My niece is grandfathered in on att's "unlimited" data for the iPhone.

She received notice of being in the top 5% of data users and was at risk of being throttled unless she self moderated.

Her usage for the month was 2.7GB.

Compare unlimited's price of $30/mo vs. data pro service of $30 for the first 3GB.

"Unlimited" must be a new marketing term... I was going to go for T-Mobile's "unlimited" plan until I found out that it's more limited than AT&T.

Definitely not new, and it's always been used by the wireless carriers to describe something that was not actually unlimited.

I haven't checked, but does anyone know how limited Sprint's "unlimited" plan is? I get the sense that it's the least limited unlimited.

AT&T is trying everything they can to kill off the last of the unlimited iPhone users. Someone who kept getting the "top 5% users" message finally talked to an AT&T rep who had some knowledge of the setup. It's not 5% nationwide, it's 5% in some arbitrarily defined area you are in. This leads to users who are in less populated areas seeing these messages even though their local network has plenty of bandwidth, and their "high end" use is even below the tiered plans. All of that doesn't matter, they still target the 5% in that area and keep lowering the ceiling.

How are these companies in the US even allowed to advertise "unlimited" when clearly the plans are not?

I suppose it's because they are unlimited, in a way.... at least T-mobile's version never fully stops one from getting data, it just throttles you down to near nothing...

Which sure sounds limiting to me...

Exactly. Throttling at any point is a limit. I think it's a fault in their marketing department. I would let them pass, grammatically, if they said "you get unlimited data." But they're taking that and saying the plan its self is unlimited, and that's clearly not the case. It's semantics, I suppose.

Sadly, there's no way to punish a company for bad grammar. Otherwise I'd want to go after corporations like Chicken Out Rotisserie for their slogan "Eat Good."

Grammar is no excuse and the statement they're making is at the very least misleading. Whether they're limiting the quantity, the speed or anything else, what they are offering clearly has limits.

I've heard of companies getting taken to court and ordered to change branding, slogans, advertising, etc. for far less. Usually however the companies get taken to court be competitors for making sweeping BS statements in advertising. Like "best" "most" "fastest" etc.

I suppose the amount you owe at the end of the month may not have limits. Maybe that's what they mean.

Unlimited, as it currently works, would be a good plan for a teen. No surprises on the bill.