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AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

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Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#151

Post by istvan__ »

userbinator wrote: post #148
ohw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say "60up/20down unlimited" means your ISP guarantees this bandwidth as part of the contract, rather than upper bound the bandwidth by this number. In the off peak hours you may be allowed to download at a rate higher than this number, but even in the peak hours you should be able to fully utilize your guaranteed bandwidth.

Even a "guaranteed bandwidth" becomes impossible if you're transferring from a server that can't provide those speeds, or over some portion of the Internet that can't due to link congestion/etc., and your ISP can't do anything about that. In that sense, all bandwidths are "up to". The significantly more expensive "business level" plans usually do have some sort of guarantee via SLA, but once again that only applies t…

You can check that with torrent. If it is not a single server and a single connection you should be able to saturate your network connection.

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#152

Post by JoeAltmaier »

gregwtmtno wrote: post #149
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to sell wireless service 'where my office is'? Presumably you could drive somewhere inside their geographic service area and continue to get service. After all, its wireless. Every service will be limited by local congestion. I'm not sure where this could be going? I get unlimited water from my local water company; but of course the pipes and the number of faucets at my house are practical limits.

If there's too much congestion to provide LTE speeds in a certain area, they shouldn't be able to advertise LTE speeds in that area. Or they should build more capacity to manage the congestion.

Maybe an office building is a little narrow for an 'area'?

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#153

Post by eli »

madaxe_again wrote: post #19

It'll be a cold day in hell before this sticks. They'll use every slippery tactic in the book to justify it and to fight it, they'll bribe^Wlobby the appropriate parties to legally define "unlimited" as "limited", and even if they are stuck with it, they'll just not pay. I mean, what, are they going to arrest executives? Give me a break. There's no recourse either way.

$5 says you're wrong and AT&T does indeed pay a cash fine.

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#154

Post by Tortoise »

snowpanda wrote: post #138
simoncion wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...providing the common law grounds for a class-action lawsuit. This will be fun. Most (all?) ATT customers have undoubtedly agreed to an updated terms of service contract that contains the "In order to use our Services, you agree to waive your right to trial by jury and class action suit, and agree to use only binding arbitration to settle your disputes with us." language[0] that every company was adding to their…

Out of curiosity, is that enforceable in every state? I'm asking because I read about "GRAFTON PARTNERS LP v. SUPERIOR COURT LLP"[1] in California, that appears to make pre-dispute trial waivers unenforceable. [1] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1258748.html

That's why it has an arbitration clause. The Federal Arbitration Act trumps state law and allows such waivers.

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#155

Post by developer1 »

derefr wrote: post #60
revelation wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people here obsessed with making some kind of technical disambiguation. I don't think the lawyers care for that at all. Both intentionally throttling and not remotely providing the necessary infrastructure necessary to support use will get you into hot waters.

My question was more: If an ISP usually has enough pipe for everyone on each of their distribution nodes (that is, has no oversubscription—or, more practically, only oversubscription for aggregations of customers with statistically-predictable usage such that the node should reasonably never be saturated, with some extra engineering tolerance for the rare occasions usage goes above statistical norms)— but the ISP som…

If the technology cannot provide unlimited for customers who have paid for it, then unlimited service should not be sold. Simple as that. Anything else is inexcusable. If the technology stack can only handle all customers at 250 kBps, then that is the maximum service they should be selling.

"We can handle 20% of users at 5 Mbps, and the other 80% at 250 kBps. So we'll sell the 5 Mbps. But we won't restrict sales to 20% of customers, we'll sell to as many as want it and then throttle to handle overloads on the system." There is no way to make this situation acceptable. Don't sell what you can't provide. Pretty fucking simple.

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#156

Post by johnpococito »

nobody said unlimited mean fast internet all the time... and they inform in terms, internet speed will decrease! People must start using brain and start thinking or you will end like europe (government will forbid you everything and tell you everything what u can or not... how much u can earn and what kind of light bulb you are allowed to buy in shop... ehh).

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#157

Post by johnpococito »

nobody said unlimited mean fast internet all the time... and they inform in terms, internet speed will decrease! People must start using brain and start thinking or you will end like europe (government will forbid you everything and tell you everything what u can or not... how much u can earn and what kind of light bulb you are allowed to buy in shop... ehh).

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#159

Post by sitkack »

Tortoise wrote: post #154
snowpanda wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, is that enforceable in every state? I'm asking because I read about "GRAFTON PARTNERS LP v. SUPERIOR COURT LLP"[1] in California, that appears to make pre-dispute trial waivers unenforceable. [1] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1258748.html

That's why it has an arbitration clause. The Federal Arbitration Act trumps state law and allows such waivers.

Well fk that.

Re: AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data

#160

Post by spacehome »

nathanlied wrote: post #132
maxerickson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oversubscription is intentional (and in many scenarios can enable lower prices). I doubt rules about advertising are going to change the market, the problem is that tens of millions of people are happy to pay for connectivity without really sweating the details of it.

Rules about advertising could just end up like it did in Portugal. ISPs were advertising unlimited data (on fiber/cable), but the small print stated that there was a limit, which was dependent on congestion/etc. Essentially, in any given month, you could get throttled/yelled at for going over an arbitrary data cap, which could (and did) vary every month. Given, it was usually above 1 TB, but it was still there. ISPs…

Yea, but that's a better world to live in, because people know what "unlimited" means and will glide right over it, thinking they get the speaker's intended message. I want people to see a new unfamiliar term like "at will" and think for 5 seconds about what the heck that actually means. AT&T would have avoided all the fines and public backlash if they had just made up some new term rather than underhandedly and intentionally misleading people.
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