New York Sues Charter Over Slow Internet Speeds (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: New York filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Charter Communications Inc of short-changing customers who were promised faster internet speeds than it could deliver. The lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan accused Charter's Spectrum unit, until recently known as Time Warner Cable, of systematically defrauding customers since 2012 by promising and charging for services it knew it could not offer. At least 640,000 subscribers signed up for high-speed plans but got slower speeds, and many subscribers were unable to access promised online content such as Facebook, Netflix, YouTube and various gaming platforms, the complaint said. The lawsuit seeks "full restitution" for customers, as well as hefty civil fines. Among the allegations in the complaint was an accusation that Time Warner Cable leased older-generation modems to 900,000 subscribers knowing that the modems could not achieve faster internet speeds.

Comments

Better Summary for Nerds

[bengoerz]

We're nerds. Lets summarize like it:

Charter customers with 100+Mbps plans were leased old-spec modems that couldn't support those speeds. Charter promised the FCC that it would swap the modems, and the FCC excluded speedtest results from these users from national averages. Fast forward: Charter didn't switch the modems. Now NY State is suing it for defrauding customers.

Re:Better Summary for Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Is California having a similar lawsuit? I just signed up for their Spectrum service, was promised to receive 100 Mbps, but have consistently gotten less than 40 Mbps since day one. The alternative is Frontier at the same price for a tenth the speed, but obviously, we consumers should be getting what we're paying for, right?

Ban them from doing business

[BitZtream]

In that area, take away all of their lines in the ground and nationalize them, make the infrastructure available to anyone.

When you, as a corporation intentionally defraud the public, you loose any infrastructure that supported that defrauding directly, and possible infrastructure that helped indirectly.

After a few of them lose an entire city like New York for some stupid bullshit like this, they'll change their bullshit tune.

Until they actually get punished, nothing is going to change.