[BaRRaKID]

Portuguese guy here to clarify.

These are just addons to your regular package, they allow you to customize your plan according to your needs. The regular packages have different tiers that go anywhere from 500Mb to 10Gb of data included, which is more or less the same amount of data that the other ISPs in the country provide. There are no unlimited mobile data packages in Portugal, in any ISP, except the special plans for 4G personal hotspots. These addons just mean that if you pay more, the data from the services /apps that you use more often wont count to your regular data cap, to a limit of up to 10Gb per month.

In my case (I'm with another ISP), I pay 4€ per week and have 5Gb of "regular" data to use per month, plus another 5Gb just for video platforms (like Youtube and Twitch), and then there are several apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Skype, Spotify, etc, that don't consume any data from the plan, they're free to use. They also provide a premium Spotify account for free, which is nice.

For me, as a client, this is actually good, even tough it's far from neutral. I never go over the data cap, and I rarely use Wi-Fi even when I'm at home, because the apps that I use more often are "free" and I still have 5Gb of data to use on whatever else I want. If anything the problem in the original link is that that particular ISP is charging for something that the other ISPs provide for free.

It's also important to notice that Portugal has a communications regulatory authority (ANACOM), similar to the FCC, but that actually works, and defends the interests of the consumers. Just today they announced that all the ISPs will be fined in excess of 1 million euros, and face a possible class action law suit due to increasing prices without an explicit permission from the costumers.

So yeah, where actually doing good here.

[andrepd]

>Portugal has a communications regulatory authority (ANACOM), similar to the FCC, but that actually works

Oh, that's very debatable

[mping]

Very, very, very debatable. Example was the monopoly that former PT Telecom, now Meo/altice had for many years.

[sigmar]

>because the apps that I use more often are "free"

Can you imagine that these apps being zero-rated might make it less likely you'll try competing services (that aren't zero-rated)?

I understand that it seems like "free" data, but you are still paying for the service. The ISP is coaxing you into using specific services by limiting your use of everything else.

[croon]

19 minute old account, assuring everyone that nothing bad is happening.

[ASalazarMX]

It's already 22 minutes old by now, we can trust it.

[ASalazarMX]

Reading your comment feels like licensing software from Microsoft. I just pay a fixed monthly amount for unmetered data, and I wouldn't have it any other way.