Gone are the days when you could go into a store and get an unlimited data plan. Even though it is advertised as unlimited, that is seldom the case anymore. You got cable companies such as AT&T and Comcast that have caps of 150GB and 250GB a month respectively among others. Some companies will charge you a fee but others will deny service after a repeat offense. These caps are probably in place to prevent streaming subscribers to services such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime to hog all the bandwidth.
A few years ago it was mostly believed that if a consumer used a lot of bandwidth, he or she was using bittorrent and downloading illegal music and movies. This is not the case anymore, Netflix alone accounts for more traffic than bittorrent. Even Comcast was caught sniffing your data to find out if you were using bittorrent to then throttle and slow down you data.
Some years have passed, and now with smart phones being nearly ubiquitous users hogging the data is still a problem. Verizon will offer you 4GB of unlimited data, AT&T has similar caps and they will charge you extra if you go over. T-Mobile will not charge you extra but they will slow down your data after your allowance. Hours of using Music and Movie apps such as Pandora and YouTube will quickly deplete your data allowances. C-Spire, previously known as Cellular South, will even bill you separately for streaming data. Many of these companies will also charge you extra fees for tethering which is the process of connecting you phone to a computer and use the data you already paid for.
Now, can you imagine if the people in charge of these companies were in charge of the utilities companies? The electric company would charge you a fee for every major appliance in the house. They will maybe bundle your fridge, washer, and drier but you will have to pay extra for the dishwasher and A/C units. Something like three appliances included on your plan. Showering and bathing take too much water, your plan would only include 30 showers a month, and you could have family plan for your family to shower. It will probably become illegal to take showers together then. If you used up your water allowance, you might get no water and have to go to work smelly which might get you fired! You will also need to get unlimited A/C plan and if you go over, your A/C will be 5 degrees cooler or hotter depending on the season. You would have to pay for the amount of electric outlets and water outlets. Hot water showering package will be needed to have a warm shower.
If most of these things sound ridiculous it is because they are. These ISP and cell phone companies have insulted our intelligence long enough. For the country of the free and the land of the brave we sure have no option to pick our utilities or internet providers all the same. Only option is to move to another place and settle for some other monopoly in the area. So much for free market. We do have some options when picking cell phones providers but if you have been paying attention it’s probably not for long.