Some of the throttling occurred after the (generally two-year) contract period in which the accounts were throttled for the first time. AdvertisementĪT&T would have arguments for significantly reducing that amount. that plaintiffs and the class could recover, even assuming plaintiffs were to overcome the numerous remaining pre-trial obstacles, prevail at trial, and survive an inevitable further appeal,' plaintiffs wrote in their filing asking for court approval of the settlement. Despite that, plaintiffs concluded that the $10 or $11 settlement payments are a good deal compared to what they would likely get at trial. This means customers paid AT&T an average of $225 for unlimited data in months they were throttled. The new class-action settlement says that, on average, settlement-class members exceeded the throttling thresholds during 7.5 monthly billing periods.

The FTC, which sued AT&T over the practice in 2014, said after the $60 million settlement that 'AT&T promised unlimited data-without qualification-and failed to deliver on that promise.' The FTC had accused AT&T of violating US law against unfair or deceptive acts in commerce with its 'unfair mobile data throttling program' and 'deceptive failure to disclose mobile data throttling program.' AT&T eased up on the throttling in 20 and now throttles only when consumers are connected to congested cell sites.

This throttling was particularly severe because it was enforced 24 hours a day regardless of whether there was any network congestion, and downloads were throttled to speeds as low as 128kbps. (The FTC/AT&T settlement applied to customers in any state, but the newly announced settlement is only for California residents.)Ĭustomers paid AT&T $30 a month for unlimited data at a time when AT&T automatically throttled 'unlimited' plans for the rest of the month once subscribers hit thresholds of either 3GB or 5GB. Many of these same people previously received $12 each from a $60 million settlement between AT&T and the Federal Trade Commission, bringing the typical person's total payout to $22 or $23. After administrative costs and attorneys' fees, typical victims are expected to get $10 or $11 from the new settlement. The paltry nature of expected per-person payments was explained last week by plaintiffs in a filing that asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to approve the settlement. As usual, refunds to individual customers amount to a fraction of what the customers paid for the hobbled service. Getty Images | Aurich Lawson reader comments 106 withĪT&T has agreed to a $12 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit over its throttling of 'unlimited' mobile data plans.

Att throttling internet