RESTAURANTS’ offering an “all-you-can-eat” buffet is big business. Small roadside eateries to the fanciest five-star hotels are all part of this dining phenomenon. We patronize these buffets for the variety of food available but, let’s be honest, also because we can eat until our belts burst.
However, the all-you-can-eat (AYCE) tack comes with some rules: no leftovers and no takeout. We accept that because we know these rules make good business sense and without them, the AYCE buffets would quickly disappear.
But we also know that for some mysterious reason, it always takes a very long time to refill the empty shrimp tempura serving or chafing dishes at the Japanese buffets. And why do waiters quickly refill your half-empty water glass but the “bottomless” iced-tea glass sits empty like a forgotten orphan?
The most recent controversy since the expiring prepaid load is the “Fair Use Policy” (FUP) for the unlimited data plans from telecommunications companies or telcos. All these companies have their own FUP that limits the data speed to subscribers who reach a daily or monthly limit of downloaded data.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) got itself involved in the altercation, saying it feels telcos may be guilty of “deceptive marketing practices” by slowing down bandwidth speed of users who breach a data-cap limit. One DOJ official went so far as to say that “unlimited data is like the unlimited rice or buffet concept. Restaurants cannot offer an eat-all-you-can promo and when a customer eats more than the average person, actually stop [the customer] and not honor the commitment.” We disagree and contend that telcos are fulfilling their AYCE commitment but are behaving like the slow shrimp tempura or bottomless iced-tea refills.
Telcos make it very clear that when you subscribe, you agree to their FUP rules, which are just like rules at the buffet table.
The DOJ may have a difficult legal time to claim that a data-speed cap under the FUP violates the “unlimited usage” promotion and service since a subscriber can have unlimited data but at a slower speed.
The telcos contend that since there is only a limited amount of bandwidth available, it is only “fair” to make sure that all subscribers are given equal access without one person using more than their share. That argument is as weak as that of the DOJ. If all the diners want to eat 5 kilos of tempura shrimp, that is part of the AYCE agreement.
The unlimited data plan was a bad idea: consumers are not happy, telcos have lost the public-relations battle and the justice department has more important issues to worry about.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano