Why Unlimited is Bad
Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 10:08AM Unlimited is bad. For everyone. Full stop.
In 1997, unlimited dial-up internet was the marketing trend du jour. It took less than 2 months for the dregs of society to ruin it for the rest of us. Dregs, you say? That’s a terribly harsh description. No - folks figured out that if you could keep your modem connected 24 by 7, you could run a web server, share your unlimited internet connection with all your friends (rent your internet connection, even), and generally take advantage of unlimited usage. The whole purpose of *unlimited* is to reduce the customer’s fear that they might exceed their maximum static plan in the course of reasonable and normal usage. It’s “not” to give someone carte blanche to take advantage and exploit the service and the service provider. There’s a reason why unlimited dial-up service was $19.95/month, but dedicated, nailed up, always on service was over $500/month ;-)
It seems that marketing folks never learn from their mistakes. Unlimited is bad. Dregs will always try and exploit unlimited offerings with the argument of “unlimited is unlimited - I want to use it all!!!”
It’s hit the cable internet folks, the wireless folks… heck, even the food industry. We are, on average, a species that is unable to control ourselves when it comes to unlimited :-)
Someday, marketing departments will realize we aren’t wired to be reasonable.
