U.S. carriers seem to have a hard time understanding what the word "unlimited" means, and most recently, this point is being proven once again with changes coming to Sprint's plans.
Sprint currently offers one plan called Unlimited Freedom, but starting Friday, July 13, it's being laid to rest in favor of Unlimited Basic and Unlimited Plus.
Unlimited Basic costs the same as Unlimited Freedom at $60/month for one line, but even so, is an all-around worse deal. Video streaming is now restricted to 480p instead of Unlimited Freedom's full 1080p access, and when it comes to mobile hotspot use, Unlimited Basic customers only have 500MB of LTE data to use compared to Unlimited Freedom's 10GB.
If you're not a fan of those restrictions, Sprint's more than happy to sell Unlimited Plus to you for $70/month. Unlimited Plus lets you stream in full 1080p like before, while also upgrading your mobile hotspot to 15GB of LTE data and throwing in a free subscription to Tidal's $9.99/month plan. No matter which one you choose, both new unlimited plans still come with Hulu.
A little less than a month ago, Verizon made a similar change by adding a third unlimited plan to its lineup, making customers choose between Go Unlimited, Beyond Unlimited, and Above Unlimited.
Sprint and Verizon are both trying to market these changes as a way to give their customers more choice over what they want in their plan, and while that's fine, continuing to call them "unlimited" is a flat-out lie at this point.
