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US Appeals Court Dismisses AT&T Data Throttling Lawsuit (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the say-what-you-mean dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court in California on Monday dismissed a U.S. government lawsuit that accused ATT Inc of deception for reducing internet speeds for customers with unlimited mobile data plans once their use exceeded certain levels. The company, however, could still face a fine from the Federal Communications Commission regarding the slowdowns, also called "data throttling." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said it ordered a lower court to dismiss the data-throttling lawsuit, which was filed in 2014 by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC sued ATT on the grounds that the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier failed to inform consumers it would slow the speeds of heavy data users on unlimited plans. In some cases, data speeds were slowed by nearly 90 percent, the lawsuit said. The FTC said the practice was deceptive and, as a result, barred under the Federal Trade Commission Act. ATT argued that there was an exception for common carriers, and the appeals court agreed.

4 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Common Carriers! by Trip+Ericson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good to know they think they're a common carrier. This should make future regulations putting them under such regulations stick more easily.

    1. Re:Common Carriers! by sir-gold · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with this is, when at&t has to rely on common carrier status for protection, they claim that the entire company (including the wireless and high-speed internet divisions) are all covered under that common carrier status.

      But when they are required to fulfill common carrier obligations, they claim that only the wire-line division is common carrier, and that the other divisions (wireless and high-speed internet) are are exempt from those obligations.

      at&t has taken the idea of "having your cake, and eating it too" to the extreme

  2. Translation : ISPS are only CC when it suits them by wierd_w · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "There's and exception to what we can get away with concerning our BS marketing since we are a common carrier!"

    (Except we don't like that classification, and want to be a digital media service instead, like AOL/TimeWarner, so we can get a slice of other lucrative markets through flagrant disregard of those nasty net neutrality rules.)

    Now that they have made and been granted a defence based on their being a CC, it should be used to beat them every time time they try to pretend they are a media distribution service instead, like when they want to throttle packets originating outside their network to favor local traffic delivery for the same kind of service, in contravention of NN.)

    But this is fascist 'merica, where corporations are always truthful, and their legal arguments are always right, even they are contradictory. ;)

  3. Re:Unlimited data != unlimited bandwidth. by crbowman · · Score: 1, Insightful

    So you mean there is a limit? And if I need to learn that there are limits on bandwidth then perhaps the carriers ought to learn that too and stop advertising something that doesn't exist.

    I get it that there are limits in that we all share the bandwidth of some critical component at some point and I think generally we're all OK with that. But when you start to impose constraints above and beyond that then I have a problem with you describing it as unlimited.