AT&T Throttling Unlimited Plans after 2GB Data Use

That is why I made as much noise as possible about the (IMO) abusive throttling practices of my previous ISP. Don't take this cr*p lying down, call them and tell them youre unhappy, ask them to disable it on your connection (they won't) and when they refuse, demand to speak to the supervisor. Rinse and repeat. Make it cost more to throttle than it does not to.

Unlocking does not void your warrantee. I've had many unlocked iPhones replaced under warrantee. That said, if you brick it while unlocking (and the 4S tools are very new), you won't be covered.

As recently as 18 months ago, I routinely got solid customer service from AT&T. While the wireless service itself was really sketchy in NY and SF, any account problems were handled with competence and care.

Given the incredible blowback they'd received from their poor iPhone support, I always felt compelled to tell the people I ended up talking to that they were doing great jobs, and that in spite of what was said in the press about them not having their act together, I found them to be on their game, and that I really appreciated the effort they were making.

Then something changed. Intelligence and responsiveness went off a cliff. On the occasions I did have to call I ended up so deeply infuriated that I'd find myself becoming angry BEFORE having to call again - even months later. It almost seemed that they'd adopted a posture of calculated incompetence, specifically designed discourage people from calling them.

Within a year (and after a series of truly appalling encounters) I'd gone from publicly defending them to hating them with an intensity bordering on incandescent. Were their service any less vital to my life in general, perhaps I'd feel more sanguine. But given the central importance of wireless connectivity, a "service" relationship costing north of $100 per month and delivering nothing by dropped calls and furious anger quickly made it to the top of of my dump-judiciously list.

I wish ISPs would just give up on the whole "Unlimited" concept. Clearly it's not practical for them to offer truly unlimited service, so let's just cut the bullshit and go to usage-based billing.

Unfortunately, the tech community hates usage-based billing about as much as they hate throttling. Baffles me as to why.

I think we need to make it illegal to advertise "unlimited" without it actually being unlimited. I would have thought that existing truth-in-advertising laws would cover this, but apparently they don't.

Make it illegal to promise what you never intend to deliver and this whole problem goes away. If unlimited is practical to offer, then it will be offered. If unlimited is not practical, then ISPs will no longer be allowed to pretend that it is, and will be encouraged to make the limitations of their offers obvious up-front instead of using shady nonsense like this.

If you don't mind me asking, why are T-Mo/Sprint/US Cellular/etc not options for you?