Unlimited data! You make it sound so easy.

I hope you’re still joking.

Data caps are to an extent “fake”, in that telcos’ costs aren’t measured in how many bytes their customers download/upload. Telcos’ costs come from renting bandwidth from tier 1 and tier 2 ISPs. This bandwidth is constant.

And for popular websites, they will cache lots of content on their own network or peer directly with data centers so they don’t have to pay for the bandwidth there. The routers will continue routing and the switches will continue switching whether you download 5GBs or 5TBs.

One more way to understand how much of a scam mobile data caps are, is that the same ISP will sell you unlimited fiber plans even though essentially your traffic goes through the same backbone.

Data caps may help lessen congestion on their cell towers, but they don’t need to be as low as they are today.

It was seemingly easy for every cell provider to give it to every teenager in america just 10 years ago. What is a few marginalized adults in 2026?