AT&T Continues to Fight FTC Lawsuit Over Throttling Users

AT&T continues to battle the FTC over an agency lawsuit that accuses the company of throttling and intentionally misleading its wireless customers. In October of 2014, the FTC sued AT&T for the company's now well-established war on the company's grandfathered unlimited data users. Specifically, the FTC accused AT&T of falsely claiming user connections were "unlimited," despite the fact these lines were throttled after as little as 2 GB Of usage.

The FTC complaint says AT&T violated the FTC Act by changing the terms of customers’ unlimited data plans while those customers were still under contract, and by "failing to adequately disclose the nature of the throttling program to consumers who renewed their unlimited data plans."

But last March a federal appeals court overturned the FTC's suit against AT&T, stating the agency lacked the authority to regulate common carriers. The FTC has stated it's particularly worried about the repercussions of the case, arguing that giant companies could avoid regulation and oversight simply by buying a small common carrier.

This week, AT&T asked an appellate court to let stand its previous decision to have the case thrown out.

"At the end of the day, the FTC cannot dispute that, in the 102-year history of the FTC Act, it has never been permitted to press a case against a common carrier," AT&T said in its filing with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "A decision of this court re-affirming that age-old result is not one of exceptional importance warranting ... review."

AT&T has faced scrutiny by other regulators as well. In June of last year the FCC fined AT&T $100 million for throttling the company's "unlimited" wireless data users without making it clear it was occurring. According to the FCC, AT&T consumers were deceived by misleading marketing materials and insufficient disclosure when the company arbitrarily began throttling those users who exceeded 2-5 GB of usage -- even when the network wasn't facing any meaningful congestion.