FCC Plans To Fine AT&T $100 Million For Misleading Consumers About Unlimited Data Plans, Violating Transparency Obligations

The Federal Communications Commission plans to fine AT&T Mobility $100 million for misleading its customers about unlimited mobile data plans. The FCC's investigation alleges that AT&T severely slowed down the data speeds for customers with unlimited data plans and that the company failed to adequately notify its customers that they could receive speeds slower than the normal network speeds AT&T advertised.

AT&T began offering unlimited data plans in 2007, allowing customers to use unrestricted amounts of data. Although the company no longer offers unlimited plans to new customers, it allows current unlimited customers to renew their plans and has sold millions of existing unlimited customers new term contracts for data plans that continue to be labeled as "unlimited". In 2011, AT&T implemented a "maximum Bit Rate" policy and capped the maximum data speeds for unlimited customers after they used a set amount of data within a billing cycle. The capped speeds were much slower than the normal networks speeds AT&T advertised and significantly impaired the ability of AT&T customers to access the Internet or use data applications for the remainder of the billing cycle.

The FCC charges AT&T with violating the 2010 Open Internet Transparency Rule by falsely labeling these plans as "unlimited" and by failing to sufficiently inform customers of the maximum speed they would received under the Maximum Bit Rate policy.