Thursday, June 18, 2015

AT&T Faces $100M Fine Over Unlimited Data Plans

Dallas-based AT&T is being fined $100M, the Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday, for misleading customers about its unlimited mobile data plans. The FCC alleges that AT&T severely slowed down the data speeds for customers with unlimited data plans, without providing adequate notification of those slowdowns to its customers. The FCC claims that AT&T capped speeds which were "much slower" than normal network speeds that AT&T advertised, and impaired the ability of AT&T's customers to access the Internet. Saying that "unlimited is unlimited", the FCC emphasized that AT&T had continued to advertise those plans as "unlimited"--even though those plans were being throttled above certain data caps, which is says is a violation of the 2010 Open Internet Transparency Rule.