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FTC Sues AT&T For Throttling 'Unlimited' Data Plan Customers Up To 90%
An anonymous reader writes The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today announced it is suing AT&T. The commission is charging the carrier for allegedly misleading millions of its smartphone customers by changing the terms while customers were still under contract for "unlimited" data plans that were, well, limited. "AT&T promised its customers 'unlimited' data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise," FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. "The issue here is simple: 'unlimited' means unlimited."
How apropos.
Bait and switch is illegal. Where are the criminal indictments against the decision makers?
The word unlimited means NO LIMITS. None. Zero. Nada. Without any restraints.
You can't advertise something as 'no peanuts' and then put peanuts in it. Similarly, you can't advertise something, or worse, put sell a contract for unlimited and then put limits on it.
The basic problem is false advertising here. The providers wanted the right to lie.
That is against the law. They deserve to be punished, and punished severely.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Eh, technically they're not lying. I have unlimited data, but unlimited to the point of the bandwidth they assign me(as is always the case with any unlimited service). I don't have a guaranteed speed in my 10-15 year old AT&T unlimited contract.
> A fine won't do it, since innocent shareholders will suffer.
How and why are shareholders innocent? They bought part of the company, the company behaved badly and got fined, they, as part owners, are partly responsible. Them taking a hit on share price is absolutely just, and I see no reason to make any special exceptions for them just to avoid that.
Now if the shareholders then wish to claim they were wronged by bad decisions the company made which were against the best interests of the shareholders, I wouldn't say they are wrong, but it really is a separate issue.
Now seeing the company first fined, then have its stock slide, and then be sued by its shareholders....THAT seems like it would send the right message, don't you think?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Except the service being sold (in this case) is advertised as "unlimited". Having your service go from full speed "unlimited" to walking speed "unlimited" because you hit an undefined/invisible cap is fraudulent.
By that logic, police officers should be able to arbitrarily fine you for speeding in an area anywhere you are, no matter what your speed.
"But the sign says '40 mph'!"
"Yeah, but this UNMARKED spot is a 5 mph zone. Oh and for taking a hostile tone with me, I'm going to throw in some extra fines. Pay the fine or I'll have your car impounded."
And it looks like AT&T hasn't learned their lesson. Break 'em up again. Do the same to Comcast and Verizon. Hell, break up Microsoft and Google as well, just for shits and giggles. America is long overdue for some trust-busting.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Unlimited means there are no limits. By definition, throttling after a certain "limit' is a limit. Their usage not only does not agree with colloquial usage, but it also disagrees with logic. "No limits, but if you use too much, we'll punish you."
Unlimited: without any limits or restrictions
No matter how "unlimited" a data cap supposedly is, if the bandwidth is limited, then there is only a limited amount of data you will ever be able to pull through it over a monthly period. So therefore it's limited, QED.
To posit an absurd example to prove the point, if AT&T advertised an "unlimited bandwidth" connection that could only download one byte per minute, your effectively monthly data cap would be: 60 (seconds) * 60 (minutes) * 24 (hours) * 31 (days) = 2.67 Mb per month.
Artificially throttling bandwidth is imposing a lower data cap, period.