AT&T Paying $60 Million To Settle Lawsuit Related To “Unlimited” Data Plans

In an attempt to settle the charges of misleading over 3.5 Million users, AT&T recently announced that it will pay a total $60 Million to the affected customers. Reportedly, the firm was sued as it charged its customers for “unlimited” data plans but their data speeds were reduced once their usage surpassed a specific amount. With this announcement by the firm, its 2014 court case with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is resolved.

The FTC said that in 2011, CNN’s parent firm was charged for supposedly lowering the speeds (bandwidth throttling) for users who have selected to use the firm’s unlimited data plans. The commission added that this led to making it critical for these customers to execute any activities and browse the web. In some instances, there were reports of lowering the data speeds by almost 90%. In its recent press release, the FTC stated that this malpractice was started when a minimum 2 GB data was used by the customers in their billing period.

AT&T’s spokesperson stated, “Although it has been years since the firm applied this network management tool according to the technique stated by the FTC, we trust this is in the best interests of users.” With the agreed settlement money, affected users who subscribed for unlimited plans before 2011 will be offered fractional refunds. Moreover, there is no need to claim for the same as the existing users are supposed to get a credit on their bills and ex-users will be paid by checks.

On a similar note, in its recent announcement of quarterly earnings, AT&T signified that in the upcoming year, it is planning to decrease about 3 Million in its budget for capital investment than its last year’s amount of $23 Billion. The firm announced that it will allocate only $20 Billion for its capital investment in 2020.