AT&T fined $100M after slowing down its ‘unlimited’ data • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by dctoedt » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 12:31 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #116

istvan__ wrote: post #4

We should stop lawyers from re-defining words like unlimited. We should make sure that if somebody says unlimited in advertisment or product description it really means unlimited. I know, I am an idealist. :)

I guarantee you that it was marketing, not legal, that came up with those definitions. After all, its marketing that gets the credit while the company sells throttled service as "unlimited," but its legal that takes the blame when the FTC fines the company $100 million for that practice.

> its marketing that gets the credit while the company sells throttled service as "unlimited," but its legal that takes the blame when the FTC fines the company $100 million for that practice.

That's possible; AT&T legal might have advised against advertising the service as "unlimited" but been overruled. I'd be really surprised if AT&T didn't have a policy where every advertisement goes through legal review.

Alternatively, Homer might have nodded in the AT&T legal department, especially if Homer was in fact a junior attorney.

Self-cite: A few years ago I pulled together a collection of marketing words and phrases to avoid or rephrase, culled from a large corpus of advertising reviews I did for a large company. [1]

The AT&T situation illustrates the truth of a rule of thumb mentioned in that collection: All categorical statements are bad — including this one.

[1] http://www.oncontracts.com/marketing-legal-review-some-words...

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

#142

Post by williesleg » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 12:44 AM UTC

So that means our rates are going up again.

So sick and tired of these hidden middle-class taxes.

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

#143

Post by flippyhead » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 1:00 AM UTC

So awesome.

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

#144

Post by Gustomaximus » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 1:27 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #116

istvan__ wrote: post #4

We should stop lawyers from re-defining words like unlimited. We should make sure that if somebody says unlimited in advertisment or product description it really means unlimited. I know, I am an idealist. :)

I guarantee you that it was marketing, not legal, that came up with those definitions. After all, its marketing that gets the credit while the company sells throttled service as "unlimited," but its legal that takes the blame when the FTC fines the company $100 million for that practice.

As a marketeer that has worked big telco, I guarantee you legal signed off that definition. A marketing department will propose content and then EVERYTHING will go via legal for approval. Legal taking responsibility is entirely appropriate. Marketing are there to make ideas that sell, legal are there to make sure all ideas are within the rules.

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

#145

Post by bede » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 1:35 AM UTC

T-Mobile UK (now largely assimilated by the EE mothership) comprehensively denied the existence of an 18-hours-a-day 4mbps throttle placed on its unlimited plans [1] for several years before getting in trouble with the regulators. As far as I'm aware they weren't even punished, which is a shame given how blatantly deceptive their practices were.

This strikes me as a reasonable fine. Well done FCC.

[1] http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobil...

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

#146

Post by rnovak » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 1:38 AM UTC

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…

but AT&T isn't in trouble for enforcing QoS, they're in trouble for throttling connections down to dial-up speed after a usage cap.

Even when read in the most beneficial light, no way can the word "unlimited" be interpreted to mean such a thing.

But the FCC Specifically said that companies have the right to employ reasonable network management. 56Kbit/s on the same network others are getting 30Mbit/s is not reasonable by anyone's stretch of the imagination.

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

#147

Post by lewisl9029 » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 1:45 AM UTC

Any idea what the legal landscape for these kinds of issues is like in Canada?

Wind Mobile also advertises unlimited plans yet throttles starting at a mere 3GB...

https://www.windmobile.ca/plans-and-devices/plans

Granted, their true rates are still better than their big telecom counterparts, but I still find this distasteful as a marketing tactic.

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

#148

Post by userbinator » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

ohw wrote: post #61

tomjen3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home ISP gives me a certain number of megabit up and another down. My contract essentially says 60up/20down unlimited, which means that I can download as much as I want, subject to the limitation not to download more than 60 megabit a second. We could use that as a template for 3g sales as well - granted we may have to specify the speed as 3g or 4g rather than a certain number of megabits - but ISPs hate that they…

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 to the part of the network between you and the ISP.

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

#149

Post by gregwtmtno » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:16 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #118

gregwtmtno wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Would an ISP still be able to call their service "unlimited", by this definition, if some of their distribution nodes (cable optical nodes, wireless cell towers, whatever) are oversubscribed+saturated to the point of degraded service for the customers on that node?" I actually complained to the FCC about this very issue. Where my office is, I can see the service degradation progress over the course of the day, peaki…

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.

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

#150

Post by ezzaf » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:34 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #139

istvan__ wrote: post #4

We should stop lawyers from re-defining words like unlimited. We should make sure that if somebody says unlimited in advertisment or product description it really means unlimited. I know, I am an idealist. :)

In Australia there are extremely strict "false advertising" laws just like you propose. A few years back Holden (GM) had an "Employee prices for all" sale - so supposedly regular people were getting the same deal that employees were getting. It came out a while later that wasn't true, and so Holden (GM) were forced to give customers a refund of the difference to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. If you adv…

Holden were indeed investigated by the ACCC for this, but they were not forced to refund the difference. The resolution was to "offer an opportunity to return the vehicle for a full refund of the purchase price including additional charges"[1], and applied to only 250-300 customers.

[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/holden-employee-pricin...