My understanding is that it's federal law that all cell phone networks must route 911 calls from compatible cell phones regardless of service status.

You'd have to rip the GPS chip out, for example, to actually disable location monitoring.

(Tin foil hat on) And even then, they can still triangulate your location from the cell phone towers. Also, it's possible in many cases to get your location from comparing the WiFi access points that your phone sees to a database compiled by wardriving or from users using something along the lines of http://opensignal.com/. (Tin foil hat off)

Why do you think the data allowances are so low, while believing the network capacity to be so great?

All the analysis I've seen says that it's nothing but a cash grab. No more, no less.

I did the math, and in an area where Verizon is only deploying on the 22 MHz they have in the C block, it comes to 152.1 T1s per cell site, not counting voice , SMS, and overhead. They probably could cut back on the data backhaul and just deliver slow data speeds, but I can't imagine over a hundred T1s being more feasible than some sort of fiber-based solution.

1) Intrusive advertising. I can live with banner ads, or interstitial ads between levels when they're loading. On the other hand, not so OK with ads randomly popping up between screens for no particular reason *cough*GoSMSPro*cough*
2) Excessive in-app purchasing.
3) Doesn't meet my needs. Could be an important missing feature, it might just not work at all
4) No longer need it.

I've seen some pretty suspicious (as in higher than the speed of the connection that you're paying for) numbers come out of the speedtest app.

You can set that in the app, the default setting is no more than 100 MB/month.

No offense, but I have to call BS on this:

These towers typically only have a T1 backhaul.

Since T1s are a little bit over 1.5 mbps symmetrical, (1.54 mbps IIRC) this result: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BZJiaGpCcAAonC9.png:large seems to disagree with your statement. If I understand Verizon's network setup correctly, I'd guess that they're using at least something like a OC-3c.
Now, if you'll excuse me for a second, a bit of a related rant.
The only problems with my experience with mobile internet are that:
a) Verizon's LTE network is nowhere near as fast as that result in some places where I regularly use my phone.
and
b) By my calculations. I could blow through my 2 GB data allowance in under 36 minutes just by maxing out my down speed.

What the hell is a glass fish?