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FCC To Fine AT&T $100M For Throttling Unlimited Data Customers
New submitter Wargames writes: According to the article in the New York Times, AT&T is getting fined $100,000,000 for its doublespeak redefinition of the word "Unlimited". The FCC says AT&T failed to adequately notify its customers that they could receive speeds slower than the normal network speeds AT&T advertised and that these actions violated the FCC's 2010 Open Internet Order. “Unlimited means unlimited,” Travis LeBlanc, the F.C.C.’s chief of the enforcement bureau, said in a statement on Wednesday. “As today’s action demonstrates, the commission is committed to holding accountable those broadband providers who fail to be fully transparent about data limits.”
What does that amount to? A month? A week's worth of revenue? Show some teeth dammit! Revoke their charter...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If there are any AT&T techs here who were part of the throttling, I hope you get replaced by a H1-b, have to retrain them, and get clean their asses the Indian way after they had some really really bad curry the night before.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, You were only following orders.
To be overturned in an appeal.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
Like that will stick. They pay attorneys just to keep appealing that shit. They'll never pay up.
More of this please. The marketing people have completely lost it. I just wish that fine would have been x100.
I used to have one of those "unlimited" accounts but because the throttling was interfering with my work so much, I was forced to "upgrade" to a much more expensive plan. Does anyone know if there will be a path back to the unlimited plans we were pushed out of?
"Ha ha"
$100,000,000 sounds like a decent amount of money, but how does that compare to their monthly revenue or profit?
Companies - especially large ones - have patience and the means to outlast individual activists, current public awareness or opinions. They will try and try again, they will slowly work on removing laws and regulations they dislike, until they finally manage to get away with it.
yar, how many appeals will 100M buy you?
It doesn't matter. Big corps retain fill time attorneys anyway. Just keep appealing.
It feels like 2001 all over again when the ACCC s heavily slapping Telstra around in Australia for the same practices. Then subsequently for not providing usage data once the limits were openly defined... And then again once it was found out that they were limiting based on real-time stats but providing users day of stats.
USA you have a way to go yet.
So "unlimited" means "unlimited" but "shall not be infringed" doesn't mean "shall not be infringed"??
I predict next year, AT&T's rates will magically go up by $100,000,000 divided by the number of their customers.
AT&T now knows the cost of cheating; next to nothing. And they can now budget for it.
The winner here is AT&T.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
If AT&T had a wireless monopoly we'd be paying $10 per megabyte of 2g data right now.
New "fine recovery fees" on your monthly invoice.
Anyone who thinks that a fine levied against a corporation *isn't* passed onto the consumer might want to buy this bridge that I have for sale...
Look, when you get to keep all the money you stole and pay a fine of 0.01 pct of the amount you stole, it's like a checking fee for being one day late.
Until we see real jail time for senior execs who signed off on these illegal actions, it's meaningless.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The timing of this stinks of a maneuver engineered to give Wheeler an excuse to keep the merger review with DTV on hold for another 6 months or quietly kill it. Either AT&T pays the fine and puts $100m in the FCC's pocket simultaneously admitting fault and gives Wheeler an excuse to kill the deal himself, or AT&T spends the time and resources to fight the claim which gives the FCC a reason to keep the deal in limbo long enough for the two companies to need to jump through other regulatory hurdles again as those approvals pass their respective deadlines, like the extension they've already had to get from Mexico's regulatory bodies.
At the end of the day, it's quite clear that there's no love for this deal, but that it's simply on the table gives the FCC leverage to squeeze favors and funding from both companies without actually saying no. Keep in mind this fine is purely an administrative fine, not a suit, so affected customers will never see a red cent of it.
AT&T will just pay a lawyer $99,999,999 to make it go away.
Somebody at AT&T forgot to make that recurring cash donation to the political party in power and *now* they will pay the price... Come on AT&T you know how this game is played, how the FCC does "business" here. Suck it up and write that check so we can get this overturned on appeal.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This is not the government fixing a problem for consumers but rather the government finding a revenue source. By levying huge fines the FCC can fund itself. Our state and local governments are using this same technique. They love those red light ticket cameras, parking meters that zero out when you leave the space (double billing), speed traps, etc. More government so we can have more government. Big of the bigger.
So who gets the $100 million?
We're going to fine AT&T U.S.$ 100,000,000.00 for every person that ever was on AT&T's unlimited plan.
The government isn't the injured party here -- that would be AT&T's customers. Why is the government getting $100 million instead of that money going to the customers who didn't get the service they paid for?
All the big carriers... excluding t-mobile from my own experience... are these disorganized corporate monsters that don't even know what they're doing half the time.
I don't think they're half as evil as they appear... its just this relentless incompetence. Most of it is in the management structure.
A good thing ATT should do is split in maybe a dozen different companies. And then NOT immediately fucking merge back together again. Yes it improves your stock value but you're well past your peter principle with anything that big.
Anyone had to fight with ATT to get them to admit they said something or did something or said they were going to do something? Even pulling up my account when I had the 15 million digit number was hard on a few occasions. They have so many databases, so many departments, so many overlapping jurisdictions...
I was switching some old copper phone lines over to a VOIP system and at first ATT was saying "not possible"... then they said "we'll do it for you and it will cost you basically nothing for all the bells and whistles"... then the people I was talking to had black bags thrown over their heads, tossed in unmarked vans, and flown by cargo planes to a black site somewhere that involves a lot of BDSM for some reason.
The whole process was so rediculious that I just said f' it... and set up an asterisk box. We still get a good portion of our internet access from ATT but I refuse to talk to them about any other service besides internet at this point.
Listen ATT, at the very least, create subsidiary companies. You don't need to call EVERYTHING ATT. Have it be owned and controlled by ATT. But give it its own website, marketing, phone numbers, etc. If the service is worth any money to you then it is in your interest to make the customer know you EVEN DO IT. A lot of ATTs services are effectively fucking secrets. They don't tell anyone they can do it. And that's just stupidity because the services are awesome. But try to get that department tomorrow through their corporate phone maze... and fail. If ATT mobile became a different company from att copper from att voip from att broad band from att fiber... etc. Each should just be their own thing. you can put att in the name if you want. But make it a different largely independent management structure.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If a person on minimum wage gets fined it's almost always a speeding ticket, which is usually $300 minimum ( and $500 if it's excessive, like what AT&T was fined for).
I think the grandparents numbers are a bit off. Min wage is $7.25 hr. About 15% of that goes to taxes that no poor person can get out of (even accounting for earned income credits which is really meant to offset other taxes the poor pay). It's about $6.16/hr take home (profit) or about $37 bucks.
So if we were to fine AT&T the way we fine the poor it would be about $1.3 billion, give or take.
But OTOH the poor person didn't make any profit from speeding (unless you want to count getting to their shitty job as "profit", but that's just being a vindictive jerk if you're gonna do that). The reason us libtardos want to find Corps way, way more than the pleabs is so that it _hurts_. You have to fine them more money than they made doing the illegal activity or they're going to do it again. They have to, since it's profitable and corporations have a legal requirement to do whatever's most profitable for the shareholders (they really do, look it up).
See, that $500 bucks _hurts_ the guy at McDonalds. It might even be what turns him into a hobo when he can't pay his rent. At the very least he's not going to do _anything_ except work and eat (and not much of that) for the next 6 months to a year. He'll remember the pain of losing that money and think twice about speeding. Let's give AT&T that feeling. Then maybe we'll stop seeing crap like this happen.
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Corporate money is very much like the traffic fine problem. A poor man gets a $200 fine for driving ten miles over the limit. That $200 may exceed his weekly take home pay. A multi millionaire gets the same fine and it is so trivial as to mean absolutely nothing. Now if both men had to spend a week in jail we would have equality in the system. So just why do we not do that? it is simple. First the system would lose money by putting them in jail. Secondly the rich demand being exempt from the law and one way or another make pay offs to keep that immunity. So we have two factors and a very unpleasant reality. The reality is that our justice system is all about money and not about justice at all. If the public becomes aware at the same time we face rebellion and riot. It also proves what many black leaders have fought against in that the poor are often a target of police. Police placate the public by arresting unpopular racial or ethnic groups. In many cases police are shown to knowingly arrest innocent people and allow them to go all the way to death row. Chicago is notorious for police sweeping up some poor soul and telling the media that the bad guy has been caught. And it throws the entire system into jeopardy. Since we know that sometimes lies and false evidence are created by police departments how can we have faith that in any trial a person is not being railroaded? In essence reasonable doubt is in effect in almost every case before the courts and if we do what we are supposed to do we find almost all defendants not guilty without regard to the supposed evidence against them. Society crumbles as a consequence.
Don't sell services you cannot provide. AT&T started this whole thing after jumping into bed with Apple and hoping to cash in on the iPhone. Unfortunately they did not have the infrastructure to provide the kind of bandwidth that was required. Its like a car maker promising unlimited gas to sell cars and then saying you can only have 3 gallons a week. This is why AT&T sucks and always will.
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" comes from a time when mob justice was close to the only justice.
Many years ago I dropped a question at the central information website of the Dutch govenment, which led to a dialog along these lines:
Me: I often hear that one is supposed to know the law. The law is quite a bit bigger than I can memorize, so could you please tell me what exactly it is that I'm expected to know?
Them: Well, there isn't actually a law that says you have to know the law, so it doesn't really matter. It's just that if you do something wrong you're expected to know you're wrong so you can be held responsible for it.
Me: I don't see how knowledge of laws I'm not aware of can spontaneously materialize in my brain when I'm about to break them. So it seems to me that either I can't be held responsible for breaking such laws or I am required to know the entire law after all.
Them: I'll forward your question to an expert.
The expert, someone at the Ministry of Justice, gave a short, evasive answer using some terms that were new to me and looking them up didn't clarify a thing. Of course I would have been pretty surprised if there was a meaningful answer, so I left it at that. But I did see this as a confirmation that this huge legal framework that is supposed to serve justice is based on a rather shaky assumption.
Will I get my share of this money? Or is this just another Washington tax that the Feds will keep for themselves?
Remember Comcast?
How i wish i had held on to that letter.
Have you read my journal today?
Of course, none of this will go to the customers. Only to the cronies.
So I'm still grandfathered in on one of these AT&T "Unlimited" accounts, should I expect to not be limited any longer? It is still very obvious every month when I hit the soft cap whatever it is, then after that things load fairly slow, which I've grown used to over the years. None of this arbitration really seems to focus on the present, but rather the past.
When a hundred million dollars is mere chump change, not even a wrist slap.
Yesterday, three of the five FCC commissioners voted to issue a Notice of Apparent Liability against the Maximum Bit Rate program and fine us $100 million. As you likely know, the Maximum Bit Rate program – which has been in place for years – helps manage wireless network congestion. Once customers on unlimited plans exceed a certain threshold of data usage in a month, their speeds may be reduced.
A Notice of Apparent Liability is not a finding of liability. It is an order that may be and, in this case, certainly will vigorously be disputed with facts and, if necessary, contest in court to the fullest extent possible.
Here are the facts:
The FCC in the past has identified this specific practice as a legitimate and reasonable way to manage network resources for the benefit of all customers.
The FCC has known for years that ALL of the major carriers use it.
We have been fully transparent with our customers, providing them with notice in multiple ways (text message, email, bill notices, news releases, website) – all going well beyond the FCC's disclosure requirements.
If you want more detail, here is a filing we made with the FCC earlier this year that lays out facts that contradict many of the FCC’s accusations.
You should note that two (Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly) of the FCC’s five commissioners did NOT agree with the FCC’s action and the fine. In a statement, Commissioner Pai explained his dissent:
“A government “rule” suddenly revised, yet retroactive. Inconvenient facts ignored. A business practice sanctioned after years of implied approval. A penalty conjured from the executioner’s imagination. These and more Kafkaesque badges adorn this Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL), in which the Federal Communications Commission seeks to impose a $100 million fine against AT&T for failing to comply with the apparently opaque “transparency” rule the FCC adopted in its 2010 Net Neutrality Order. In particular, the NAL alleges that AT&T failed to disclose that unlimited-data-plan customers could have their data speeds reduced temporarily as part of the company’s approach to managing network congestion.
“Because the Commission simply ignores many of the disclosures AT&T made; because it refuses to grapple with the few disclosures it does acknowledge; because it essentially rewrites the transparency rule ex post by imposing specific requirements found nowhere in the 2010 Net Neutrality Order; because it disregards specific language in that order and related precedents that condone AT&T’s conduct; because the penalty assessed is drawn out of thin air; in short, because the justice dispensed here condemns a private actor not only in innocence but also in ignorance, I dissent.”