<story><title>The Man with the Golden Airline Ticket</title><url>https://narratively.com/the-man-with-the-golden-airline-ticket/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>serpix</author><text>We have unlimited, uncapped 4G plans in Finland and probably most of Europe does.</text></item><item><author>171243</author><text>I once had a superpower like this. I bought the Verizon Unlimited 4G internet plan before throttling or data caps were a thing in roughly 2010.&lt;p&gt;I had the Droid Razr Maxx and later Samsung Galaxy S5 with 1 5 dollar app that turned my phone into a hotspot (FoxFi) that the Verizon could neither detect, prevent, or charge extra for. I used 200+ GB&amp;#x27;s of blazing fast internet over the air for something like $50 a month for about 5 years.&lt;p&gt;It was an insanely good deal. The only rules were I was not allowed to make any modifications to the plan because it was taken off the market and I was considered &amp;quot;grandfathered&amp;quot; in. The &amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot; plans of today are nothing like that plan was. They have data caps, are throttled, and traffic get reprioritized.&lt;p&gt;It was just as much a part of me as this ticket was for this gentleman (well not quite that much, but you get the point). Eventually Verizon just flat out upped the price to over $100 per month and it became unsustainable. Glorious while it lasted, sorely missed.</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s an interesting angle here of what a &amp;quot;superpower&amp;quot; does to someone&amp;#x27;s psychology. He internalized the ability to do these extraordinary things - including using the phone staff as a therapist line - as such a part of his identity, that he was devastated by having to live normally again. It&amp;#x27;s hard for myself to imagine myself getting to the point where I think I&amp;#x27;m that special, but I&amp;#x27;m not so naive to think that if I had a bunch of money and&amp;#x2F;or privilege for decades it couldn&amp;#x27;t happen to me too.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “So in my incoherent state,” he writes, “I would book a seat for Dan or Laurie just imagining that they might come. I was making reservations and didn’t know whether I was even going. Here is why. I was up and [alone] in my home office and bored. So I would call the 800 number for the AAirpass desk and talk to the agent about the news or the weather or about Paris or little London. Then, after an hour of nothing they had to hang up. So I would make a reservation and ask them to fax it to me. Then the next day I would take the fax and cancel the reservation. I needed someone to talk to at midnight. The 800 number was open.”&lt;p&gt;Even his son says up front that he doesn&amp;#x27;t see what his dad was doing as such a sensational, extraordinary thing, that that description &amp;quot;doesn’t quite land,&amp;quot; which is astonishing too.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mgoetzke</author><text>well, Germany at least doesn&amp;#x27;t as far as I know. 20GB Telekom LTE at ~80EUR&amp;#x2F;m, after that it is throttled. They do offer an unlimited, while network neutrality bending, youtube&amp;#x2F;netflix unlimited streaming option.&lt;p&gt;PS: I stand corrected. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.telekom.de&amp;#x2F;unterwegs&amp;#x2F;tarife-und-optionen&amp;#x2F;smartphone-tarife&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.telekom.de&amp;#x2F;unterwegs&amp;#x2F;tarife-und-optionen&amp;#x2F;smartph...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;They do offer them now</text></comment>
<story><title>The Man with the Golden Airline Ticket</title><url>https://narratively.com/the-man-with-the-golden-airline-ticket/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>serpix</author><text>We have unlimited, uncapped 4G plans in Finland and probably most of Europe does.</text></item><item><author>171243</author><text>I once had a superpower like this. I bought the Verizon Unlimited 4G internet plan before throttling or data caps were a thing in roughly 2010.&lt;p&gt;I had the Droid Razr Maxx and later Samsung Galaxy S5 with 1 5 dollar app that turned my phone into a hotspot (FoxFi) that the Verizon could neither detect, prevent, or charge extra for. I used 200+ GB&amp;#x27;s of blazing fast internet over the air for something like $50 a month for about 5 years.&lt;p&gt;It was an insanely good deal. The only rules were I was not allowed to make any modifications to the plan because it was taken off the market and I was considered &amp;quot;grandfathered&amp;quot; in. The &amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot; plans of today are nothing like that plan was. They have data caps, are throttled, and traffic get reprioritized.&lt;p&gt;It was just as much a part of me as this ticket was for this gentleman (well not quite that much, but you get the point). Eventually Verizon just flat out upped the price to over $100 per month and it became unsustainable. Glorious while it lasted, sorely missed.</text></item><item><author>majormajor</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s an interesting angle here of what a &amp;quot;superpower&amp;quot; does to someone&amp;#x27;s psychology. He internalized the ability to do these extraordinary things - including using the phone staff as a therapist line - as such a part of his identity, that he was devastated by having to live normally again. It&amp;#x27;s hard for myself to imagine myself getting to the point where I think I&amp;#x27;m that special, but I&amp;#x27;m not so naive to think that if I had a bunch of money and&amp;#x2F;or privilege for decades it couldn&amp;#x27;t happen to me too.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “So in my incoherent state,” he writes, “I would book a seat for Dan or Laurie just imagining that they might come. I was making reservations and didn’t know whether I was even going. Here is why. I was up and [alone] in my home office and bored. So I would call the 800 number for the AAirpass desk and talk to the agent about the news or the weather or about Paris or little London. Then, after an hour of nothing they had to hang up. So I would make a reservation and ask them to fax it to me. Then the next day I would take the fax and cancel the reservation. I needed someone to talk to at midnight. The 800 number was open.”&lt;p&gt;Even his son says up front that he doesn&amp;#x27;t see what his dad was doing as such a sensational, extraordinary thing, that that description &amp;quot;doesn’t quite land,&amp;quot; which is astonishing too.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>philjohn</author><text>Same in the UK ... Three UK does an unlimited sim-only plan for £20 a month which includes overseas roaming, including the US (but not Canada), albeit you&amp;#x27;re limited to 12GB a month when overseas, which is still a great deal.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t listen to DAB radio anymore in my car as it&amp;#x27;s mono and sounds awful, I use the various radio station apps and have far fewer drop outs than with DAB to boot in addition to the far greater audio quality.&lt;p&gt;Looking at my usage for the last month I&amp;#x27;ve used well over 50GB.&lt;p&gt;Home broadband tends to be unlimited as well, I&amp;#x27;m on a 384Mbps down 37Mbps up cable connection and regularly transfer 2TB+ in a month when working from home, and nary a peep from my provider.</text></comment>