Never say never

Never say unlimited, either.

The latest example of this principle involves the AT&T customer who won a modest award in small-claims court after finding that his unlimited data plan had been limited by the company.

AT&T says that customers are downloading so much data the company has no choice but to control the flow. As I read this, my mind went back 40 years to when AT&T found itself in a similar predicament.

At the time the company, through subidiaries like Ohio Bell (where I worked) aggressively promoted a service that gave customers an unlimited number of local calls for a flat rate. This higher priced service brought in more revenue than measured service, but it also solved a problem with the latter.

In order to count the number of calls measured service customers made, the telephone company had a register on each line. Customers were always complaining, "There's no way I could make all of those calls," causing the company to spend hours checking the registers and dealing with customer appeals. What was supposed to be low cost service had grown more costly.

However, unlimited service came with its own cost-benefit ratio. As people made more calls the company had to invest in more equipment. The only way it could get more revenue was to seek a rate increase, a difficult and not always successful enterprise. How much better to grow revenue as customers increased usage, especially since computer-based systems could now track calls accurately and efficiently.

So AT&T turned its marketing around and pushed measured service -- "Pay only for what you use." However, customers remembered it by another name -- limited service. And now they are finding that internet service also has its limits.

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I also recalled my telephone company days when I heard of a regulation that would require rearview cameras on passenger vehicles. The goal is to help protect children and others from being run over by backing vehicles.

As a new employee I began to notice all things telephone, including the way workers always placed cones at the rear corner of their vans when they parked.

I assumed the purpose was to alert others drivers to the parked vehicle. But the purpose is to protect those children and other people.

If you set a cone out when you park, you have to pick it up before you leave and when you do pick it up you'll see the child playing on the ground.

Ingenious. Smokey the Bear must be smiling.