T-Mobile Fined $48 Million By FCC For Mischaracterizing 'Unlimited' Plan and Throttling Users' Data (bloomberg.com)

T-Mobile will have to pay $48 million in fines after reaching a settlement with the FCC over the way it promoted its unlimited data plans. T-Mobile's unlimited data plans don't charge you for going over a certain data limit, but the carrier can slow down connection speeds after you reach a certain threshold. From a Bloomberg report: The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday announced the settlement, including a $7.5 million fine and $35.5 million worth of discounted gear or data for customers of third-largest U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile and its MetroPCS unit. An investigation found that company policy allows T-Mobile to decrease data speeds when customers on plans sold as unlimited exceed a monthly data threshold, the FCC said in a news release. The agency heard from hundreds of "unhappy" customers who complained of slow speeds and said they weren't receiving what they were sold, according to the news release.

Comments

AT&T

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T does this, too. Are they gonna get slapped down for this, too?

Re: AT&T

[Anonymous Coward]

The new "unlimited" plans clearly state that your connection will be throttled at a certain point. That should give them cover going forward.

This ruling is on plans where the customer was not told they would be throttled.

At least that is my understanding.

Re: AT&T

[Khyber]

No, that should not cover them, as they are advertising a limit after the fact. The issue here is where they say "unlimited" which by any technically-competent person would imply you can use as much bandwidth as you can receive at any time with zero time restrictions or other restrictions.

If you advertise throttling at any point and time, you are lying about your unlimited service. Unlimited means NO LIMITS. Period. Oxford has yet to change that definition, and fuck 'legal' definitions as they are often not based upon factual information.

Re: AT&T

[SvnLyrBrto]

The problem here is that words mean things. And when the carriers throw out words like "unlimited", when what they're selling is not in fact unlimited; they are being duplicitous. And they absolutely deserve to be slapped down for that. And whether a technical person should know that they are lying does not change the fact that they are lying. Remember, not everyone is a technical person. If they'd just spell out EXACTLY what they are selling at EXACTLY the price they're charging upfront, with no "gotchas" buried in the fine print, there'd be no issue.

Honestly? They're dumb data pipes, like any other. There's no good reason they should be treated like anything else. And I wish they'd stop trying to imagine themselves otherwise and just sell me bandwidth like any other provider: Give me guaranteed and burstable Mbps rates; and sod off as to whether I use it for voice, data, video, music, tethering, VPN, running a web or email server, or just downloading Linux ISOs to /dev/null 24/7 because I can.

Re: AT&T

[magarity]

T-Mobile is very clear that they mean there is not an amount of data beyond which a user will incur additional fees or penalties. Such an amount would be a limit. Their advertising is completely true for that meaning of unlimited. They are quite up front with this; it is not buried in the small print that over a certain amount the user's speed may be throttled. This is fine is definitely a case of some crybaby nitpicking definitions. I've had every one of the major carriers and T-Mobile is the only one that's not only easy to understand but actually has this kind of plan for a long time now. I'd like to know if some congresscritter who gets big donations from ATT or Verizon called the FCC to "look into it".

Re: AT&T

[Immerman]

As I understand it though, the throttling has nothing to do with congestion - you go over your "4G limit", you get throttled to "3G Speeds", even at 2am on a Tuesday ight when the network is basically idle.

Still, I think they have offered by far the most honest "unlimited" plan - it seems like everyone has an "unlimited" plan available, none of which are actually unlimited, and personally I'd much prefer to hit my limit and be throttled than cut off, hit with a bunch of unexpected fees, or have my plan automatically terminated, all of which other providers are doing.

Still, it would be really nice to see "unlimited" plans disappear completely. With the exception of the not-artificially-limited plans customers actually expect: No matter how much you download, you'll always be treated just like every other customer. Yeah, there's still technical limitations, but if you object to technical limitations, "unlimited" becomes a completely useless word in almost every context, not just phone plans.

Something's missing

[Sarten-X]

I feel like there's something more to this story.

T-Mobile's "unlimited" plans are what I use, and they've always been pretty straightforward about what that means... They don't hit you with a hard-stop limit, but after a particular chunk of full-speed data, they cut you back to "3G speed". All of their marketing material that's I've paid attention to has stated that plainly (to an engineer), in print that wasn't particularly small.

I can't say I've ever found the advertisements to be particularly misleading (or the policy to be particularly limiting), but I'm not as touchy as some consumers are, I guess.

Re:Something's missing

[almitydave]

Yeah, same here. We have a 3GB/line plan, but they've always been clear that you can use more than that but at a slower speed. I've only ever seen marketing to this effect. Were they offering something somewhere without including that disclaimer? That'd be surprising to hear, as they're generally quite up-front about the conditions. As for those saying "unlimited means unlimited, and any limit of any kind means they're lying", well, no, they've specifically said the amount of data is unlimited, not the speed. Two different things.

More worrisome to me is that they just announced they're going to implement throttling of wi-fi tethered data when the network gets "busy", which seems a clear violation of net neutrality. What happened, T-Mobile? You use to be cool!

I thought this was obvious?

[CheeseTroll]

I've been a T-mobile customer for several years, and I thought it was pretty obvious that they'd throttle the data when you reached your plan's threshold. Did they, at some point, market the plans as "unlimited data at 4G speeds"? Or are certain customers being deliberately obtuse?

Beats the heck out of getting cut off completely, or worse - getting charged a zillion bucks for data overages.

Re:I thought this was obvious?

[CheeseTroll]

Like a good Slashdotter, I originally posted without reading the article, but then went back and read the details.
Sounds like this applies to their "unlimited" plan which was not clear that they'd *eventually* throttle that plan, too.

FTA: "T-Mobile failed to adequately inform its unlimited data plan customers that, under a “Top 3 Percent Policy,” their data would be slowed at times if they used more than 17 gigabytes in a given month, the FCC said. It said the company had agreed to update its disclosures to better explain who may be affected."

Oops.

Re:I thought this was obvious?

[Beetle B.]

Must be a different plan than mine.

Mine is "Unlimited Data", but very clearly states that it will be throttled after 5 GB. It's not hidden or in fine print.

Haven't we covered this before?

[wjcofkc]

Over the last year or two, T-Mobile has redefined and even re-labeled what their unlimited plan means. Regardless, they have always been absolutely forthcoming about detail changes. Although I can see where that might get confusing, especially for customers who renew into a new plan without realizing it. So I guess it must be a slow day at the FCC.

On a personal anecdote, I very recently ditched my business plan for AT&T after a T-Mobile business rep tried to sell off my unused lines for a full year cash up front. Same rep then managed to deactivate my primary phone. I filed a complaint and he still works there.

Re: A speed limit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's constantly available and there are no limits on when you can use it. In one very clear use of the word unlimited, the plan is unlimited.

I thought they were very clear about the throttling. This is ignorant people being upset because they aren't smart enough to understand their plan.

Yeah, ouch.

[ashshy]

That's barely a slap on the wrist for Big Magenta. More of a gentle tickle, really.

Using free data sources like Yahoo Finance, you can easily see that TMUS collected $33.9 billion in revenue over the last four quarters. $1.1 billion trickled down to become bottom-line profit. This $48 million fine is a rounding error compared to the company's sales and just 4.4% of its trailing profits.

Put another way, the company has 67 million total subscribers. If T-Mobile paid back the entire fine directly to its customers, it'd be a grand total of 72 cents each. Please sir, may I have another?

Re:A speed limit

[gnick]

A speed limit is infact a limit, so the FCC is correct - the plan is not unlimited.

So you're demanding unlimited speed? Good luck with that.

"Unlimited" != unlimited

[cmdr_klarg]

Let's get some truth in advertising please? Anything less than full bandwidth 24x7 should not be called "unlimited".