Your unlimited experience is about to hit a roadblock.

Sometimes being popular isn’t the best thing in the world.

When Virgin Mobile introduced an unlimited, prepaid wireless broadband plan in August, it created a small media frenzy and shocked an industry that assumed usage-capped wireless broadband was the only way to survive the incredible demand for wireless data.

The company’s introduction of a $40 monthly unlimited-use broadband plan, with no term contract and month-to-month billing was a dream come true for casual vacationers and business travelers who don’t need a two year contract for pricey broadband-on-the-go from one of the major carriers.

When the company unveiled the unlimited broadband plan, as Stop the Cap! reported last summer, the demand was so great it brought the company’s network to its knees.  The prepaid provider, a division of Sprint, has struggled ever since to keep up with customer demand.  This week they announced they were throwing in the towel, quietly notifying would-be customers in the fine print of Radio Shack ads effective with all renewals after Feb. 15, a monthly limit of 5GB would be enforced on its Broadband2Go service.  Several of our readers noticed, including Greg, Sam, Jenny, and others.

“Customers who use BB2Go for typical email, internet surfing and reasonable downloading will likely not be impacted/notice any difference,” Virgin Mobile’s Corinne Nosal told PC Magazine by email.

But those who manage to consume just over 200MB daily will notice when the network speed throttle kicks in for those who “use too much.”  Speeds will be slashed to as low as 256kbps.  If you can’t live with that speed, you can pony up an additional $40 to “renew your account” (even if your month isn’t up yet) and the speed throttle will be removed, until you hit 5GB of usage again.

“So much for Virgin Mobile — 5GB means the service is no better or worse than the other players in the market, and considering the problems Virgin has had with reliable service, I’ll probably go back to using Cricket,” writes our Buffalo reader Lance.

Virgin Mobile relies on Sprint’s 3G network which already gets quite a workout from existing Sprint customers, as well as those using Clearwire (and several “private label” wireless broadband services).  Cricket owns and manages their own network, exclusively for the use of its own customers.

“Cricket will also throttle you if you hit 5GB, but you rarely run into overwhelmed cell tower sites like you do with Sprint’s network,” Lance says.

PC Magazine’s Sascha Segan notes the new usage limits makes using Virgin Mobile broadband a difficult proposition if you love multimedia:

The problem comes if you like video or downloads. Streaming Netflix at 1000kbps (if you can get that speed on the Virgin/Sprint 3G network), you use up about 450MB per hour. Some Windows updates can be up to 200MB alone. Want a TV show from your favorite legal downloading Web site? That’ll be 350MB, thanks.

While there are some small wireless ISPs in some parts of the country, Virgin’s abandonment of truly unlimited high-speed data leaves Sprint 4G/Clear as the only remaining major player willing to take on the wired-Internet oligopoly with an unlimited high-speed, wireless solution.

Some AT&T customers who buy bundled packages of services including landlines, cellular and satellite television have been running into a problem recently: AT&T keeps “losing” part of their monthly payments.

KOVR-TV’s consumer reporter Kurtis Ming shared the story of Karen and Darrell Smith.  The Sacramento area residents were AT&T landline, cell phone, and satellite TV customers for years, faithfully paying their monthly bill on time with no problems until the family decided to cut the cord on their landline service.

Darrell says he was told it would be no problem.  “She did say that once we cancel the landline then we wouldn’t be eligible for the bundle anymore, but we’ll just get a bill for it and just pay that.”

The Smiths say they paid their AT&T bills online in September, and October.  But then they received past due notices from both DISH Network and AT&T.  So what happened to the payments they have proof they paid?

“They said they had no way of knowing where the money went,” says Darrell.  “Once it comes in it’s gone,” says Karen.

The Smiths say the billing issue didn’t seem to surprise AT&T.

“He said, ‘All you had to tell me was that you were having trouble with the bundled billing department because everybody in this company knows that money gets lost there all the time,’” says Karen.

Thus began several months of ongoing billing nightmares for the family, including familiar “buck-passing” between DISH, who blamed AT&T for the billing errors, and AT&T, whose representatives eventually zeroed out their balance, if only to get the Smith family out of their collective hair.

After AT&T shut off their cell phone service because of “past due” bills, the family cringed every time a new bill arrived, wondering what new problems would be coming next.

“How can a large company like this operate with such disjointed departments and such a lack of ability to communicate?  She said that they’re working to improve that,” Karen tells the Sacramento CBS station.

After four months of nightmares, the family called the TV station hoping their consumer reporter could penetrate AT&T’s billing department and get the billing fixed once and for all.

Steven Smith (probably no relation), an AT&T representative, sent the station an official explanation that seemed to blame it all on the Smith family:

Ming

[…] Three revised final bills were generated due to payments made on the account. The first final bill separated the combined Mobility and DISH accounts. It appears the consumer did not understand that separate bills would be rendered from DISH and AT&T Mobility after the landline disconnection and the customer evidently did not notify their financial institution of the account changes for automatic payments….

Another AT&T representative suggested it was inappropriate for a customer service agent to state the company was having billing problems.

Ming was happy to report AT&T appears to have fixed the problem, at least for one family.

AT&T customers should always scrutinize their bills to make sure they are accurate.  If errors are found, contact the company as soon as possible.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KOVR Sacramento ATT Losing Money 1-4-11.mp4[/flv]

KOVR-TV Sacramento’s consumer report Kevin Ming describes the story of one family’s ongoing billing problems with AT&T.  (3 minutes)

Life's for sharing... just not on our wireless network.

British T-Mobile wireless broadband users got — how shall we put it — an “abrupt” and uncharacteristically rude notice about a change in the company’s “Fair Use” policy that takes effect in February (underlining ours):

Browsing means looking at websites and checking email, but not watching videos, downloading files or playing games. We’ve got a fair use policy but ours means that you’ll always be able to browse the internet, it’s only when you go over the fair use amount that you won’t be able to download, stream and watch video clips.

So what’s changing? – From 1st February 2011 we will be aligning our fair use policies so our mobile internet service will have fair use of 500MB.

What does this mean? – We’ll always let you email and browse the internet and you’ll never pay more than you agree to. We do have a fair use policy but ours is there to make sure we deliver the best service possible to all our customers.  This means that you’ll always be able to browse the internet.

So remember our Mobile Broadband and internet on your phone service is best used for browsing which means looking at your favorite websites like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, BBC News and more, checking your email and looking for information, but not watching videos or downloading files.

If you want to download, stream and watch video clips, save that stuff for your home broadband.

T-Mobile's warning to customers to avoid watching videos on their network flies in the face of their own smartphone promotions.

As our regular reader “Jr” observes, broadband carriers want customers to use their broadband connections to browse web pages and read e-mail — and little else.  Rarely has a carrier come right out and said it, though.

Not only has T-Mobile “aligned” their fair use policies to deliver you less service (down from 1-3GB per month), but they’ve kept the same high price.  T-Mobile is the same company that routinely markets smartphones and other multimedia-equipped handsets specifically for the services they don’t want you to use on their network.

T-Mobile illustrates once again how Internet Overcharging schemes really work:

1. They implement a usage cap and suggest it is “generous” and that the majority of customers will never come close to hitting it;
2. They gradually reduce the usage allowance when revenue needs eclipse the needs of customers;
3. They still claim the new, lower limit is still “generous.”
4. They suggest almost nobody is likely going to hit the limit, no matter what it is.

Of course, had T-Mobile customers really come nowhere near the old limits, what problem was resolved lowering it?  T-Mobile claims the vast majority of customers don’t exceed 200MB of usage per month, an exceptionally low amount in comparison to other carriers.

The telecoms regulator Ofcom told ZDNet UK on Monday that, “if consumers are being notified of a change likely to cause them material detriment, the provider must give the customer one month’s notice of the change, and at the same time they must also inform the customer of their right to terminate their contract without penalty if the proposed change is not acceptable to the customer”.

As the changes take effect from 1 February, T-Mobile has given less than one month’s notice.

“We encourage unhappy consumers to speak with their provider about their concerns,” Ofcom’s spokesperson said. “If the problem relates to a particular term or condition that you feel is unfair, then you can log your complaint with Ofcom. We monitor complaints about the behaviour of communications providers and if there is a high volume of complaints about a particular issue, we do investigate and take action as required.”

(Thanks to our reader “PreventCAPS” for sharing the story with us.)

It’s official.  Verizon Wireless will welcome Apple’s iPhone to its network next month, but in a glaring omission, company officials refused to discuss data pricing for the all-important data plans that will power the wildly popular smartphone.

The official announcement of the iPhone on Verizon came late this morning in New York at a press event hosted by Verizon’s president Lowell McAdam.  Joining him was Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer. Neither Steve Jobs or Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg were on hand for the event.

“Late in 2010 we started offering the Apple iPad and today we are extremely gratified to announce that the iPhone 4 will be available early next month,” MacAdam said. “Our relationship with Apple has developed over the last two years. Back in 2008 we started talking about bringing the iPhone to a CDMA network, and we spent a year testing.”

“All of Apple is very excited to bring the iPhone to Verizon’s customers,” added Cook.

The new phone will be available for pre-orders, exclusively for existing Verizon Wireless customers Feb. 3.  A week later, anyone can reserve the Verizon iPhone at Verizon Wireless or Apple stores, or online.  The new phones will cost $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model with a new two year contract.  The phones will work on Verizon’s 3G network, but not on their new LTE/4G network.

Verizon is so confident its network can handle the traffic, it is bundling, for free, a mobile hotspot with the phone that will allow up to five devices to share the iPhone’s 3G connection over Wi-Fi.  That means you can use a laptop or home computer with a wireless card and connect to Verizon’s 3G wireless broadband service without any additional equipment.

But Verizon’s press event left some questions unanswered, starting with whether the company would sell unlimited data plans to accompany the phone.

“We talked about the device pricing, but we’re not going to talk about the pricing for the network for that connectivity,” Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said. “We’ll have announcements in the future.”

Another downside: the Verizon iPhone will not be able to multitask.  If you make or receive calls on your phone, your data connection is suspended for the length of the call.  This is common on CDMA cellular networks, and it currently affects other smartphones used on Verizon’s network as well.

As far as Apple sees it, that isn’t much of a problem so long as the phone works on Verizon’s network.

“I can tell you that the number one question I’ve gotten is when will the iPhone work on Verizon,” said Cook. “I couldn’t be happier to tell people that. They will make those sorts of trade-offs.”

[flv width=”576″ height=”344″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/AP Verizon to Start Selling iPhone Early Feb 1-11-11.flv[/flv]

Lowell McAdam makes the official announcement.  (2 minutes)

No significant expansion for FiOS in 2011, say company officials.

A Verizon spokesman has confirmed Verizon will not be expanding its FiOS fiber to the home service into new areas in 2011, except in those communities where the company already signed franchise agreements.

It’s the second year of Verizon’s hold on fiber expansion, instituted because of objections by Wall Street, a difficult economy, and a less optimistic view by Verizon’s new management that fiber has the capacity to quickly return on investment.

For upstate New York, the end-effect of Verizon’s decision is an odd patchwork of partially-built FiOS-capable communities, mostly in suburbs amenable to Verizon’s franchise terms. Some suburbs have access to FiOS broadband and phone service, but not television.  Others have access to all three services, while many other areas have nothing but Verizon’s ordinary copper phone lines.

“If you are big on fiber, there are some outlying towns with real estate agents that list whether or not their properties have Verizon FiOS, and whether that includes television service,” says Lysander, N.Y. resident Jeff, who reads Stop the Cap! “Our town was just glad Verizon picked us for upgrades and we didn’t ask too much of the phone company, quickly agreeing to a TV franchise agreement.”

But residents in the city of Syracuse are less happy — they won’t get competitive video from Verizon and are stuck with a Time Warner Cable wired monopoly because the city “dragged its feet” on franchise negotiations.

“When it comes to bigger cities, they see Verizon’s knock on the door as an opportunity to cash in on freebies from the phone company, like upgrading their video studios for government access channels, paying substantial franchise fees, and agreeing to carry channels the city government wants on Verizon’s cable system,” Jeff says.  “When the first cable systems came to town, it was the same story; some communities dragged their feet for years trying to extract more.”

Of course, cities don’t have to wait for Verizon to take care of their growing broadband needs.  They can build their own fiber networks and deliver world class service themselves, or open the new networks up to private competitors to deliver bigger bang for your broadband buck.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSYR Syracuse FiOS availability not planned for Syracuse during 2011 1-6-11.flv[/flv]

WSYR-TV in Syracuse reports it will be a long wait for many in central New York waiting for fiber to the home television service. (Warning: Loud Volume) (1 minute)