The terms are not bullshit. The network does not have the capacity to service everyone at their maximum last-mile data rate, all the time. Bandwidth is a large, but finite resource. There are several ways of addressing this:
-You can divide the total capacity up equally and give everyone dedicated connections that aren't very fat. Nobody likes this, and it's very inefficient because most people aren't using their full bandwidth most of the time.
-You can charge by the byte, on top of the base fee, so that using the system more costs more. It's fair - pricing directly reflects resources consumed - but nobody likes the idea of being nickel-and-dimed whenever they click a link.
-You can do the above, but include some large chunk of data (which is quite cheap) into the base fee, that most people won't go over. Call it a "cap". This works well.
-You can promise "unlimited" data, but start sending nasty letters and/or slowing the connection to a crawl when they go over some prescribed "fair use" amount. This is a data cap in all but name.
Basically, all-you-can-eat stuff is always sold on the basis that you will consume some reasonable amount, because no resource is infinite.
-You can divide the total capacity up equally and give everyone dedicated connections that aren't very fat. Nobody likes this, and it's very inefficient because most people aren't using their full bandwidth most of the time.
-You can charge by the byte, on top of the base fee, so that using the system more costs more. It's fair - pricing directly reflects resources consumed - but nobody likes the idea of being nickel-and-dimed whenever they click a link.
-You can do the above, but include some large chunk of data (which is quite cheap) into the base fee, that most people won't go over. Call it a "cap". This works well.
-You can promise "unlimited" data, but start sending nasty letters and/or slowing the connection to a crawl when they go over some prescribed "fair use" amount. This is a data cap in all but name.
Basically, all-you-can-eat stuff is always sold on the basis that you will consume some reasonable amount, because no resource is infinite.