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Court Refuses To Dismiss AT&T Throttling Case
Taco Cowboy sends news that a federal judge has shot down AT&T's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company deceived customers by throttling their mobile data speeds. The suit was filed by the Federal Trade Commission after it found AT&T was charging customers for "unlimited" data plans, but then throttling their bandwidth once certain thresholds were reached. AT&T tried to have the suit thrown out by saying the FTC was exceeding its authority. Judge Edward Chen disagrees (PDF), saying jurisdiction for their conduct had not yet passed to the Federal Communications Commission when it occurred. The throttling affected "at least 3.5 million customers."
More likely every AT&T cellular customer will receive a $.50 credit, and the lawyers will receive millions.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I wouldn't say very old.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Pure socialism (which is not in itself a bad thing) when combined with players of the same moral fiber as those in the telecom industry creates exactly the problem that you are trying to avoid, except now you have to sue the government for change.
Responsiveness to consumer needs comes along a curve drawn by the number of competitors. Monopolies are the worst, duopolies, almost as bad, I will argue quad-opolies as the inflection point and I'm surrounded by restaurants that will cook me anything they have ingredients for any time I want, so somewhere in the hundreds businesses become very accommodating.
The four big telco's in the US are competitive more than they are cooperative. T-Mo (the Walmart of carriers) does disruptive shit to the others all the time and they have to at least pretend to have a matching game. No-Contracts was their latest. Previously, the cost of your phone was spread into your bill, but your bill didn't drop when your phone was paid for. So you were either under contract, or you were paying a $20 a month premium for using your old phone, win/win for the carrier. That sucked for the consumer, but it's how every one did it until, in the spirit of competition, one company decided to muck with the rules. The consumers won.
I have my issues with all the carriers, but nation wide networks are a non-trivial investment and spectrum isn't infinite. I think 5 or 6 is all you could squeeze in, and I don't think you'd see much more benefit.
We need law suits like this to succeed, so lying to the public has a serious cost. We can give all the damages to some nice charity, I don't need a $3 a month refund for 11 months of service, I need AT&T's marketing department to think next time, "this lie will be expensive."