AT&T just got hit with a $100 million fine after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

www.washingtonpost.com...

The Federal Communications Commission slapped AT&T with a $100 million fine Wednesday, accusing the country's second largest cellular carrier of improperly slowing down Internet speeds for customers who had signed up for "unlimited" data plans.

I knew it! I'm one of the lucky ones who was grandfathered into the unlimited data plan and I just knew my connection was being throttled! Screw you AT&T, but I'll forever be a slave to the unlimited data plan causing me never leave you!!!!!

a reply to: Swills

I noticed the slow down. Mine's still not any better, is yours?

a reply to: angeldoll

Nope, still garbage. They said they sent out letters and emails to us but I received no such thing.

a reply to: Swills

Why doesn't part or most of that money go to the customer for dealing with slow data speeds? I hate wireless carriers this is garbage! It's not like thier "unlimited data" disappears or runs out....Just give the effing people what they pay good money for you criminals!

a reply to: Swills

Ha. Good.

We too were grandfathered in on the unlimited plan. Unlimited apparently doesn't actually mean unlimited to AT&T, once we hit 3g, our 'speed' is ridiculously slowed. Our contract is up in July, and we've been strongly considering going with another carrier for this reason (among others).

Maybe we will hang on a little longer until we see what their response to this problem is.

a reply to: Swills
Are you going to get any compensation for it?
Or will the government keep it all?

Is this net neutrality in action? Read that the opposite of what you thought it would be? I don't know either way, I don't even own a cell phone.

Just musing about the timing and terminology used.

"grandfathering", lol.

A 100 million dollars, drop in their bucket. The gov will use it to buy bombs.

$100 million fine. Great. Now they will go up on our bills to cover it, so it makes no difference to them. I hate ATT, but my only other option is Comcast, and they are no better.

The hundred mill will probably be picked out of your pockets via some sort of corporate welfare.

AT&T is probably the worst company ever. I am grandfathered in as well but every time I get a new phone they sneakily take it off and I have to spend hours bitching at them to put it back on.

How does unlimited data equal speed? If AT&T stopped their use of data after so much then that would be limited data. Changing the speed still gives them access to data all day long. Sounds frivolous to me.

a reply to: Swills

Bwahahahaha! I think AT&T sucks. They have the worst customer service, bar none. Not surprised to hear they screwed over millions more customers.

I feel badly for any of you who have AT&T as your carrier.

Sprint simply unlimited is the only true unlimited left. And it has to be grandfathered by now I think.

This was always in att and the others unlimited fine print. It's not like they don't spell it out.

Unlimited data, not unlimited speed. Throttling starts after X GB DL. Given the finite time frames, you could call this limited, but at that logoc, unlimited becomes a useless word.

I'll have to look closer and see, but this just looks like another wealth transfer. Seems a daily occurance in oligarchy.

a reply to: Swills

AT&T isn't the only company that's throttling data consumption to those grandfathered into the UNLIMITED plans. If you check the web, you'll see that SPRINT is a big offender too. Maybe this $100 million fine will be a wake-up call to Sprint and any other carrier that's playing deceitful games with their long-term loyal customers.

Oh..by the way, I'm on Unlimited with Sprint. But customers on limited-data plans are furious that the company is intentionally pushing out Android Lollipop updates when the customer is NOT connected to Wi-Fi. Since the update is Billions of data-bytes in size, it's causing lots of people to go over their MONTHLY data allotment, and owe big $$$ to Sprint for doing so.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP
How does unlimited data equal speed? If AT&T stopped their use of data after so much then that would be limited data. Changing the speed still gives them access to data all day long. Sounds frivolous to me.

Unlimited is unlimited. The word means no limits. Changing speed after a certain amount of data is indeed a limit. You have hit a data LIMIT, so they slow your speed.

Additionally, slowing your speed does in fact reduce the amount of data you are able to download, again limiting your data, going against the meaning of unlimited.

Just heard on a radio news channel that if the FCC wins the money will be refunded to customers who were effected.

STM

a reply to: seentoomuch

Good, they can use it to pay my phone bill. Be nice if I didn't have to pay for a year.

a reply to: Swills

Good. This practice needs to end. I remember when I first upgraded to a cell phone and got an unlimited data plan on T-Mobile then couldn't figure out why my speed would suddenly plummet after so long to the point that I couldn't get anything to load on the screen.

At least AT&T now offers rollover data.

Paying for X gigs of data per month but losing whatever you don't use is total BS.

Now that they have rollover, I don't care about losing my unlimited data plan when I switched to an iPhone 5 2 years ago.

a reply to: TinfoilTP

Do you always play Devils advocate or do you not understand that my LTE network should be faster than the old Edge network, or worse, dial up? It's literally like paying for broadband and receiving dial up speeds.