Austin,

I disagree with your opinion regarding the data speed limit in the cases of "unlimited plans" on the basis of the technological nature of a mobile telecom network. Please let my try to explain my conclusion through the following arguments.

Before a mobile telecommunications network is deployed, the engineers need to identify the necessary equipment considering the common data and voice traffic of the city, for example, in order to provide an adequate service to the consumers.

Afterwards, the company settles the rates to the consumers on the ground of the investment in the infrastructure, the expecting return of that amount, the interconnection charges and the regulatory regulations, among others.

In that order of ideas, imagine that a mobile telecom company "A" had dimensioned its network considering a “reasonable use of data” by consumers and established a data rate of $20.00. If the “reasonable use of data” changes dramatically, the company has two possibilities to maintain the quality of the service: 1. Invest more in infrastructure to increase the company’s data capacity and therefore, as any other business, increase the rates to avoid economic looses. 2. Limit the speed in the data plans strictly to the abnormal consumers so (i) the company is not required to deploy more infrastructure and (ii) the rest of the consumers are not affected by the rare conduct.

Even though I agree with you that an "unlimited data plan" is supposed to provide unlimited data service, it is not true in the reality because the rate of that particular service is created by diverse aspects and if one of that aspects changes in a considerable way, it is presumed the rate is going to change in the same proportion as well or that the company needs to stop that change immediately.

A good way to avoid conflicts with the consumers is that the mobile telecom companies inform their consumers about the correct usage of the network and for instance, send text messages to the consumers that are going to exceed the corresponding normal use of the service and prevent the reduction of the data speed.

-- DiegodelaPuente - 22 Sep 2011