The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and AT&T have reached an agreement over a data throttling lawsuit, which accused the carrier of slowing down data sent to wireless devices. A federal court ruling has revealed that the two parties agreed to a settlement on August 2, and requested a 90-day stay so that FCC can review and vote on the agreement. That said, the value of the settlement remains unknown. Key sources, however, suggest that the deal will include an injunction as well as a monetary payment.
To recall, the FTC sued AT&T in 2014 for throttling unlimited data plans without clearly informing its customers. The commission stated that the carrier didn’t do enough to notify or warn customers that it massively slows down their data after it reaches a specific limit. FTC’s primary concern was AT&T’s integrity and honesty, as the carrier changed the terms of use for subscribers without providing them with proper information.
In response, AT&T claimed that the FTC’s lawsuit was ‘baseless’ as only 3 percent of customers were affected by the change of terms, who were eventually notified of data throttling over text. That said, FTC argued that AT&T didn’t give its customers an apparent warning, which applied to users that subscribed to AT&T’s early unlimited data plans.
While back in 2016, an appeals court stated that AT&T’S ‘common carrier status’ implied that they don’t need to reveal the throttle as per FTC. In 2018, however, a federal court allowed FTC to move forward with its case against AT&T, stating that data services weren’t part of the common carrier status.
It remains to be seen what FTC’s settlement with AT&T would mean for the rest of the industry, as many carriers in the country now practice data throttling. New research claims that carriers in the US are involved in more aggressive data throttling practices than what they’ve led subscribers to believe. The study found that the big four carriers in the US aggressively throttle data, irrespective of network congestion.
