Wireless carrier AT&T has apparently reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission regarding its data throttling practices. The two parties have reached a settlement regarding a case that originally began in 2014.
Details of the settlement are still unknown, but a recently published federal court ruling says the deal was reached on August 2nd, with the parties subsequently requesting a 90-day stay to allow the FTC to review the details. Past reports have suggested the deal will include an injunction as well as a monetary payment.
The FTC initially filed suit against AT&T over what it claimed were deceptive unlimited data claims. The complaint cited that AT&T failed to inform customers that their speeds would be significantly throttled if they used a certain amount of data per month. This rule applied to users who had been grandfathered in to AT&T’s early “unlimited” data plans. The FTC, in turn, argued that customers were not getting what they initially signed up for.
AT&T responded by saying the throttling affected only a small number of users, and that those users were notified via text when the throttling kicked in. The carrier called the claims made by the FTC “baseless” and “baffling.”
A 2016 appeals court decision stated that AT&T’s “common carrier status” meant that it didn’t have to disclose the throttling per the FTC. A 2018 legal decision, however, stated that the FTC could move forward with its case against AT&T, and that data services were not part of common carrier status.
The practice that the FTC initially sued AT&T over is now common among carriers in the United States, the differentiator seemingly being better disclosure. It’s unclear what, if anything, the FTC’s settlement with AT&T could mean for the rest of the industry and consumers.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.