Mikey Campbell
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced AT&T will pay out $60 million to settle a case alleging the carrier slowed down, or throttled, data transfer speeds of customers subscribed to unlimited plans.
The settlement will be placed in holdings to finance partial refunds for current and past customers who saw data speeds throttled after hitting an undisclosed data cap, reports Reuters. Specifically, the settlement applies to subscribers who committed to unlimited plans prior to 2011.
The director of FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection Andrew Smith in a statement suggested the second-largest U.S. carrier by subscribers purposely misled customers when it implemented the strategy designed to save bandwidth.
"While it seems obvious, it bears repeating that internet providers must tell people about any restrictions on the speed or amount of data promised," Smith said.
Alongside the $60 million payout, AT&T advertisements and representations about data transfer speeds or amount of available data must be accompanied by information regarding restrictions of said features, the report said. The FTC is looking to avoid a repeat of the data throttling imbroglio that led to its action against AT&T some five years ago.
In charges leveled in 2014, the FTC alleged AT&T intentionally failed to notify customers, particularly those subscribed to unlimited data plans, of its data slowdown scheme. At the time, the carrier applied a network provision to heavy data users that caused transfer speed to drop by as much as 90 percent. Some 3.5 million consumers, all of whom paid a premium for unlimited network access, were impacted by the measure.
AT&T settled the case in August, with FTC commissioners slated to vote on the agreement in principle on injunctive provisions and monetary relief. Today's announcement arrives nearly three weeks ahead of a Nov. 21 deadline for review.
Though it settled the case last month, AT&T was quick to point out that none of the FTC's allegations were proven in court. AT&T was "fully prepared to defend" itself in a pending legal fight, the company said, but decided a settlement to be "in the best interests of consumers."
"Even though it has been years since we applied this network management tool in the way described by the FTC, we believe this is in the best interests of consumers," AT&T said in a statement on Tuesday.
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Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
26 Comments
Good
See the fucking shit att did? Fucking shit.
I am SO VERY SICK of criminal corporations saying “It wasn’t proven in court we lied; violated the terms of our contracts; and stole hundreds of millions of dollars from tens of millions of people.
The US Attorney General should implement a rule that NO settlement shall ever be reached with a corporation unless they publicly admit they violated the law and this out of court settlement is SOLELY to preserve capital they would otherwise lose in the court case they could not possibly win.
A corporation is primarily an investment vehicle. It’s second and arguably more important use is to protect the people running it from going to prison for a thousand years for crimes against humanity!
Yes, this particular time no one died. But we’ve seen the exact same slithering behavior from the auto industry when people did die. And the one thing Boeing has NOT done is admit that they intentionally lied to the FAA and killed 383 people just to sell more planes. And
notto put too fine a point on it the VP directly and personally responsible for all this will NEVER lose one cent or spend one decade in federal prison.i guess everyone of their customer will get something less than a $1.
So what do affected customers get ... cue cricket sounds.