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FTC Sues AT&T Over 'Misleading' Unlimited Data Throttling Practices [Updated]

I'm surprised and happy this lawsuit was even filed. It's hard to say if this will lead to an outcome favorable to AT&T grandfathered unlimited customers but it puts carriers on notice that they can't keep up their unfair practices.

That being said, this could easily end up nowhere at all. How much teeth does the FCC really have these days?
 
Regardless of what the outcome of this is, it's just another reminder that the US is very behind when it comes to IT. Period. On every level.

We pay too much for too little.
And every company has about ten too many "tiers" and spotty infrastructure.
You upgrade the technology and take gouging the consumer out of this equation and none of this is that complicated and messy.

You hear someone in Europe say they get totally unlimited wireless data at 50mbps second average speeds, and all the telephony services for $50 equivalent a month total, it's so damn annoying.
 
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Ozy said:
I just dropped my unlimited plan on my wife's and my iPhone last week. The new promotion is SO much better and without a contract. I was able to get 40gb of shared data, unlimited minutes and text, unlimited international text, tethering back, all for $25 more than I was paying for two 5GB limited unlimited plans. If I wanted 30GB the price would have been the same.

With the NextSM plan, we brought our own devices over, so our monthly device fee is only $15/mth instead of $40. Next year, I can buy the new iPhones 6s with the monthly payment plan that splits up the payments over 20 months. The year after that, if you don't pay off the phone at the one year anniversary date when you want the iPhone 7, you have to turn in the phone, or pay the remaining 8 months and keep it. I will pay it off. That will let me flip it on eBay for much more than the remaining 8 payments. They add no price to the phone and are doing a 0% finance for the phone. That is a good deal. If you choose a subsidized 2 year contract, your monthly device fee is $40. Over two years, this does not make it worth it. The Next plan to fund the phone cost is a better choice.

I also just added my new iPad Air2 to my shared 40GB plan for $10 a month fee without any setup fee. My prior VZW iPad's got dinged $35 each time I added them to my VZW data account. I am going to cancel my iPad Mini 2, iPad Mini 1, and JetPack 18GB plan on VZW because of this new setup and save a nice large combined sum.

AT&T and VZW perform about the same in the Phoenix area now and when I travel back to San Jose to my work's office. AT&T actually has better tiers of speed, with the ability to drop from LTE to HSPDA (4g) to 3G then to 2G. This degrades nicely. VZW has a steep switch from LTE to 3G then to 1x.

This was motivated after going on a trip earlier this month where I accidentally hit my 5GB limit for the first time in 7 years. They throttled me down to .75Mbps. It ruined my ability to be productive. I was QUITE pissed. I called and complained and threatened switching ultimately getting $275 refunded. After cooling down and talking to a colleague, he showed me this new promotion and after doing all the math, it really is a much better deal.
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So you're paying $25 a month more, then later you get the "privilege" of paying another $25 per device when you upgrade. How is this a better deal again? :rolleyes:
 
If the terms were as transparent as AT&T says, then I would imagine the only thing the FTC can hope to achieve out of this is to get AT&T to stop using the word "unlimited".

I don't see how this is otherwise actionable. If the end user signed an agreement which ostensibly spelled out throttling, then all the FTC can do is make them change the wording. No one got less than they signed up for.
 
It would seem that AT&T has throttled speeds on everyone. I used Speed Test to check my LTE speeds and lo and behold I'm only getting between 4 and 8 Mb download and 5 Mb upload. Last year I was getting 25 - 30 Mb download and up to 40 Mb upload. I called AT&T and was told they had to reduce the LTE speeds due to the number of customers using LTE and still having to provide the slower network speeds (2G, 3G and 4G) and 4G is still used for telephone calls. It was sucking up the bandwidth. I was told that they are upgrading equipment as fast as possible and are working on LTE for phone calls. Supposedly all customers were notified of this degradation of network speeds. I cannot verify this as my wife pays the bills so if I was notified I never saw it.

I'm never throttled due to data usage since I only average 180 MB per month. I still keep my unlimited plan since I have no one to share data with. My wife uses her flip top phone as a telephone and has no interest in a smartphone, how quaint :D
 
pdaholic said:
I feel like I don't really have an unlimited plan, because once I hit 5Gb, my "unlimited data" is worthless.

Not to mention the fact that when I purchased my iPhone 6 and renewed my contract, ATT raised my monthly bill such that they will make an extra $1000 over the course of my 2 year contract.

ATT sucks, but I'm not sure the other options out there are much better.
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I held out on my unlimited plan from the first iPhone in 2007 until last month. The limitations of my supposed "unlimited plan" became painfully obvious to me in the months approaching my wedding day. We had all kinds of people we were emailing, texting, etc and I was hitting my 5Gb limit and getting throttled. So frustrating trying to get things done with the bandwidth cut to a trickle. So, I finally decided that "why should I keep paying extra each month to preserver an unlimited plan that for all intents and purposes is really no better than a 5Gb plan?" So, I jumped ship and got onto a family share plan, saved a bit of money and now have tethering--which of course I don't use because I don't want to push over my new cap :(

Z
 
AT&T's response is baseless, unlimited means unlimited. This means without restrictions. Slowing down after 5GB is a restriction. Not allowing tethering is a restriction.

It doesn't matter if it was clear or not when they started this program, these were not the terms when we signed up, that is all that matters for it to violate the terms of the contract.
 
JayLenochiniMac said:
Be careful what you ask for. They'll just stop offering unlimited to grandfathered customers the next time they upgrade.
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Exactly. AT&T has tried to avoid losing unlimited customers by forcing them into a tiered data plan - they've just put a soft limit on them. Now the FCC is involved, AT&T will either shutter the unlimited plans and risk losing some customers, or eliminate the soft cap and have to make some network adjustments.
My guess would be that they will force customers off the unlimited plans, which they are contractually allowed to do any time.
Imagine the lawsuits from those who have given up their unlimited plans if AT&T removed the cap now?
 
Possible.....

uwdude said:
Maybe we should stop to think that it might actually be AT&T ASKING the FTC to do this, in order to get a ruling against their current unlimited plans, so that they can conveniently say "Sorry, the government won't let us offer this anymore." Boom, unlimited plans gone, and AT&T doesn't have to take the heat for getting rid of them.
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I was thinking the same exact thing when I first saw the headline....
 
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mcdj said:
If the terms were as transparent as AT&T says, then I would imagine the only thing the FTC can hope to achieve out of this is to get AT&T to stop using the word "unlimited".

I don't see how this is otherwise actionable. If the end user signed an agreement which ostensibly spelled out throttling, then all the FTC can do is make them change the wording. No one got less than they signed up for.
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But we didn't sign an agreement that allowed throttling or prevented tethering when we signed up for our unlimited plans. So, that does mean we are getting less than we paid for and it is actionable.
 
QCassidy352 said:
I agree with you. I don't see it as false advertising. "Unlimited data" does not necessarily mean "at unlimited speeds." It could, but it doesn't have to. And since AT&T did in fact notify users -- in a variety of ways -- that they were going to do this, I don't see it as misleading, either.

The one caveat I'll add is that if they slow the data *enough,* it in effect becomes a limit because you can't really do anything with a few kbps download. The complaint says 80-90%, which is a lot, but I could see 10-20% of LTE speeds still being usable for many things (I often get 20+ mbps down on AT&T LTE, so 10-20% is still 2-4 mbps, which is not great better than most of us had for many years at full 3G speeds).
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When I bought my first iPhone in 2007 no one at AT&T ever tried to make this distinction. They only started talking about this distinction when they wanted to start throttling people. The only time I was notified of this distinction was when I got my first 5GB throttling notice.

Z
 
I'm so happy this happened

Hello,

First of all this is great news, as i am one of the 3% that still has "UNLIMITED" data plan since iPhone 3Gs. I have started using alot of dat starting this years since my wife is overseas, and i FaceTime alot.

What AT&T says that they notify customers via text message when you are about to go over the limit before throttling, is totally FALSE. Since i have unlitmited plan, i have only gotten this message once, and that was around 3GB.

But i have been using close to 10-15GB of data each month now, and they don't notify me at all. And the speed they throttle is worse then Edge speed.

So lets hope something better happens from this.

Thank you,
VJSCORP
 
joshuaclinton said:
Yessssssssss. Of course, AT&T will lose, then add miscellaneous fees to Unlimited data customers.
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Wrong. They will lose, and then add miscellaneous fees to ALL data customers. Not just unlimited.

Companies dont pay fees, fines, penalties, and taxes...... They spread them amongst their customers to pay.

I had an unlimited plan on 2 phones for years and years. I only changed it less than a year ago because the family share plan was cheaper and I can deal with the data plan size that I purchased.It would be nice if the FTC made AT&T refund some of my money for dealing with the throttling caps all those years.
 
jrawl004 said:
I was thinking the same exact thing when I first saw headline....
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Doubtful it will happen quickly, though.

What are they going to do? Kill my unlimited data and "upgrade" me to the 6GB plan that they recommend at $20 more without my permission? Um...no.

In a year and a half or so, when I upgrade - poof! - no more unlimited data, and I will be forced to switch to a tiered plan.

Which, by the way, why the hell don't providers seem to want people to have one phone/one plan anymore? Everything is designed and priced for "sharing".
 
Zandian said:
When I bought my first iPhone in 2007 no one at AT&T ever tried to make this distinction. They only started talking about this distinction when they wanted to start throttling people. The only time I was notified of this distinction was when I got my first 5GB throttling notice.

Z
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100% this. I'm in the same boat.
 
dukeblue219 said:
So like others my first reaction is that of COURSE unlimited means unlimited and that they shouldn't throttle after a certain amount. I have Verizon unlimited and enjoy that's it's truly unlimited and I can use it as a hotspot too. AT&T's perspective is generally that they are giving you an unlimited amount of data but controlling how fast you can actually use it.

Let me ask a similar question.

If I go into a restaurant that heavily advertises unlimited breadsticks, can I reasonably expect UNLIMITED breadsticks? Or is it reasonable for the restaurant to say sure, it's unlimited, but we'll only bring out 1 per person at the table at a time?

I think we'd mostly agree that the latter is acceptable and that a request for 1000 breadsticks would be declined. Is that really any different than what the carriers face, where 95% of customers use 2GB or less and probably 5% are far more than the other 95% combined?

Certainly bandwidth is less of a tangible quantity than a breadstick -- it's harder to argue that I am being wasteful by using 100GB. But, let's not act like bandwidth is an unlimited resource, either. It does cost money to expand capacity and if the bulk of that is being forced by a few users sucking down enormous amounts of data then they are indeed a very real cost to the carriers and to all of us.

Dunno what the right answer is, but I do think it's far more complex than the FTC's argument that unlimited means unlimited.
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I respectfully disagree with this analogy.

I'm not walking into a restaurant advertising unlimited breadsticks and asking for a 1000 breadsticks at once. Instead, I just ate 5 breadsticks, and upon asking for another, the waiter says, "you can have more breadsticks, but I'm only going to give you one bite of one at a time from here on out." I'm sitting at the table for the next hour only to receive 2 additional bites of a breadstick. Sure, I've still got "unlimited breadsticks" but let's face it, it's bull-****.
 
armandxp said:
How is that fair to iPhone users? Or any other user....
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It is fair because that is what you paid for.
From the beginning, they have been 100% clear that this is the experience you are paying for.

How is it fair that people whine that they didn't get something that they didn't pay for?

The entitlement mentality is way too prevalent and people need to grow up.
 
I have "Unlimited Data"
But when I hit 5gb, they send me a nasty letter
What part of "unlimited" don't they not understand?
 
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