From PC Mag: AT&T has agreed to pay a $60 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission for throttling the mobile internet speeds of customers who had subscribed to "unlimited" data plans.
The FTC initially brought the case against AT&T in 2014, claiming the carrier misled millions of customers over how its data plans were not exactly unlimited. Starting in 2011, the carrier began throttling customers' the speeds by as much as 80 to 90 percent after using as little as 2GB of data in a billing period, the FTC claimed at the time.
In a lawsuit, the commission charged that carrier had failed to publicly disclose the data-throttling practices, which ensnared at least 3.5 million customers. However, AT&T claimed it had mentioned the speed caps via customer bill notices and in a press release before the data plans were launched.
Following a protracted legal battle, AT&T eventually agreed to settle the lawsuit by paying a $60 million fine, which was approved by four out of the five FTC commissioners; Rebecca Kelly Slaughter recused herself. However, the amount is about $40 million less than what the FTC had originally desired.
View: Article @ Source Site
