Verizon demands $880 from rural library for just 0.44GB of roaming data

A small library that lends out mobile hotspots is facing a tough budget decision because one of its borrowers accidentally ran up $880 in roaming fees, and Verizon refuses to waive or reduce the charges. The Tully (NY) Free Library has an "unlimited" data plan for the hotspots, but Verizon says it has to pay the $880 to cover less than half a gigabyte of data usage that happened across the border with Canada. Generally, the library pays $40 a month for each of the three hotspots, for a total of $120 a month. Between the regular charges and the unexpected roaming fee, the latest bill came to $1,000. Aside from the roaming bill, the library is facing another new problem with Verizon. The hotspot data plans seemed to be truly unlimited when the regional library council paid for them, allowing borrowers to stream video or do other data-heavy activities. But since the plan changeover, Verizon has capped their data at 25GB a month, even though the new plan seemed to be identical to the old one.