The FTC Is Suing AT&T for Throttling Its Unlimited Data Customers

Brian Fung and Craig Timberg, reporting for The Washington Post:

Federal officials on Tuesday sued AT&T, the nation’s second-largest cellular carrier, for allegedly deceiving millions of customers by selling them “unlimited” data plans that the company later aggressively controlled by slowing Internet speeds when customers surfed the Web too much.

The Federal Trade Commission said the practice, called “throttling” and used by AT&T since 2011, resulted in slower speeds for customers on at least 25 million occasions — in some cases cutting user Internet speeds by 90 percent, to the point where they resembled dial-up services of old. The 3.5 million affected customers experienced these slowdowns an average of 12 days each month, said the FTC, which received thousands of complaints about the practice.

Insert non-sarcastic finally here.

“It’s absolutely outrageous,” said John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney at Public Knowledge, an advocacy group based in Washington. “They’re not allowed to promise one thing and deliver another… Unlimited is not unlimited when you put limits on it.”

★ Tuesday, 28 October 2014