New York state has given Verizon Wireless a million new reasons to understand that the word “unlimited” when used in advertising should mean what it means elsewhere in polite society.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced last week that his office had beaten a $1 million “agreement” out of Verizon Wireless that will see the carrier compensate 13,000 customers it had summarily disconnected from their “unlimited” plans because they had taken the word to mean what it means.

Cuomo’s office found "that Verizon Wireless prominently marketed these plans as 'Unlimited,' without disclosing that common usages such as downloading movies or playing games online were prohibited. The company also cut off heavy Internet users for exceeding an undisclosed cap of usage per month."

A million bucks is essentially petty cash for a company this size -- the public-relations beating will likely prove more costly -- but the episode should nonetheless act as a deterrent for other carriers tempted to sprinkle their advertising with manure. At least that’s the theory.

As for Verizon’s take on the matter? Well, it was priceless:

"We are pleased to have cooperated with the New York Attorney General and to have voluntarily reached this agreement," a company spokesman told Associated Press. "When this was brought to our attention, we understood that advertising for our NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess services could provide more clarity."

See, it was all a big misunderstanding.

Here at Buzzblog we like to believe that we go out of our way to accept business-speak for what it is and to not immediately presume the worst about corporate intentions.

Such latitude, however, is not unlimited.

$2 a month? … Too much.

No one ever wants to pay anything for something they've been getting all along for free (hence the hokey old admonition about cows, milk and sex before marriage.)

So it should come as no surprise that 72% of respondents in a new survey by Parks Associates contend they would abandon their favorite social networking site altogether before paying a measly two bucks a month. The surprise is that almost 28% claim they would be willing to pony up.

But what people profess in polls and what they do in the privacy of their own Web browsers are not necessarily one and the same.