Response to AT&T Throttling Story

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There’s been a huge response to my last post. Many people aren’t pleased with AT&T’s new and unfair business practice of throttling unlimited users to unusable speeds after 2GB of data use.

Thanks to these communities the conversation is very active. I wonder if AT&T can hear us now?

Hacker News
MacRumors
Cult of Mac
Houston Chronicle
iClarified
Apple Insider
New York Times Blog
GigaOM

  • http://twitter.com/dsilverman dwight silverman

    John, AT&T finally responded to me late tonight, with basic boilerplate language about 5 percent being the threshold. They are not providing any details about what currently constitutes 5 percent. I’ve updated the post you have linked above with the official response.

  • http://www.johncozen.com/ John Cozen

    Sorry to hear that Dwight but glad you’re making your voice heard by contacting them and posting!

  • http://twitter.com/dsilverman dwight silverman

    AT&T’s got a moral obligation to show its numbers, or kill off unlimited plans altogether. 

    http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2012/02/atts-moral-obligation-if-you-throttle-it-help-us-count-it/ 

  • IPPlanMan

    For the FTC:
    »www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

    For “unlimited” data plan customers, AT&T has provided no proof of the accuracy of its internal bandwidth meters, and thus there is no consumer-transparent basis under which this “top 5%” throttling practice is determined and implemented. The FTC needs to investigate this as it is a deceptive business practice in which a plan is marketed as “unlimited” but is throttled to the point of useless (as the video shows) with no clearly defined criteria based on users who can travel frequently from region to region.

    The idea of a “market” being based on your “address” is an unfair business practice. When someone travels from NYC to LA, etc. there’s no way to label them a top 5% user based on a specific region as AT&T appears to be doing. How can AT&T even claim this? Does the so-called congestion travel with a customer?

    Aside from there being no proof of congestion in the first place, there’s no way to know if AT&T is really doing the “top 5%”… make AT&T prove it.

    AT&T is deceptively marketing an “unlimited” data plan which is throttled to effectively useless speeds based on video evidence. You can point the FTC to this YouTube video:

    »www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW5aEQzTcW0

    This complaint also applies to the tiered data offerings: that’s another reason to ensure that these usage meters are accurate. Who’s checking this? No one I’ll bet… Why would they?

    All the more reason for the FTC to make AT&T come clean on this.

    As for the FCC:
    »www.fcc.gov/complaints

    Select “Wireless Telephone”

    Select “Deceptive or unlawful advertising or marketing by a communications company (does NOT include Telemarketing)”

    You will fill out “Form 2000A – Deceptive or Unlawful Advertising and Promotion Complaint”

    The complaint has the same basis as above. AT&T is deceptively marketing an “unlimited” data plan which is throttled to useless speeds based on video evidence. You can point the FCC to the YouTube video above.

    You can submit this form to the FCC online or on paper.

    Very simple to do.

    Ptrowkski did it…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=22801437 John Fink

    The one thing I’m wondering in all this is are they throttling more than 5% of their users – granted we’re more tech savvy and thus vocal than those using their phone really just for e-mail. I’m personally upset I can’t watch Netflix movies, but my data consumption really hadn’t changed that radically – yet per AT & T’s charts it had. If anything I think the case to be made is there’s a lack of transparency – its hard to know if you are really in the 5% and how this is managed – i.e.: if a user enters the 5%, is one released from the group – - likely not. It’s an arbitrary numbers allegedly based on billing cycle and geographic location. I think AT&T’s lack of silence proves a point – if they talk about this problem publicly and flaws are exposed in their calculation then perhaps we have a valid FTC complaint. I wouldn’t put it past them – thanks John for probing them (and also getting the same answer I got: we invite you to switch to our tiered data plans). If history repeats itself I should be off contact in time for iPhone 5 and jumping to Sprint, provided they can assure me Netflix will run well for the most part (I’ll be looking very hard in the fine print of that contract regarding the consistency of data speeds). It’s a shame, I’ve been an iPhone user since the day it launched in 2007 – and lately my iPhone 4 has been getting data speeds comparable to Edge on the first iPhone.

  • Matthewspacc

    On the 24th of this month I am going to court for my trial against AT&T about this issue. It’s in Simi valley, CA at 8:30am. I have subpoenaed the data on the top 5% Anyone have any good ideas for questions to ask AT&T under oath give me a call 912-313-1234 or email me at matthewspacc@yahoo.com. Thanks
    Matt