AT&T Sued for Cutting Back on Speed of Unlimited Data Plans

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced its move on suing AT&T for slowing down data speeds for some customers. These customers were known to have been using unlimited data plans provided by the telecom giant, which actually had a limit. The customers found out the reality only later when they exceeded their data usage during a billing cycle, which resulted in the slowing down of their Internet speed.

The FTC officials have strongly condemned this inconsiderate step taken by the company. FTC has also held the company responsible for misleading millions of its mobile customers, charging them for so-called unlimited data plans that were in reality not unlimited at all. The agency alleged that in some cases, AT&T throttled the data speeds of customers by more than 90 percent, preventing them from streaming movies, loading websites and even using the phone's GPS function. With this irresponsible act of the company, as many as 3.5 million customers have been throttled 25 million times.

AT&T should have adequately informed its customers well in advance about the usage of the plans and the charges. Had the customers been informed well about the data they could access, the entire episode would have taken a different direction preventing the unnecessary harassment and hassle. Although AT&T’s general counsel, Wayne Watts has called the FTC’s complaint “baseless” and has defended the company’s move by claiming they have been completely transparent with customers, the FTC is holding their ground on the irresponsible move made by the company.

The FTC said that AT&T got thousands of complaints from customers who said their speeds were slowing down. Then, AT&T went after people who canceled their service, the agency said. When customers canceled their contracts after being throttled, AT&T charged those customers early termination fees, which typically amounts to hundreds of dollars.

With increasingly innovative technological enhancements in phones and app, wireless networks too have become faster, which has enabled people to consume increasing amounts of data. In response to this increased data consumption, wireless companies have moved to tiered data plans, offering a fixed amount of data per month. If a person uses data over and above their allotted plan, they are bound to pay a penalty.