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AT&T Urges FCC to Drop $100 Million Fine, Says Data Throttling Doesn't Harm Customers
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"Blah blah blah...AT&T is a mean, evil, filthy rich corporation (not a person) who needs to be punished for being mean and evil to its customers."
You're all sheeple. You're not asking the right questions. Who gets the $100 million? Certainly not you, dear reader and AT&T customer. Where's that $100 going to come from? Certainly not the AT&T coffers. Not the CEO's bank account. You, dear reader and AT&T customer will wind up paying for it in the form of some byzantine fee that appears on your bill. Either that or it will impact the stock price and/or the dividend. "But but but...I don't care about greedy investors!" you whine incessantly. Well, you should because chances are AT&T is a component of the mutual finds in your 401K or a component of your precious pension fund.
And think of how this is going to affect Milana Vayntrub's residual payments. #sarcasm
You're all sheeple. You're not asking the right questions. Who gets the $100 million? Certainly not you, dear reader and AT&T customer. Where's that $100 going to come from? Certainly not the AT&T coffers. Not the CEO's bank account. You, dear reader and AT&T customer will wind up paying for it in the form of some byzantine fee that appears on your bill. Either that or it will impact the stock price and/or the dividend. "But but but...I don't care about greedy investors!" you whine incessantly. Well, you should because chances are AT&T is a component of the mutual finds in your 401K or a component of your precious pension fund.
And think of how this is going to affect Milana Vayntrub's residual payments. #sarcasm
Then that would mean that if my house had lead paint in it, I would not have to disclose it to a potential buyer because it would violate my First Amendment rights.
A lie by omission is still a lie.
[/QUOTE]
All doubling it will do is mean they will cough up more money to buy more politicians to get their way.
For those who claim to be 'moderates', and occasionally vote republican, you have to realize that the republican party has been bought out, and does not represent you anymore. You don't have the money, you don't have the gifts, and you don't have the quality hookers, to get them back on your side.
True that some democrats are 'moderates', but they are called 'blue dogs', and by and large, their population in Congress has been significantly culled over the years.
AT&T will run to their 'base', and that 'base', in service to the cash they will receive, will gut the FCC like a fish, and not give a fraction of a poop about doing it.
If AT&T wants to raise its rates on me or any other customer to cover this, then we are all free to move to other carriers.
The shareholders, through the Board of Directors, are always free to change the management that approved the throttling.
I don't know who's that CEO that come up with this brilliant idea to throttled data that we pay for it...but look like he made a big hole in att budget for $ 100 million. Well, way to go smart pants.
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If att won't be allowed to throttle anymore then they should be forced to give us out grandfathered unlimited plans back. My throttled speed was so bad after using 5GB that be came unusable (0.03mbps) so we dance;d unlimited and got a 10 GB plan so I could actually use my data.
I read an article a few months ago about the move to limit board of directors power. Many boards were being forced to move against CEO salaries, and as a result, in many boards, they have elected to remove themselves from any say in compensation, and benefits for any officers.
You have to remember, the people sitting on many of these corporate boards are CEO's themselves, or were at one point, and those kinds of people stick together and stick up for each other through thick and thin.
Heck, many boards have wholeheartedly approved the outrageous salaries and benefits that are showered on my CEO's. Their hands, so to speak, are covered in blood (red ink), and they really don't give a poop. Many boards have ridden their companies into bankruptcy because they are 'inside players' and know how to do a bankruptcy right. That's why they call them 'strategic bankruptcies' now.
The board of AT&T is probably just as happy as a pig in poop with the management right about now... Hell, they will probably write off the fine anyway... Funny how it doesn't end up costing them a penny, and still they bitch holy hell...
What an argument. Not only does throttling not harm customers, but AT&T must preserve it's freedom of speech, so you know, they can continue to rip us all off freely.
So corporations should bleed people and it's ok because they will get a small fraction of it back?
What alternative punishments do you suggest for corporations that break the law? Put the CEO and VPs in jail? Just let them do whatever they want?
I believe the idea here is that if you fine a corporation enough, the investors will put their money elsewhere, thereby punishing the company even more.
Go to T-Mobile, free music streaming doesn't count against your data bucket..
I did switch to T-Mobile. I get unlimited data on 2 phones for cheaper than my old plan which was unlimited on one phone and 250MB on the other. Plus, my data was getting throttled because I liked watching videos while traveling. Good riddance, AT&T.
"Unlimited data". You don't get limited on the amount of data you can download/upload, just on the speeds.
I don't agree with AT&T, but that's a valid defense for me.
The ONLY thing "throttling" does is "limit data."
Obviously ATT needed to advertise as follows.
"Unlimited* data!!!"
* F U
Instead they seem to be going with:
"Unlimited data!!!"*
*Freedom of Speech!!!
It's expensive because they want to recoup their infrastructure expenses. Providing coverage for the continental US and Alaska/Hawaii takes a lot more infrastructure than it would for most other countries - for example, the UK, which is smaller than some of our states.
AT&T thinks they can bully around the FCC?
Listen AT&T executives -
Unlimited data should be UNLIMITED data at the SAME SPEED everyone else is getting. The FCC is your superior that keeps the company and your competitors in check, since the cell phone carriers have too much power as it is.
If, in the agreement, it states that a customer is allowed to use unlimited LTE data for a certain amount of money each month, the customer should be allowed to use as much data as they want at a reasonable speed that's faster than 3G at the minimum. I'm sure the stockholders aren't happy about the fine, so some replacements might need to be in order at the top of AT&T.
Listen AT&T executives -
Unlimited data should be UNLIMITED data at the SAME SPEED everyone else is getting. The FCC is your superior that keeps the company and your competitors in check, since the cell phone carriers have too much power as it is.
If, in the agreement, it states that a customer is allowed to use unlimited LTE data for a certain amount of money each month, the customer should be allowed to use as much data as they want at a reasonable speed that's faster than 3G at the minimum. I'm sure the stockholders aren't happy about the fine, so some replacements might need to be in order at the top of AT&T.
I'm fine with them dropping unlimited. You technically had it for your 2 year agreement, they grandfathered you in and they have the right to cancel it at any time. What I DON'T like is that they are throttling your unlimited plan. What I DON'T like is that they want to get out of paying the fine. What I DON'T like is its okay to screw the customer, but when the feds screw AT&T with penalties they cry like a little bitch.
I bet the reason they are raising the upgrade fee is to pay for this fine. Again, screwing the customer. And if they don't have to pay the fine, they'll still keep the increase and.. yup, you guessed it, SCREW THE CUSTOMER.
AT&T unfairly and severely bottlenecked their customers that bought "unlimited" plans and in most cases, charged us more than other data plans for the right to "unlimited data". They were deceiving and misleading people in an effort to get more customers and then not fully providing what they had advertised for.
Sure, the customer technically had unlimited data for the two year agreement. The problem is, the customer continued to pay extra for the device after the two years were up. You get grandfathered into a plan because it's the law. Sure AT&T could cancel your unlimited data plan, but then lose a boat load of customers in the process - something AT&T won't risk doing.
I do know one thing, though. I'll be auditing AT&T at the end of my agreement, or slightly before it, and then comparing what they offer compared to the other carriers, including Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Straight Talk (which is technically AT&T too, but not directly).
AT&T is most certainly an entity that has placed short term profits over the long-term value of keeping customers happy. Even at the most cynical and dispassionate of analysis, it's a disservice to investors who may wish to invest in AT&T in the long term, so that short-term investors can reap profits today.
At best, it's poor management. At worst, yeah, it's pretty evil.
The point of a fine is not to directly reimburse the customer, but to castigate and punish a corporation for behaving badly. Unfortunately, AT&T's leadership understands dollars best, and depriving them of dollars is the only corrective action that has any remote chance of having an impact.
Will this go in my pocket, or feed starving people in Africa? Of course not. However, that doesn't mean AT&T should be allowed to continue with impunity.
And that, is what makes AT&T evil. It's also one of many reasons why I'm a former customer.
Poor babies.
There are bankers and conservative politicians already hard at work making sure that few Americans in the workforce today will actually see much of the money they've contributed so these plans. AT&T's stock price going down a couple points is hardly a drop in the bucket to that catastrophe about to happen.
$100 million is just a hair over 3% of the profits AT&T made in the last quarter alone, and barely 0.3% of its income over the same period. I wouldn't doubt that more money is being spent lobbying and fighting against the $100 million fine than it would cost to simply pay up. So, I'm not concerned in the least, neither for AT&T customer's bills (Which AT&T finds plenty of meaningless excuses to increase anyway), nor AT&T or its major investors' considerable wealth.
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These fines are a waste of time. Was unannounced throttling deceptive? Yes. But who benefits from a $100 million fine? Certainly not those that had their bandwidth throttled, nor do the rest of AT&T's customers. We all lose in this scenario. AT&T is fined $100 million, our rates go up to cover the cost and AT&T says sorry. Skip the fine, just say sorry and let me keep my money.
If people were truly hurt by this action, then a lawsuit should prevail. Let the lawyers get rich and all of those affected will get their $20 dollar court demanded repayment.
If people were truly hurt by this action, then a lawsuit should prevail. Let the lawyers get rich and all of those affected will get their $20 dollar court demanded repayment.
Logic is sound. ATT fined. They increase a fee. Customer pays ATT higher bill.I don't quite buy that logic. They pay it. If they pass it to their customers they become less competitive and might hurt themselves further. There are just some things that you cannot pass along. If you are an AT&T customer and are afraid of you being left holding this bag, by all means, dump AT&T before that happens