[asterisk-biz] What do you mean by "unlimited", was: Unlimited DID

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 15:27 -0400, Richard Siddall wrote:
> This problem is not limited to VoIP, of course.  It was (and is) 
> standard practice among dial-up ISPs.  Yahoo! is now offering "unlimited 
> web hosting" with limits.  If it isn't already a problem among broadband 
> providers, it will be as the oversubscription levels they need to 
> maintain their pricing becomes unmaintainable as more people watch more 
> video over the internet.  Broadband providers are certainly making 
> noises about applying usage caps.
> 

I agree that its not limited to voip, although in the particular
instance that started this it was someone talking about voip.  In europe
its very common to have broadband have "unlimited" as part of the
advertising and a "fair use" clause in the contract saying that
unlimited means "with limits".  One provider I saw used unlimited to
advertise a multimegabit link with a 2GB monthly transfer limit.  My
math showed that you could hit that limit in less than a day at the
advertised speed.



> The real question is how you fight it.  I suspect most customers would 
> take a plan claiming to be unlimited against one that had generous 
> limits they would never reach in practice.

I bet most customers would, especially since figuring out if they would
ever meet the limits would take math and its been my experience that is
a sure way to get people to ignore something outright.  This is the very
reason so many advertise as unlimited.  If you offered someone a plan
similar to vonage but told them that they had 90,000 minutes per month,
my guess is that many would retort "but vonage is unlimited!" not even
bothering to do the math that 90k minutes on 2 channels exceeds every
months total number of minutes (31 days would be 89,280 minutes).  

I suggested "truth in advertising" laws be applied or amended so they
could apply a few years ago when I first started talking about this.
*Technically* they are being truthful, they put a little * next to
unlimited and then define what that means elsewhere, in the fine print,
so its all legal but its not honest in my opinion.


-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
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