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from the as-much-as-YOU-want-but-as-slow-as-WE-want dept.
Federal officials on Tuesday sued AT&T, the nation’s second-largest cellular carrier, for allegedly deceiving millions of customers by selling them supposedly “unlimited” data plans that the company later “throttled” by slowing Internet speeds when customers surfed the Web too much.
The Federal Trade Commission said the practice, used by AT&T since 2011, resulted in slower speeds for customers on at least 25 million occasions – in some cases cutting user Internet speeds by 90 percent, to the point where they resembled dial-up services of old. The 3.5 million affected customers experienced these slowdowns an average of 12 days each month, said the FTC, which received thousands of complaints about the practice.
See also Ars Technica's coverage: US sues AT&T, alleges severe throttling of unlimited data customers which notes that customers were throttled by as much as 90% once they reached 3GB or 5GB of data.
The FTC has made available both a press release and the AT&T lawsuit (pdf).
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday October 29 2014, @03:57PM
You're not with BT then.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday October 29 2014, @04:01PM
No, plusnet (http://www.plus.net/)
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday October 29 2014, @04:32PM
Really? I left them when I got sick of them throttling bittorrent. Was a few years ago now, maybe they've changed.
Also, PlusNet are owned by BT.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday October 30 2014, @12:41PM
I have been with them for years, never had an issue with throttling.
I knew they were part of BT, but because they are a smaller player in the market, they are not held to he higher "semi-legal" standard (blocking sites, etc)