Well let them charge homebroad band prices on unlimited cellular phones. I pay about $26 a month for 10GB of use. That is 2.6 for each GB!
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AT&T Urges FCC to Drop $100 Million Fine, Says Data Throttling Doesn't Harm Customers
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Well let them charge homebroad band prices on unlimited cellular phones. I pay about $26 a month for 10GB of use. That is 2.6 for each GB!
Exactly. Are the plans unlimited, or do they have caps? You can't have it both ways.
Also agreed, and if AT&T were throttling users based on system capacity this would be a different conversation. They're throttling users based on total usage, not on system load. If you're the only user on a tower and you hit the "cap" in your unlimited plan, you get throttled, even though you are not having an impact on anyone else.
The technology has long existed in network hardware to throttle traffic for users placing a disproportionate demand on the network when the system is at capacity. If AT&T did this, I think you'd find many people cheering them. Instead, they are being greedy and trying to force customers with unlimited plans into newer more expensive plans by artificially capping their data and then claiming it's in the name of fairness. $100 million is hardly penalty enough for this kind of deception.
You literally just answered your own question. Unlimited plans come in an All-in-One package and are generally priced as a deal and are just that, "Unlimited". When someone is paying extra for a select amount of gigabytes they are limited to that amount of gigabytes so they shouldn't be throttled. An Unlimited package allows the user to stream an unlimited amount of HD videos and people take high advantage of that creating network bottlenecks.
i kind of agree but then again ATT should not have sold a product "Unlimited" that they can't support this is why i need to side with the consumer.
PS the people who pay for a select amount are not limited to that select amount of data they can go way over it and not have speed reduced they just get a bigger bill making ATT look more greedy favoring those who can pay more and not favoring those who signed up for a plan who thought would have been "UNLIMITED" in fact its very LIMITED
They do more than that. They also layoff employees to recoup costs and improve the balance sheet. I am a 15 year employee with AT&T now. I don't work with any of the wireless stuff but I can tell you that paying 100 million penalty to the government is going to result in more layoffs. We are already undergoing our "2nd" round of layoffs this calendar year as I speak.
In late 2011, after the government rejected the AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile, we had to pay T-Mobile $4 billion, yes $4 "billion" due to the contract we signed with them. The layoffs after that came swift and hit hard. Thousands of employees with families just trying to make a living all out of work (and probably still out of work). By the way, had AT&T been allowed to acquire T-Mobile, they probably never would have ever needed to throttle anyone because they would have had ample spectrum. Understand there is a limited amount of spectrum out there that the gov't licenses to each company.
For all of you AT&T hater's that think the government should put AT&T in its place, just remember that we are people with families too. Ever ask yourself what the government plans to do with that $100m dollar fine anyway? Give it back to you or simply waste it on more useless gov't pork.
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I don't get why you are still on unlimited? I switched years ago and so much happier. I started on the 10GB plan, and then when AT&T offered double your data, I bumped up to the 15GB plan (min plan for double) and I am getting 30GB. Now with rollover, some months I have extra. I also get the option to tether my iPhone. So the $10 extra I was spending on my iPad to join my plan, I got rid of, and put that $10 toward the 15GB/mo (30GB double plan promo) and got tethering. Now I can tether my iPad AND MacBook. To me, this was a total win!
And it's not the law to grandfather you in. The contract stated 2 years. Once up, they can drop that plan and put you on a plan of similar or less price than what you were paying that best matches their current offerings.
They only grandfathered you in so that the publicity hit wouldn't be so bad. A lot of customers switched out of unlimited like I did to save money and get the extra spiffs like tethering without jailbreaking.
I can't argue the customer paying the same per month after that. The bill should be reduced after the 2 years as its not subsidized. That's something all carriers have been doing and nobody ever fought it. Most likely not that big of an issue because a lot upgrade their phone yearly or 2 years. Very few actually held it past 2 years.
Actually all users are throttled if the network is busy. It's against the rules to throttle some and not all. Forgot what FTC ruling that was.
Well you're right about them being greedy, but put yourself (as a business owner) in the position of AT&T or any company. You know that first and foremost your main goal is to make money. Anyone saying they are in business first and foremost for the good of the consumer is spouting nonsense. While I understand how you feel on this matter, it makes perfect sense for AT&T not to throttle people when they go over their limit because they paying more money to do so.
That's why I mentioned previously that unlimited deals are basically packaged as "All-in-One" offers so purchasers of these packages are getting them at a reduced cost, so you will get what you paid for. But to get back to the point of the term "UNLIMITED", you know as we well as everyone else here knows what unlimited truly means. You're still getting unlimited data regardless of what the speed is. If you're going to call it "LIMITED" you may as well call everything AT&T offers as "LIMITED", especially when it comes to coverage. So you buy an unlimited plan but the phone doesn't work everywhere you go. That's "LIMITED". Slowing down speeds at times is not limited.
Federal Judges rule on TWO issues in a case. The law and what is fair and equitable. Same is true for federal regulatory agencies. This falls under fair and equitable.
Further, perhaps some upper management types ( not the CEO unfortunetely ) will be forced to resign for thinking up this unethical business practise since it hurt not helped their bottom line.
Further, perhaps some upper management types ( not the CEO unfortunetely ) will be forced to resign for thinking up this unethical business practise since it hurt not helped their bottom line.
i never switched from unlimited plan its 82.00 a month after taxes there is no plan w/ 5gb of data cheeper or the same that i can see unless I'm missing something
Agreed but again what the problem is what ATT sold was not a plan that was unlimited until a certain GB this is the issue. its not ok no matter who is selling something to you to bait and then switch. So i hope the law keepers stick it to them good. This is a capitalist economy BTW so there needs to be regulation otherwise every company out to make a buck would eventually have us chained to a rock working for them.
you wanted a horse and got a goat --LOL
And, with Enron in mind, some of that has to also be 'what we can get away with charging'.
They aren't going to return any overages (profits0 so if they can raise their rates $20.00, and they only lose a few people, CHA-CHING!!! Daddy gets a NEW JET!
Someone is sour that they don’t have unlimited... what fine print? This tell me you don’t have an unlimited plan. Apart from the standard contract changes subsection there wasn’t anything relating to data throttle, etc when unlimited began.
He's not wrong. They WILL pass down the fine to their customers. Just like after losing almost 400,000 customers to T-Mobile they increased fees across the board.
The moral of the story is that AT&T is incredibly greedy. I left Verizon for T-Mobile. I'm treated much better and I'm saving $200 more a month.
"Okay, we'll drop the $100M fine... and raise it to $100BN. Hope that helps."
As a Brit, I am continually astounded at how much my British friends pay on contract for their data, HOW little they get.. but Americans? Wow, you REALLY get rinsed out, shaken off and hung out to dry. On "Three" in the UK, I get 300 mins, 3,000 sms and **TRULY** uncapped data for £15 a month on pre-pay, and I get 10-20Mbps down/2.5-5.0Mbps UP - I mean I could absolutely use 1TB of data, and never see ANY slowdown or issues, as they are a fair company. I do LOTS of 1080p uploads to YouTube, and use it for HD NetFlix/YouTube etc, and it's perfect.
Stuff you, AT&T and "EE" in the UK, scammers.
As a Brit, I am continually astounded at how much my British friends pay on contract for their data, HOW little they get.. but Americans? Wow, you REALLY get rinsed out, shaken off and hung out to dry. On "Three" in the UK, I get 300 mins, 3,000 sms and **TRULY** uncapped data for £15 a month on pre-pay, and I get 10-20Mbps down/2.5-5.0Mbps UP - I mean I could absolutely use 1TB of data, and never see ANY slowdown or issues, as they are a fair company. I do LOTS of 1080p uploads to YouTube, and use it for HD NetFlix/YouTube etc, and it's perfect.
Stuff you, AT&T and "EE" in the UK, scammers.
This is true. AT&T will not eat the cost of this fine, the subscribers will just like smokers paid the price for all the tobacco manufacturers fines years ago and still are today.
Ballsy. If only Apple had tried this in the eBook case. "You're wrong. And you don't have the authority."
No wonder Apple won't go up against AT&T's lawyers. They make Apple's lawyers look like *******.
And that's no mean feat.
No wonder Apple won't go up against AT&T's lawyers. They make Apple's lawyers look like *******.
And that's no mean feat.
I used to be with AT$T and had an "unlimited" plan when I bought my original iPhone. I was grandfathered with every subsequent iPhone upgrade and felt the throttle until I switched to T-Mobile last year.
I can honestly say that I hate AT&T for their deceptive bait and switch business practices which lead to me ultimately leaving them.
I don't consider myself a heartless human being and my heart goes out to those who lost their jobs at AT&T.
However, what's needed here isn't necessarily fines but far stronger government regulations that prohibit these deceptive practices and for telecoms to provide their services as a utility, much like broadband has been forced to do thanks to Net Neutrality. The problem with not having strong regulations is the fact that we have only four major carriers here in the USA and these companies who bribe politicians for no regulations, that's called crony capitalism.
If we followed Europe's example with telecoms, we'd have more than four telecom companies competing for customers by offering better service and deals and more people would have jobs.
The problem isn't the government, the problem is the very corporation you work for.
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I'm on a 3-Family Plan. I ended up saving money switching out of the stupid, restricted unlimited plan.
Yes. This. Ironically, ATT isn't the only company to have to "do what they gotta do". Like Apple, Google, Verizon, and every other company isn't out there "getting theirs" or making sure they cater to obnoxious shareholders without any regard to anything else. Such is the way of things. Didn't used to be quite so unbalanced. Oh well.