For years, both landline and wireless carriers have been marketing their broadband services as unlimited, then burying some very real limits deep in their usage agreement fine print. Some companies stopped this only after users spent years complaining, like when Comcast used to pretend their service didn't have any limits. In other cases it required government intervention, like when NY's Attorney General busted Verizon Wireless for falsely advertising their EVDO service as unlimited, then sending users letters threatening disconnection for using too much bandwidth.

That's why it's surprising to see carriers still trying to get away with it (and succeeding). During their recent launch of the much ballyhooed HTC G1, T-Mobile's advertising proclaimed that users get "unlimited web access." We were the first to notice that buried in the fine print was the fact that users who consumed more than 1GB per month could find their service throttled back to 50kbps or less.

After we approached T-Mobile with the contradiction, the company pulled the language from their terms of service -- not wanting to ruin the PR launch party for their new, next-gen broadband-driven phone. According to T-Mobile, this was only a soft cap they had no plans on enforcing. Several months later the language quietly returned, this time with a much more generous 10GB monthly cap T-Mobile plans to employ for all smart phones.