OpEd: AT&T's "unlimited" data may have limits

Apr 27 2004 - 03:06 PM ET | AT&T Wireless, Data
We reported a few days ago that AT&T Wireless was starting up an unlimited data plan. Both T-Mobile and Cingular have similar plans (though still cheaper than AT&T Wireless'), so the announcement made since. It comes out today from an article over at Smartphone Thoughts that it might not really be unlimited: bq. "AT&T Wireless further reserves the right to move a subscriber from the Mobile Internet Unlimited PDA Plan to the standard $79.99 monthly unlimited Mobile Internet Data Plan, without notice, if the subscriber uses more than 100 megabytes of data in each of two consecutive months." It makes sense there would be some sort of cap (running a file server off the connection should be against the terms of service), but 100MB can go pretty quickly. Why not put the cap in the gigabytes? Or just make it a case by case basis. Calling the service unlimited and then kicking out customers who use a moderate amount of data (3.3 megabytes a day) is quite similar to kicking customers out of an all you can eat buffet for eating to much.