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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!”
To be overturned in an appeal.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
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?
You're comparing some front-line network admin who changed a setting on some networking gear as requested by their management, to prioritise some traffic in a way that probably still left everyone better off than they were just a few years ago, probably with no knowledge or reasonable expectation of having knowledge of any commercial deals or what the effect would be on any specific customers... to Nazis who executed Jews in death camps?
And with a bit of anti-India racism as well?
It's pretty early in the thread for such a poor attempt at trolling, AC.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
$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 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.
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
Luckily, I was the opposite of that when I was an AT&T CSR. One month I was the highest "refund amount" CSR in the entire company...in January 2011 I returned over $17,000 to AT&T customers mostly by refunding activation fees the stores lied to customers about. I got audited too, but I stayed under the $250 limit we had...I just had a ton of calls post-Christmas. I give props to the SLC Punk movie ending, "attacking from the inside".
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.
Either goes straight into the FCC's pockets if they pay it, or divvied up among lawyers to fight it. It's an administrative fine, there's no scenario where it ever makes it back to the affected customers.
And, in your world, management = tech ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
How in-fucking-sane are you?
Almost as insane as someone who goes to work for AT&T even though they know that they are the devil. We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company. What the everliving fuck. What happened to personal responsibility? Working for AT&T is nowhere near as bad as exterminating jews (as one commenter complained) but it's still pretty fucking sleazy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lots of people work for shitty management. So what? It's a case of blaming the victim.
People just want a goddam job.
Look at Chick fil A. The owner is homophobic. Let's you and me go beat the shit out of his employees over it.
As for the remark you mention, I find it to be offensive, irrelevant, and not mine.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
ATT trivia time:
There exists multiple employee types at the company. They are:
Executive Level
Management
Non-management ( union )
Contractors
Overseas business units
" Techs " can be pretty much anyone from the bottom of that list up to roughly a Director level, ( 3rd line mgmt, think CCIE types ).
Fourth line and above are pretty much the executive levels and this is where tech skills vanish and MBA types begin.
Thus, it should be noted that some mgmt types actually are considered techs.
Source: Sadly, I work there. I'm sure I'll have a wall of text propaganda email waiting for me tomorrow morning :|
Look at Chick fil A. The owner is homophobic. Let's you and me go beat the shit out of his employees over it.
Well, no. But if someone has a choice of where to work, and they choose to work there, they're an asshole.
As for the remark you mention, I find it to be offensive, irrelevant, and not mine.
I was consolidating, and covering bases. But that's good to know.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I worked for a bit for AT&T, but I also did over $17K in customer refunds in a single month...
I agree with you on all points.
Consider the restrictions we're imposing on a person trying to make a living:
1.) The person has choices about where to work
2.) They choose to work there anyway (assumes they even know about the place)
3.) Boom. They are an asshole.
How many people dig through years and years of stories that are in the public domain to see if they have to become an asshole to be gainfully employed?
How many "techs" do you think are going to bail from AT&T, now that this story is out, because they don't want to become an asshole?
Thanks.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
How many people dig through years and years of stories that are in the public domain
People with a little bit of technical knowledge are often familiar with which ISPs, telcos etc. are bad, not least because there is always someone there to tell them. Meanwhile I know personally people who are willing to tell themselves whatever they have to tell themselves to justify their high-dollar gig at Halliburton.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Remember Comcast?
How i wish i had held on to that letter.
Have you read my journal today?
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.
Halliburton's business practices are not the concern of the employee any more than the military's is the concern of, say, the enlisted men.
In both cases, there are protections afforded employees who refuse to conduct illegal activities, but, in both cases, an individual can appeal to authority and are not liable for their employer's actions.
Your agenda aside, we return to the reality that people who want a paycheck work where they can get one.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Halliburton's business practices are not the concern of the employee any more than the military's is the concern of, say, the enlisted men.
That is a lot of shit, and you are probably a bad person if you have to tell yourself that. The enlisted men are absolutely responsible for the bad behavior of the military. We don't need such a large, strong standing military, and having one is prerequisite for wandering around the globe shitting on other people's affairs. If those people had chosen some more scrupulous career than "paid murderer for profit" then the USA wouldn't be able to project power all over everyone else.
You may not be legally liable (although you can be prosecuted for war crimes, so you're wrong about that, too) but you are absolutely morally liable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You don't know the difference between bullshit and wild honey.
I actually spent a long time in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club, out on the Big Pond.
State your experience and then we can discuss.
Until then, get off my pasture.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I actually spent a long time in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club, out on the Big Pond.
Were you drafted, or did you join the baby-killing industry willingly?
State your experience and then we can discuss.
My father was a Marine. Went to Korea. He regretted enlisting to help the rich fucks running this nation get richer at the expense of the world.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I apologize for any and all remarks that I have made that have contributed to your discomfort and I am very sorry that you have father issues that have shaped your world view beyond any hope of meaningful dialog.
Be well.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I am very sorry that you have father issues that have shaped your world view beyond any hope of meaningful dialog.
I do have father issues, but they didn't preclude me from learning from him — both by positive and negative example. I considered his advice to avoid the military-industrial complex to be valid, and taking it to be wise. But that's because I'm anti-murder, especially murder for profit. You don't need to apologize for my father issues, though, unless you're one of my dad's old drinking buddies, or one of my relatives or in-laws.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"