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The Federal Trade Commission is suing DirecTV, the nation’s largest provider of satellite television, saying it deceptively advertised costs of a two-year service promotion to consumers.

A “substantial portion” of DirecTV’s more than 20 million subscribers in the United States were affected, an agency spokesman said Wednesday. And Jessica L. Rich, director of the agency’s bureau of consumer protection, said the F.T.C. was seeking millions of dollars in refunds.

The agency said that the deal was introduced to consumers as a one-year subscription starting at $19.99 a month, but that the offer required a two-year contract, with escalating monthly costs and a steep cancellation fee.

“DirecTV sought to lock customers into longer and more expensive contracts and premium packages that were not adequately disclosed,” Edith Ramirez, chairwoman of the F.T.C., said in a statement. “It’s a bedrock principle that the key terms of an offer to a consumer must be clear and conspicuous, not hidden in fine print.”

DirecTV, which is based in California, disputed the allegations.

“The F.T.C.’s decision is flat-out wrong, and we will vigorously defend ourselves, for as long as it takes,” Darris Gringeri, vice president for public relations of DirecTV, wrote in an email. “We go above and beyond to ensure that every new customer receives all the information they need, multiple times, to make informed and intelligent decisions.”

In the complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the agency said that DirecTV’s advertising since 2007 had misled subscribers.

It also said that DirecTV had failed to make clear that the cost of service would increase by up to $45 a month in the second year, and that consumers would pay up to $480 to cancel the package before the full two years expired. Additionally, the agency charged that DirecTV advertised access to premium channels, including HBO and Showtime, as free for the first three months of service, without sufficiently disclosing that consumers had to opt out of those channels within those three months to avoid being automatically charged after the trial period ended.

“The company tells consumers to ditch cable and switch to satellite TV to save money,” Ms. Rich said. “DirecTV hid important terms in order to trick consumers into buying its satellite TV packages.”

She said that she could not be specific about the millions of dollars in refunds that the government was seeking, noting how varied consumer complaints had been.

The suit was not the first action the agency had taken against DirecTV. The company paid two settlements for telemarketing violations, in 2005 and 2009, amounting to $7.6 million in all.

Delara Derakhshani, policy counsel for Consumers Union, a public policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports, praised the F.T.C.’s action. “You deserve to know exactly what you’re going to pay down the line before you get your first bill,” she said. “Too often, consumers are told one price, only to find unexpected fees and rate hikes.”

Jeffrey Wlodarczak, a media and communications analyst at Pivotal Research Group, said he thought that the F.T.C.’s lawsuit would not have much of an impact on DirecTV’s financial performance, and that DirecTV had sufficiently disclosed the terms of the contract.

“If people don’t read the fine print, that’s an issue,” he said. “But it was all in there. It was all disclosed in the sign-up agreement.”

Mr. Wlodarczak speculated that the F.T.C. was seeking a new level of explicitness in such disclosures. “The F.T.C. can say ‘you need to be more aggressive with disclosures,’ but you can say that about anyone that markets any item,” he said. “People should probably realize that there is some long-term agreement or cancellation policy if you’re getting that kind of a deal.”