Because the typical person doesn't care for detailed information, and it's faster to just say "unlimited", as in "not ten megabytes". People then took this to mean "download all of your WoW patches with your phone so your home ISP doesn't throttle you" or something.

There are already people who don't pay. AT&T will not care, and in the end, it won't be AT&T who can't get a home loan because of an outstanding debt. Just take your business elsewhere. That's all that matters to corporations. Losing money to competitors.

But sir, your data IS effectively unlimited. Your speed of ACQUISITION is limited. I read the terms of service in detail well before I got a phone with AT&T. All of this was spelled out back in 2007 as a potential eventuality.

...but AT&T would be shutting down all of the call centers for AT&T and T-Mobile in the Philippines upon completion of the merger. Also if you've ever talked to somebody who sounded like they picked up English on a bus ride to their Farsi classes, you probably talked to somebody in the Philippines.

"Anonymous" as a proper noun defies anonymity, so it's no real wonder that these people failed to cover their tracks.

The ONLY smartphone-class phone on AT&T allowed to be set up with unlimited data right out of the gate is the ORIGINAL iPhone. Yes, you can still use it to this day. The only data options for the original iPhone are unlimited.

In an "unrelated" note, if you already have a smartphone-class device with unlimited data, even if you migrated from another carrier that was absorbed into AT&T, you're entitled to keep your unlimited data if you change to another smartphone, be it through upgrading or simply just acquiring another phone through your own means. All iPhones are smartphone-class devices, even if they aren't truly smartphones.

I'll leave it up to the people with more sense than that of a mayonnaise jar to connect the dots.

AT&T's policy for data connect devices (PC cards, USB dongles) is if you lost an unlimited data plan (and you will, because the system is putting EVERYBODY on 5GB automatically), you can cancel that line with no ETF, keep the device, even if you just upgraded.

Of course, not every CSR reads the contract text, so you may need to speak to the right person.

Not the case for phones, though.

Yes. I started service through Wirefly, and the ToS was presented in its entirety. I didn't care for the terms during three halfhearted attempts at signing up, but after I learned everything about AT&T, I decided that I wasn't some ship-jumping consumerist who had to have cell service in the bottom of a flooded silver mine.

I had a home phone and a backup prepaid cell, so eh, nothing to lose.

I've never tried to start service with VZW, T-Mobile, or Sprint, so I don't know what information you get up front with them, but with any US cell provider, you still get a trial period during which, if you decide that the service is no good where you live/work/hang out, you can return the phone, cancel, and depending on how soon into your service you are, pay nothing, or a partial month plus activation fees.

AT&T's policy is if you return by the third day, you only pay for each day of service you had, and your activation fees get refunded.

Anyway, I started service with AT&T after learning how over 90% of all persistent dropped call issues on AT&T involve some model of iPhone.

If it were the network, then it would be every phone, no? So I bought a BlackBerry Curve 8900, and I've had three dropped calls in 19 months.

People frequently drop their iPhone in a mug of beer (HOW?!), or jump in the pool, or some other stupid way of destroying it, then put their SIM card in a basic phone. Then they have a store or customer support remove their unlimited data because oh it's soooo expensive, then expect to get it put back on well after it was announced that the only way to get it back was to never voluntarily remove it. If you already have a smartphone or iPhone unlimited data feature, you are more than welcome to keep it if you upgrade or simply swap phones to another smartphone or iPhone.

If it was removed because someone at Walmart bungled an upgrade or something similar, it can be restored, just don't wait six months to call in about it.

Now, maybe Verizon doesn't know, but some of the heavy abusers of cellular data with iPhones use upwards of 40-50 GB per month. You're not going to use that much data browsing the web, but with a jailbroken iPhone, you can get a 7 to 14 megabit connection shared with a whole network of computers for all of $30 per month... and that is spelled out as abuse of the service in the ToS, which is written in very basic English.

I assume that unlimited data will be revoked again once LTE rolls out, or it will be exclusive to the first iteration of CDMA iPhone.

FYI, the only data services available for the original iPhone are all unlimited data, with varying amounts of SMS message allotments. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.

Don't you see? You're already indoctrinated. The reapers are controlling your every thought! That said, science fiction is at least cautious. For what reason would a machine intelligence seek peaceful interactions with organic life? Do you see bacteria as something worth communicating with?