January 11, 2015
AT&T is involved in a scandal because of data throttling for unlimited data plans. Starting 2011, customers of the company based in Dallas complained about very low internet speeds on their phone, even though many had unlimited data plans. It looks like AT&T slowed them down with up to 90 percent, thing that might bring them a big fine from the state’s authorities, FTC and FCC, even though AT&T defends its position.
T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon also involved
The problem is that some information states that AT&T had this practice with around 3.5 million customers. In July last year, Verizon also announce, in an optimization plan, that they will also slow down data speeds for unlimited data plans but only network congestions appear. Meanwhile, T-Mobile and Sprint are also involved in the practice. Both carriers throttle data speeds when users surpass a certain data allocation. While Sprint follows the policy for unlimited data plan users, T-Mobile throttles data speeds for all users once they pass their allocated data limit, instead of charging them overages like other carriers. Due to carriers exempting certain data speed tests, consumers could not figure out if they were being throttled. In November, T-Mobile decided to provide accurate speed information to its users, after the FCC began probing the practice.