I’m hearing a lot of noise lately about the concept of Limits, or rather its opposite, UnLimits. Take net neutrality, for which every geek decided to laugh at the “internet is a bunch of tubes” analogy, yet that seems to be an analogy that strangely makes sense in explaining the concept of limits.

Then there’s the concept of “unlimited” for data-plans, for which O2 just announced its version for the iPhone, but where unlimited actually means up to 1400 pages or 35 mb per day. And then there is the unlimited data-flow that Media 2.0 publishing has resulted in, not realising, maybe, that our brains are limited in processing that waterfall. And historically, the best analogy could perhaps be made with crude oil, which was at some point seen as “unlimited,” and which I’m sure lead to the drama we are witnessing today.

There is no such thing as “unlimited.” Net neutrality wants to assume that everyone uses the web equally and thus should pay equally, and the underlying assumption is that whatever we throw at the net, it will not go under. However, with data-intensive services like YouTube, and even more so, P2P-applications, this clearly does not compare to Joe Schmoe browsing his daily Netvibes. I don’t think I need to go into data-plans as those is based on the same principles, nor the ‘noise of web 2.0,’ as Kari has dealt with that pretty well. Nor do I even need to go into the oil-crisis, I hope.

But what I believe people are really protesting against, is not that O2 can’t offer unlimited services. What they protest against is that O2 calls it “unlimited,” yet writes in small print “as long as it’s fair use.” What this is, is a case of bad PR.

Let’s take another example, e-mail. Back when Google decided to offer 1 gig to everyone for free, it was a revolution. Yet pretty soon others came on board, and people started filling up their mail-boxes. Gmail could have responded by implementing “unlimited” storage, yet with the way people use local storage today, that would’ve not been too bright. Instead, they announced a formula for growing storage-space on Gmail and I’m happy to report that I haven’t come close to reaching it today.

What Google did was good PR. They identified the problem, saw how people typically consumed their services, and came up with a reasonable response to that problem. What other “unlimited” providers should do is the same. They should get away from promoting the concept of no limits, as there are always limits. It’s the way our universe works. They should look at how people consume their services and impose limits in an appropriate and customer-friendly way. They should say: “Hey, we understand that this is a problem, and you can believe that we’ll do our very best to solve it… when the technology and the economics catch up!”

Now, I get why mobile operators and net-providers continue to offer “unlimited” plans. It’s the same reason why some businesses always try to profile themselves as the cheapest or the best. It’s because they are operating in a fiercely competitive market, and they feel they need to do these (stupid) actions to keep up with others who are engaging in the very same thing.

But they are turning themselves into faceless commodities in the eyes of consumers, who are being trained by these corporations, by our capitalist system perhaps, to always look for the next-best, the next-cheapest, or the next less-limited thing. And all that does is open the market for someone else to come in, a Google or an Apple, a company with an identity, with a face, and do something completely unnatural to these companies. Not lie, but tell it like it is:

There’s no such thing as “unlimited.”

Like

Unlike

Related posts:

1. The Poor Man’s Business Model—How Out-of-the-Box thinking can generate tremendous value for customers
2. "Platform as a Service" by SalesForce
3. 7 reasons why I'm stopping using Last.fm for music & 4 reasons why I'm starting to use Drop.io + Facebook Connect
4. Web 2.0: what's next ?
5. iPhone's app strategy and its implications for other smart phones