AT&T says take this fine and shove it, data throttling is harmless

[pRICE cUBE]

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/29/att-...lion-fine/

Last month the United States Federal Communications Commission announced that it would fine AT&T $100 million for misleading customers about its unlimited data plans and not adequately warning customers about throttling their data speeds. AT&T has since responded, arguing that data throttling doesn't harm customers, the company is being prejudged and that its First Amendment rights are being violated in a response first found by The Hill (via Ars Technica).

AT&T, who wants the FCC to drop the fine, claims that it has made all the required disclosures to customers, pointing out that its Unlimited Data Plan customers were more likely to renew their contracts than non-Unlimited Data Plan customers. Additionally, the telecommunications company argued the FCC would be outside of its authority in both imposing the fine and making other requests because the statute of limitations on the case has passed.

[vision63]

AT&T should be re-broken apart.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

vision63 wrote:
AT&T should be re-broken apart.

Hear, hear!

[OWC Jamie]

AT&T subsrcibers won't be paying that fine.

[pinion]

I remember the first time I was throttled on my unlimited plan once I hit 3GB. It was basically unusable. I called to complain and was told that I was guaranteed "up to" a certain amount of speed and that I was still technically unlimited in the amount of bandwidth I could use. Even if it was at a slow 100kbps or whatever. I've hated AT&T ever since but I don't see Verizon to be much better and in my building that's the only 2 carriers that get a signal.

Things have gotten better though. The eventually got me over to Next when that plan came out and for some reason basically gave me the iphone 5S I had just bought on contract because they didn't charge me the extra monthly in the next plan. Then I went from 10GB shared to 15GB shared for the same price. And now I get roll over data. So we never come close to hitting our data cap even though I still use about 5GB a month and I'm paying about $60 less a month than what I was awhile back on unlimited.

But, back on topic, this is BS. They should pay the fine. It certainly wouldn't work out for me if I told them I wasn't going to pay a late fee or whatever other fee they wanted to charge me.

[vision63]

pinion wrote:
I remember the first time I was throttled on my unlimited plan once I hit 3GB. It was basically unusable. I called to complain and was told that I was guaranteed "up to" a certain amount of speed and that I was still technically unlimited in the amount of bandwidth I could use. Even if it was at a slow 100kbps or whatever. I've hated AT&T ever since but I don't see Verizon to be much better and in my building that's the only 2 carriers that get a signal.

Things have gotten better though. The eventually got me over to Next when that plan came out and for some reason basically gave me the iphone 5S I had just bought on contract because they didn't charge me the extra monthly in the next plan. Then I went from 10GB shared to 15GB shared for the same price. And now I get roll over data. So we never come close to hitting our data cap even though I still use about 5GB a month and I'm paying about $60 less a month than what I was awhile back on unlimited.

But, back on topic, this is BS. They should pay the fine. It certainly wouldn't work out for me if I told them I wasn't going to pay a late fee or whatever other fee they wanted to charge me.

That fine isn't enough money. It's just a few dollars to them. They should suffer real punishment. Even if they pay, they basically got away with throttling your service.