That 1.5gbit/s figure is inaccurate… You’re referring to the bus speed (SATA is capable of 1.5/3/6gbps), not the speed of the drive. You’re talking about read speeds of roughly 192 megabytes per second, when spinning-disk hard drives can usually only manage 40-60MB/s. SSDs can easily pull off 512MB/s given the right bus – the increase in SATA speed is driven by SSDs, because hard drives are still relatively slow.
Since you’re putting it nowhere near as eloquently, I’ll go ahead and quote Louis CK for you: “Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy.”
Now, that being said, this is a completely irrelevant point. Yes, technology is amazing. But just because cellular communications are an amazing thing doesn’t mean we ought to accept price gouging on said communications. If Verizon was charging in line with other carriers, we’d have no right to complain. Hell, if Verizon didn’t lock customers in with hardware instead of just contracts, we’d have no right to complain (just switch carriers).
However, they do not charge fairly, and they can get away with the pricing they have because of lock-in and various other market factors (collusion with AT&T). Outside of the US (particularly in Europe) the compatibility between carriers of the phones leads to awesome competition.
Some brief searching gave me this little snippet: “The Three network, which already offers unlimited data on its “One Plan”, has confirmed that 4G LTE access will be offered as standard on all of its price plans from later this year, and that tariffs offering unlimited data will continue to be offered at the same price with 4G speeds. Three offers unlimited data on SIM-only plans costing as little as £12.90 per month” – unlimited LTE for around $30 USD per month. This is the norm in Europe, pricing-wise.
T-Mobile charges around $30 USD per month for their 5GB + 100 minutes + unlimited text pre-paid plans, though you can argue they lack LTE. They offer unlimited data for something like $60/month. So we have anywhere from $30 USD to $60 USD for 5GB or unlimited data respectively vs $60-70 with no device for 2GB and 4GB of data. You’re talking less than half as expensive for twice as much, or unlimited for the same price. And in the UK, completely unlimited for $30.
That is, I would think, “too expensive and the result of greed”, by definition. Twice the price, way less data and you’re locked in to their devices since VZW phones only work on VZW or MVNOs that use their network.
