The Federal Trade Commission has delivered a second slap on one of America’s largest telecom companies’ wrists – the FTC accuses AT&T of misleading millions of its customers over its unlimited data offers. The second largest telecommunications service provider of the US has charged its customers for “unlimited data”, but they reduced their browsing speeds, sometimes even by 90%, ZDNet reports. The sentiment of the US customer protection agency was summed up in three words said by FTC’s chairwoman Edith Ramirez: “Unlimited is unlimited”.
The FTC accuses AT&T that, despite promising its customers unlimited data transfer included in its “unlimited” data plans, it throttles data after the user downloads 2 gigabytes – an amount a user can easily consume in a single day. According to the commission’s claims, the telecom giant has introduced this conduct in 2011. This might have affected a number of 3.5 million AT&T customers, the FTC says. The behavior of the service provider is against the law – it has applied one-sided changes the customers’ terms while they were still under contract, besides failing to adequately disclose its program.
AT&T has responded to the agency’s claims shortly after these allegations were published. The telecom company has called the claims “baseless”, arguing that they have nothing to do with their network management program.
The FTC’s allegations are baseless and have nothing to do with the substance of our network management program. It’s baffling as to why the FTC would choose to take this action against a company that, like all major wireless providers, manages its network resources to provide the best possible service to all customers, and does it in a way that is fully transparent and consistent with the law and our contracts.
Wayne Watts, AT&T General Counsel
This is the second time the FTC goes after AT&T this month – earlier in October the telecom giant was forced to pay back over $80 million to its customers, after billing them for unauthorized third party charges.