AT&T says it notified consumers that it would throttle ‘unlimited’ data service

Facing a proposed $100 million fine by the FCC for choking off the data speeds of subscribers with so-called unlimited plans, AT&T is now saying that it shouldn’t have to pay the fine because it notified those subscribers beforehand.

The carrier has now filed a document with the FCC requesting that the ruling and the proposed fine be cancelled and dropped. It also said that the FCC had no basis for setting the amount of the fine, and that AT&T should be fined no more than $16,000.

And, interestingly, AT&T claims in the filing that nobody was really harmed by its data throttling.

From the filing: “The Commission’s findings that consumers and competition were harmed are devoid of factual support and wholly implausible,” the company wrote in its filing. “Its ‘moderate’ forfeiture penalty of $100 million is plucked out of thin air, and the injunctive sanctions it proposes are beyond the Commission’s authority.”

AT&T says it notified unlimited plan customers via an online disclosure and text messages that it would slow down their data speeds if they reached a certain threshold of data use for the month.

AT&T clearly has no love for the FCC. The company says the agency had no grounds for proposing the fine — the biggest in FCC history — and even goes so far as to suggest that the FCC had ulterior motives. The agency’s actions, AT&T wrote, smacked of an “unseemly effort to coerce settlement.”

Source: The Hill