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FTC Levies $40M Fine Against TracFone for Throttling Unlimited Data Customers

If only ...

Politicians were held to the same standards as cell providers.

They promise something, for their vote. And within hours of arriving in Washington, the very things they swore that they stood for - are abandoned. Too bad they can't be fined a few Million $$.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Can we do something about the regional broadband monopolies (IE, Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner?) They concern me more than the cellular providers, which at least compete with each other so have some interest in screwing over their customers less so that people will switch.
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Google fiber seems to be shaking things up a bit. Time Warner here in Austin is starting to drop prices a bit since google showed up. I see google is looking a dabbling into the wireless market too - interesting to see what changes will come about.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Can we do something about the regional broadband monopolies (IE, Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner?) They concern me more than the cellular providers, which at least compete with each other so have some interest in screwing over their customers less so that people will switch.
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Only thing I know is things like municipal wifi with fast internet, and for the FCC to overrule laws that some states have passed which make it illegal for governmental entities to deliver broadband for a cheaper price. There's enough backbone to deliver gigabit to every town. The corporate monopolies want to sell us limited broadband and their wonderful 500 channels of crap plus a useless wired phone service-- and then charge us more for "premium" channels. And get the state governments to outlaw public access.
 
Z400Racer37 said:
Everyone to whom throttling would be relevant knows about throttling, and nows the carriers do it. And its in the contract that they can do it. It's not like this stuff is a secret. So they did it on some people, and those people are now pissed because they don't like the terms of the contract that they signed anymore. But worry not, bureaucrats to the rescue. Let's just steal their money back because they're not happy with their decision anymore.

Losers. :rolleyes:
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The problem isn't the throttling per se, but the magnitude of it. It's the ~90% reduction in speeds, thereby rendering the service next to unusable. Reasonable throttling is well within the terms of the contract, but throttling to the point of near unusability pretty much negates any bonus of "unlimited" data. Furthermore, those that do go over into throttling territory get treated poorly and badgered to use less data, even threatened with fees, despite purchasing an "unlimited" data plan. It's shady practice at best.
 
Z400Racer37 said:
Everyone to whom throttling would be relevant knows about throttling, and nows the carriers do it. And its in the contract that they can do it. It's not like this stuff is a secret. So they did it on some people, and those people are now pissed because they don't like the terms of the contract that they signed anymore. But worry not, bureaucrats to the rescue. Let's just steal their money back because they're not happy with their decision anymore.

Losers. :rolleyes:
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It's people like you that kill me. Let's switch it around...If I sell you a Chicken Sandwich" and you get home to find out that it contains 95% breading and a sliver of chicken, would you consider it a chicken sandwich? Most people wouldn't. But the few that do consider it a chicken sandwich would still not be happy about the product that they got and they probably wouldn't buy again. However, since we are tied into contracts, we can't just stop eating that chicken sandwich. Instead, we must keep paying for it for 2 years until our contract is over.

So stop with your simplistic view of capitalism and learn to apply some emotion and feeling behind it. :rolleyes:
 
Re:

ScoobyMcDoo said:
Google fiber seems to be shaking things up a bit. Time Warner here in Austin is starting to drop prices a bit since google showed up. I see google is looking a dabbling into the wireless market too - interesting to see what changes will come about.
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Too bad Google fiber is only in 7 cities: Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Kansas City Nashville, Provo, Raleigh–Durham

Probably going to take them 10 to 15 years -if not more- to reach a bigger crowd
 
ScoobyMcDoo said:
Google fiber seems to be shaking things up a bit. Time Warner here in Austin is starting to drop prices a bit since google showed up. I see google is looking a dabbling into the wireless market too - interesting to see what changes will come about.
Click to expand...
That's great! Google fiber gave up on San Antonio for now which sucks for Time Warner subscribers. I was looking forward to getting 300mbps soon but I bet now the deployment will slow down since Google fiber isn't coming.
 
Being that LTE did not exist when ATT and Verizon had unlimited plans, if they only throttle back to 3g speeds, then they really aren't violating anything. Unlimited data and data speed are not the same. Now, if they are throttling to 128kb, then that's an issue because the data is unusable. Straighttalk likely cannot make the same argument, which is why they were fined so much.
 
Wackadoo said:
Thank you finally some common sense.
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It would be common sense but for the fact that Straight Talk was known to cancel accounts, without refunds (even if you bought a year's worth of service) or cut off data service until the next month if you went beyond a certain magic number of gigabytes that was unknown, but believed to be as little as 5.
 
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So...

What about ISP's that charge you for 50mbps download speeds that you can never actually achieve in real life?

This is the first I have heard of any internet/telephone company being fined for not offering the service they advertise. Most likely because they were small potatoes.

You can bet your ass that if this was Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, or any of the other major telecom companies, they would never even be investigated.

I sincerely believe that Big Telco pressured the FCC to try and bankrupt a discount competitor so they can carry on charging more for less. All this smells really fishy.
 
nutmac said:
2. When certain amount of bandwidth is used, offer customers a choice between (1) automatically charging $10 to get additional bandwidth (e.g., AT&T and Verizon) or (2) automatically throttling to lower speed, such as 128 Kbps (e.g., T-Mobile).
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That's how Cricket does it. The few times I've used up my monthly 1 GB bucket, I've never felt the need to top it up for the rest of the cycle because the EDGE speeds turned out to be adequate for email, streaming music and other things I do.
 
NikeTalk said:
AT&T will get off based on the "fine print" so don't get your hopes up..
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Or they will announce that all 'unlimited plans' are ending at the end of the existing contract.

There is nothing that says they have to keep their unlimited plans, and nothing that I've read, so far, to indicate that AT&T can't just say 'Effective February 14th, you are all screwed' and end all unlimited plans on that date.

And they are both ruthless, petty, and evil enough to do that.
 
jtrenthacker said:
GOOD! I hope they fine the hell out of all of them. I'm an unlimited customer with AT&T and I've now been bitten by their throttling practices.
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Correction, you were an unlimited user. They don't offer the plan anymore. Grandfathering doesn't mean unlimited for life, yet it seems a lot of people on these boards seem to think that's the case.

Icy1007 said:
The data is unlimited. They didn't say you'd get it all at the same speed.
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Exactly. And there's zero law that stipulates companies even need to grandfather customers in.

Unlimited is the worst buzzword to happen to IT in years. Nothing is ever unlimited—it's a marketing gimmick to rope people in. If you've ever bought web hosting services, for example, you'll often see "unlimited transfer / space". Stay away from those because they tend to oversell their services and do the same kind of crap... there's probably a limit somewhere in the TOS. The ones that do offer unmetered bandwidth limit to a certain speed (a certain mbit/sec) or they come with a big monthly price tag because they know those users are heavy consumers (typically colo customers or ones who stream internet radio or video services).

I hate data caps as much as the next guy but it's a fact of life at least for mobile where the spectrum is limited. (You can't just erect another mobile tower when you need capacity, keep in mind it can sometimes take months or years for city ordinances.) If your cable company does it, though, then they're just being greedy—coax cable w/ DOCSIS 3.1 can theoretically handle 10 gb/sec down so I see little reason for them to ever cap except to be greedy.

ChrisCW11 said:
What about ISP's that charge you for 50mbps download speeds that you can never actually achieve in real life?
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When I first got my cable connection over 10 years ago, a lot of websites never maxed on the connection because they were still on T1s. (At least it was still faster than dialup!) 50 mbps is 6.25 MB/sec. Some website hosts are still only one 10 mbps connections.
 
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Icy1007 said:
The data is unlimited. They didn't say you'd get it all at the same speed.
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The data is NOT unlimited if you throttle it. That's the marketing BS to twist your mind.

Think of this scenario in car speed. In the first day of the month, you can drive as fast as you can (lets assume your car can go 100 mph in terms of LTE cap speed). So you can drive 2400 miles on the first day.

Then your car is throttle down to 10 mph, that's only 240 miles for each day in rest of the month. The result is 240 miles x 29 days = 6960 miles.

That means you can drive no more than 9560 miles each month.

So there is your "limit".
 
Are they leaving at&t unscathed because they did a better job with the fine print than the lowly carriers? Otherwise, it sounds unfair.

I don't want them to go after at&t anyway because that means I'll kiss my grandfathered plan goodbye. Keep up the good work, government, for putting an end to our grandfathered plan.
 
Icy1007 said:
The data is unlimited. They didn't say you'd get it all at the same speed.
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It's implied, obviously.

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CEmajr said:
AT&T needs to be next.
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Say goodbye to your grandfathered unlimited plans, AT&T customers. They are not obligated to renew them every time you re-up your two year contract. They'll just discontinue them altogether
 
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