If you’re a person who believes that an unlimited data plan is a beautiful thing, Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo thinks you should know better. Speaking at an investor conference yesterday, Shammo claimed that “unlimited” is just a word causing a brief uproar around the internet.

In fact, Shammo says:

So what customers are understanding and through our good sales routine is once you explain to a customer their usage on a monthly basis, unlimited is just a word, it doesn’t really mean anything and that people don’t really — I think a lot of consumers think they consume a lot more data than they really do. So that whole unlimited thing I think is going by the wayside and they see the benefit of going to the shared.

Shammo is right in some sense that most people don’t need an unlimited plan, and that it’s a false sense of security. The thing is, for power users, who are far to often the loudest voice among wireless customers, unlimited data is a necessity and Sprint and T-Mobile are willing to fulfill that need Verizon now choose to push to the “wayside.”

Still, I can’t help but feel Shammo is telling us that we don’t understand how we use data, only Verizon does so we’re just going to tell you what to think about it and never sell you an unlimited plan again.

I don’t like being told what to think by my wireless company, even if there may be some truth to it. Furthermore, his comments beg for a question of timing as T-Mobile launches their own Unlimited Nationwide 4G data plan. Was this a cheap shot at Sprint and T-Mobile? Still, T-Mobile’s HSPA+ 42Mbps customers average less than 2GB of data per month, so again, Shammo isn’t wrong in that sense.

I’m just happy that with T-Mobile, I have the choice of Unlimited Data yet again. I hope you are as well.

Android Central