) it is very easy to go over 2GB a month...

This is 2007.

Paying for movies is so old-fashioned. I don't think people do it any more. If you are downloading more the 5GB then you are definitely a pirate.

But take comfort in the fact that you are helping stop global warming.

Re:This is 2007.

First: (obligatory IANAL) downloading movies is perfectly legal - uploading them is illegal.

You are dumber than toast. Downloading a movie makes a copy of it. If you're not authorised to make that copy, you're infringing the owner's rights. Just because the MPAA are only choosing to sue uploaders doesn't make downloading legal.

Re:This is 2007.

Now for the 5GB limit. Get real. 1 DVD ISO for a linux distro is 4GB alone. I could easily reach this limit in about 20 minutes without even trying, just setting up a new machine.

I think you probably missed an important point. This is not a limit on Verizon's wired DSL or FIOS services, this is VerizonWireless' (a different company) 3G wireless data services.

With an average download speed of about 400kbs, 5GB represents about 40 hours of continuous download. EvDO is simply not practical for moving about large amounts of data.

I'm not a great fan of Verizon's business practices, but from a practical perspective the 5 GB limit is unlikely to affect 99.99% of their users. I'm traveling to client sites quite a bit for my job doing software implementations. I use the service extensively, mostly for web access, replicating email, and some Remote Desktop/VNC usage, and I rarely break 1GB in a month.

Re:This is 2007.

It doesn't matter if it doesn't affect 99.99% of their customers. It's still not unlimited, which is what they're advertising. It is a Big Deal for that 0.001% (higher really) of people who DO go over the value. One of my friends just got kicked off Verizon's service a couple weeks ago. He's a software developer, works at home a lot, and livs in an RV. This service SHOULD have been good for him, but after downloading a few TV shows from iTunes (NOT P2P, notice) and a couple Linux ISOs or whatever, he suddenly got booted. They didn't even give him an option to pay more and stay on the service.

That's no "unlimited" in any real sense of the word. I don't think anyone would reasonably fault Verizon for putting a 5GB limit on their plan. To call it unlimited though is disingenuous, no matter what the fine print says, and to not offer any other more expensive options for those who do go over the limit is just stupid.

Ah memories...

Reminds me of some time ago when I got my first hard drive with "unlimited" capacity... and then accidentally filled it up with 5GB of movies in the first few days of using it.

I vowed next time to get a hard drive with at least twice unlimited capacity.

Re:Ah memories...

No matter its size, when correctly used, a HD can have only 3 states: still in the box, almost full and dead.

Re:Limited != Unlimited

Welcome to the internet in the UK, loads of ISPs advertise 'Unlimited' adsl only to actually have limits. One has been found guilty of false advertising.
In fact many ISPs claim to have unlimited use (despite all ADSL in the UK being limited) most only state in the small print that they have 'Fair Usage Policies' (FUP) which will come in when they decide you have used too much, they always imply that there are no limits (one even states "that you dont have to monitor your usage!").

This is simply illegal IMHO, you cannot state that something is unlimited when it is limited. Even if this contradiction comes in the small print, especially when you do not state how limited it is. A c
This page http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/caps.htm [kitz.co.uk] outlines it perfectly.

Re:Sign the petition

Sign the petition to stop UK ISPs from advertising unlimited packages when there are in fact hidden caps in their un-Fair Usage Policies
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Unlimited-ADSL/ [pm.gov.uk]

Re:.ca

You hit 120GB a month? Do you remember what the outside looks like?

Re:.ca

Sure, right now it's only 'Pirates' hitting these limitations. However next week/month/year it'll be 'Average Joe User' with his . For example, how much bandwidth does the average Vonage user munch? What happens when IPTV starts to hit mainstream?

Re:.ca

First of all, Vonage hardly uses any bandwidth. It's something like 128kbps, so roughly 16KBps. NO ONE is going to talk 24/7, and even if they did, it's not going to rack up as much bandwidth as say, having several Bittorrents going at once.

Again, with IPTV, there's a realistic limit on how much you're going to watch in a given month. In other words, there is a clear definition of what "unlimited" means in that context. And there's also no way in hell that someone can possibly watch TV 24/7 for an entire month, so that alone is evidence enough to justify that someone is abusing their connection. And let's not forget that the cable company can easily throttle back your general Internet bandwidth in the case that you're using excessive IPTV bandwidth.

Now as far as the people in the article, they are CLEARLY using their cellphones as a general Internet connection for their computers. This is FORBIDDEN by the cellphone TOS unless you sign up for a different plan. I just flat out don't believe that someone used 5GB of bandwidth in a month by checking email and surfing web pages using ONLY their cellphone.

Re:.ca

Do you remember what the outside looks like?

Of course he does, he's got all these movies of it...

Linux

and what if you're downloading linux distributions or other operating systems? ISO's for DVD's are consistently around 4gb. IF you download one dvd iso and one cd iso theres a good chance you will already be over the limit.

Well, in Canada...

In Canada just pay .02 cents per kB. What a great deal!

Re:Well, in Canada...

Well here in Japan I pay around $45 a month (modem rental included) for a 50M/s connection - mind you, if it was available where I live I'd get fiber at 100M/s.

Limits? What limits? I remember last year when a friend came over for a while. With both our computers on the same connection, we often downloaded around 6Go a day...

Re:If it has a fixed cost, it has a fixed limit

That's totally besides the point. If they say it's unlimited, then it should be unlimited. It may be a bad idea business wise for them to provide ulimited bandwidth for a fixed price, as you correctly point out, but that's their problem.

Re:If it has a fixed cost, it has a fixed limit

its all down to the definition. A 'normal' user, reading pages, and sending/receiving email, would see 5gb as more then they would use. Someone with greater needs, such as to download large files, would see 5gb as barely adequate. Hell, even re installing a Steam account on your computer could fill that in a day.

That aside, the thing is that companies like Verizon have seen their old pricing model prove inadequate over time, and they want to distance themselves from the previous model. The interweb was such that only people downloading illegally were exceeding their previously undefined upper limit. I would imagine they got the 5gb value by doing some data mining on their customers. I'd bet that most never go near 5gb.

I imagine they know people will soon start buying movies and other large media online as a matter of course, and they want to be able to charge for 'premium' access. The best way to achieve that is show that they are taking action now against heavy downloaders, demonstrating the need for different levels of access, so they cannot be accused of suddenly instituting a new system for the sake of profit only.

I would cope with metered access, if it meant no hassle when I did transfer a lot. I do often have to transfer large amounts of data between home and my lab overnight.

Re:If it has a fixed cost, it has a fixed limit

The contract is fair and reasonable, but conflicts with their advertising. You can't advertise the Brooklyn Bridge for sale and then present someone with a contract for a tenement in The Bronx. People just want truthful advertising.

Re:If it has a fixed cost, it has a fixed limit

People just want truthful advertising.

truthful advertising... that's a good one. it's also an oxymoron, like "political integrity" or "reality television".

Re:Let me get this straight:

Yes, they will cut you off, but not because they assume you're pirating movies.

If you read the actual terms you'll see this:

Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games;

Basically, they don't want you using the internet to purchase movies or music from anyone other than Verizon. It's an incredibly anti-competitive action.

Forgive my statistics, but...

In a brief overview of the logs that are kept by a gateway at the local university, it shows that, on a daily basis, 32 members of my dormitory floor download at roughly 700KBps average during the day (that's total for all users). That's about 60,480,000 KB per day. Fifty NINE gigabytes per day. Divide that by 32. 1,845MB per person, per day. This is a reasonable number for college students. Let's assume that up to 75% of that is bittorrent, other peer to peer traffic, or what have you. That's STILL 461MB per person, per day, of assumed legitimate traffic. This is AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Web browsing, and other legal Internet services. 461MB * 30 days = 13,837MB or 13.5GB. I rest my case.

Re:Forgive my statistics, but...

Your assumption is where you made your mistake. You pulled 75% out of the air with no basis for doing so. What if bittorrent was 99.9% of the bandwidth used? Your case resting would be completely incorrect.

assumed legitimate traffic.

The operative word here being assumed.

Someone who's IM'ing 13.5 GB/Month won't be in college long...

False Advertising

Doesn't the US have somethign equivalent to the British Trades Description Act [wikipedia.org]. If they tried selling 'unlimited' internet access with a limit in the UK it would be, de facto, illegal, whatever the small print.

Truth-in-advertising

Doesn't the US have something equivalent to the British Trades Description Act. If they tried selling 'unlimited' internet access with a limit in the UK it would be, de facto, illegal, whatever the small print.

Yes, we do. It's called "Truth in Advertising," and it's part of the Federal Trade Commission's job to enforce that business don't lie about their services. We also have the Better Business Buerue as a watch group to identify unfair and unethical business practices.

Anyone who's had their service dropped by verizon for the 5GB limit, and isn't hosting a pirating service, should be suing verizon under truth in advertising. When you use the word "Unlimited" in big bold letters on the cover of the plan, you can't lie about it in the fine print.

Re:False Advertising

Actually, there are situations in the US in which false advertising is a criminal act. In particular, see 18 USC 52-55. [cornell.edu] The same applies, perhaps even in a broader sense, in some states. In Ohio, for example, it may be a third- or second-degree misdemeanor.

Civil remedies may apply as well, although an individual's damages are likely to be very minimal in this case, probably governed by state law. In Ohio, this would probably amount at most to the prorated monthly service fee, possibly a connection charge by an alternate supplier, and attorney's fees. If you're willing to file in non-small-claims court, you could also ask for an injunction against the offender.

(I ANAL, and all that jazz.)

Purpose is plainly stated

Paragraph 1 of the Verizon terms state plainly that the Unlimited plain means unlimited bandwidth for a particular small set of uses:

Unlimited Data Plans and Features (such as NationalAccess, BroadbandAccess, Push to Talk, and certain VZEmail services) may ONLY be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). The Unlimited Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose.

Re:Purpose is plainly stated

Our new car* can drive faster than the speed of sound**, to anywhere on Earth***, and carry as many passengers as you need****!

**** Limit of four passengers
*** Scope of car limited to that part of Earth that includes the city of Detroit and surrounding areas
** Speed limited to 70MPH
* Not a car

If you advertise "Unlimited", and it's not unlimited, you're lying. Putting it in the small print doesn't make you honest, it's an admission of guilt.

I once got paid to quit

Reminds me of an ISP in Germany that offered unlimited broadband for cheap 7 bucks a month.

They also gave me a brand new VoIP-enabled wireless router as a welcome present and didn't even charge for the first 3 months.

After 5 months that guy calls: "I want to talk to you about your DSL plan [...] over the past months you've been downloading an average 181 GB a month [...] up to 243 GB [...] bla bla bla"

He then offered me 100 bucks if I agree to quit the plan immediately and never come back.

So:
State-of-the-art VoIP-router: 0,00$
5 months of downloading TV series: -14,00$
Getting paid to leave: : +100,00$ (priceless)
---------------
all of the above: +86,00$

new idea for advertising

Unlimited* Internet Access for only US$29.999

* - Bullshit!

Not everyone has unlimited access.

Well, you might find that extremely limited (and it is) but it isn't so strange for me. In Belgium the major ISPs (Belgacom [belgacom.be], Telenet [telenet.be]) allow about 10Gb quota per month, with 5 euro per 5Gb for extra quota. This is expensive! Downloading a movie or even a linux distribution DVD costs you several euros on bandwidth alone.
Minor ISPs use this a nice way into the market. (For example, mine [edpnet.be] allows me 20Gb default with a 0.25 euro cents per Gb over that upto 60Gb per month).
Offcourse, all limits are openly advertised...

Google calculator has something to say

5 (gigabytes / month) = 15.9494775 kbps [google.pt]. That's a quarter of the dialup speed. You can reach 5 GB/month using your good old 56 kbps dialip connection 6 hours a day on its max capacity. Enough said.

In other news, I pay 25 euros/month for a 8 Mbps down/512 Kbps up unlimited cable line, and I consider it expensive, and plan to change to the competitor that offers a 4M/512K by under 20 euros. God bless Europe.

unlimited data vs unlimited bandwidth

Unlimited data and unlimited bandwidth aren't the same. Why doesn't Verizon just throttle abusers? They can still have their unlimited data as advertised, just at a rate of 2400bps.

Not bad for the mobile industry

If you think that's bad, to Vodafone UK, "unlimited" means 15Mb. Yes mega, though that's per day, not per month. It also doesn't include IM, VOIP or P2P. This is according to their new price plans that start in June, with a "£1 per day flat rate for internet usage".

Pizza, Internet, what's the difference

Compare this to Papa John's, which is running a special on their website which says: Three Medium, Unlimited Toppings (Maximum Five Toppings per pizza)

To quote Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that hword. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Wired usage habits on wireless are antisocial.

So many people on this thread are talking about downloading movies, calculating what the average bandwidth of college students is, etc....

What they are not addressing is that most people would be using wired bandwidth for these tasks. Wired bandwidth is relatively plentiful, even with the bottlenecks in the local loop. The capacity in the backbones is mostly restricted by the amount of routing, not the capacity of the fibers, which isn't anywhere near full (hear about all that "dark fiber"? New multiplexers? Hmm?)

On the other hand, if you use wireless bandwidth, you're consuming it from a relatively small pool allocated to a cell. There's only so much you can squeeze out of radio bandwidth, which is why it's such a big deal to the cellular networks when the government auction off another slice of spectrum.

Yes, this is false advertising by Verizon. But the real issue is a minority of idiots spoiling the party for everyone else ; you just can't support those usage patterns over current wireless technologies, not for everyone in the cell. They are quite reasonably ticked off with a minority of the customers degrading their service and making them look bad to the rest.

If you want industrial quantities of bandwidth, you should be using a landline, and paying for it.

In an ideal world, marketing would make it very clear what service you were getting, and people would be more respectful of limited common resources, like radio spectrum.

I blew my 5GB cap entirely with work-related data.

I got this for a contract I was working on, and we regularly got dumps of "representative test data" against which we wrote our software integration tests. At least every couple of days, they would push out a 300MB file. Add to that the fact that I was building our automated software build infrastructure using a tool (maven) that downloads dependencies from central repositories (about 80MB for a full pull of all dependencies), and because I was creating the infrastructure I had to blow my system away to test cleanly several times a day.

I bought it for work, and was presumed to have just been file sharing. I had unpleasant conversations with Verizon. Didn't even have an appeal process, nor an opportunity to demonstrate my situation, nor even the right to ask for a manager. I seriously thought about lodging a small claims court claim for damages, as their cutting me off cost me $1500 in demonstrable lost receipts (i'm paid by the hour) in that week while I tried to research an alternative.

I finally went with Cingular on their unlimited data plan and they never had a problem with any limits. I also made sure we researched the policies and they said they didn't give even the slightest care how much I downloaded, or if I used it for "broadband services" like music/movie downloads, 'cause that's what Broadband usually means. Other than switching to a Mac and having a bit of irritation geting an ExpressCard device to support the service initially, I've had no problems with it.

i.

Re:Whoa!

'' I agree that they should not be allowed to market it as 'unlimited' if it's not, but saying that 5GB is too little is just insane. ''

5 GB is too little when you sell it as "unlimited".

Nobody would complain if they advertised and sold it as "limited to 5 GB per month".

Re:Whoa!

Whether or not it's "too little" really isn't the issue as far as I'm concerned...

What's too little for one person would be more than enough for another.

The real issue is how they're marketing it; If there is a 5GB limit, then that is a limit... period - hence it is not "unlimited."

I'm sure that it is easier for them to sell it as "unlimited," just like it would make my life a hell of a lot easier if I tell the IRS that I didn't make any money last year and refuse to let them commence their annual financial colonoscopy.

They need to find another name - calling it unlimited is, basically a straight up lie.

Re:Whoa!

This is NOT for home internet.

Not exactly.

This is for a cellphone.

Again not exactly.

The Verizon plan in question is marketed towards business professionals who are on the road a lot and need an internet connection for their laptop. Ture, the EVDO card you get with the plan uses the cell phone network to transfer your data. However it is meant to be your laptop's internet connection. Your cell phone does not use this plan at all.

I was on the road for a solid month last year and used their little EVDO card. My company is big enough that we have some exclusive deal where we really do get unlimited bandwidth. Just looking at the emails I downloaded in the first week I think I went over the 5GB. In the emails, there were 4 ppt files, 20 doc files, and 1 xls file. That xls file alone totaled just under 2GB (which is the max file size allowed by our server).

So at least in my case 5GB/month would really not work and I'm lucky to work for a big enough client that they can really get the unlimited bandwith.

The card was so good (speed was very close to my crapcast cable modem) and worked really everywhere (except in some very very very rual parts of Wyoming and Montana) that I was thinking about getting one for my personal use. Then I saw the that not only do you pay a fifty-some dollars a month but there is also a per kilobit charge on top of the monthly fee too. Now that I see there is a 5GB limit, I'm really glad I didn't get one.