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It's down to networks designed for low-bandwidth voice calls. Some data provision was allowed in the original plans but the recent explosion in consumer smartphones was a bolt from the blue. Whereas mobile users were once happy to visit low-bandwidth mobile versions of sites (anybody remember WAP?), nowadays we expect the full high-bandwidth experience we have at home. Why should YouTube be off-limits just because we're at the coffee shop, especially bearing in mind our mobile devices have no problem playing video?

Huh? What an ignorant article. Those networks "designed for low-bandwidth voice calls?" First of all, voice is NOT bandwidth, and won't be for a while, as Verizon tested their first Voice over LTE call (VoLTE) just last month! Second of all, these networks have been continuously upgraded and deprecated over the last decade! Let's go over just Verizon's network progression since their inception a decade ago (and before that):

Analog Cellular (totally discontinued)
1xRTT (the old, 2G network)
EVDO (3G, currently deployed to 100% of VZW's native coverage map)
EVDO Rev A (Verizon rolled this out a little later)
LTE (Launched Dec of last year, will be in 149 cities by the end of this year)

And this article says that the cell companies' networks weren't designed for today's technology? Today's technology is what is powering today's network. Totally ignorant, worthless article.

I think you’re confusing “bandwidth” with “broadband”. Voice calls are considered low-bandwidth, since they are very “bursty”, with comparatively long periods of silence between bursts. Broadband, as may be inferred from the “broad”, uses a lot of bandwidth.

Yes voice calls use bandwidth, even when they aren’t digital. There are limits to simultaneous analogue signals over a common frequency/cable, and that was called bandwidth long before there was even a digital world. Hell, even the name refers to the disparity between the upper and lower width of band (set of frequencies with no gaps) which was the original limit of simultaneous reception and transmission.