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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 tibman on Wednesday October 29 2014, @07:09PM
I was thinking the same. It's like watching over 500 1080p tv episodes in one month... except on a cell phone. You'd have to watch over 16 episodes a day for 30 days straight. Video is probably the most demanding thing bandwidth-wise. Averaging 250KB/s 24/7 for a month is very doable.. but wtf are you doing? The phone's battery wouldn't last very long.
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