Eh, I'd argue it's still a business decision. It's still possible to find "true unlimited" data plans with some companies. I've got one with Cricket Wireless.
They do mess with your data connection though[0]. For instance, they automatically downgrade video and appear to compress images "on your behalf"[0] regardless of what plan you're on.
I'm somewhat dubious on the idea that their Cricket More plan is actually unlimited, but I'm pressed for time and can't read their more dense terms of service around the plan, but I'm assuming they have a congestion clause buried in there, despite what the linked FAQ claims
I know how they do that with video, but how do they extra compress images when most traffic is https?
It works with video because all video sites automatically adjust quality based on throughput so they just figure out when you’re streaming video and then throttle. But most websites don’t automatically change image quality based on throughput and pages load more quickly and are harder to shape…
No idea, however from the linked page, they say they do:
>Cricket compresses all images that are embedded in web pages in either of two industry standard formats (JPEG and GIF), regardless of the source or content of the web page or the application used to view it. Cricket strives to compress web page images to provide a high quality user experience where the average consumer should not notice a difference between the source image and the compressed image.
The only way is if there’s some cooperation between the site and ISP where the site knows to apply extra compression for the ISPs address range. Otherwise I don’t see how that could work (and also trivially bypassed when on VPN or even something like Apple Private Relay although the latter may still tunnel through some kind of mobile ISP info - not sure)
It's unlimited but throttled during peak usage so that the primary network customers get priority. I think cricket wireless is an MNVO, see the drawbacks of an MNVO here:
