In terms of the specific AT&T Unlimited plan this thread is about:These companies are offering an expensive service and it is not the fault of customers that they refuse to significantly upgrade their infrastructure to handle the traffic demands of today.
It was only available "for sale" during a few months in 2010.
It was only available to people who owned the first-gen iPad, which was a 3G device.
Netflix (and other major pay video streaming services) were NOT on iOS at that time.
As for AT&T offering an expensive service:
2010: $29.99/month
2017: $29.99/month
As for AT&T infrastructure upgrades:
2010: 3G speeds
2017: LTE speeds in many areas approaching 100 Mbps (based on uploaded screenshots here)
And somewhere along the line, someone figured out how you could use this NOT EXPENSIVE service to tether. Now that the infrastructure has been upgraded in many areas to where LTE speeds are capable of supporting multiple devices, people are buying this specific AT&T Unlimited plan on eBay (often times paying over $1000 to get it) and canceling their home Internet.
I've been using US carrier data plans since 2002 when I had to import my first Microsoft smartphone (Orange SPV) from eBay UK. As many complaints as I have had/currently have about wireless carriers, how AT&T has handled this specific Unlimited plan over the last seven years is definitely not one of them.
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