Frustrated AT&T subscriber Matt Spaccarelli gets his winnings from AT&T after fighting the carrier's data throttling in small claims court.

AT&T has dropped its plans to appeal a small-claims-court ruling that the company unfairly limits subscribers of its "unlimited" data plans after they use up a particular amount of monthly bandwidth.

Matt Spaccarelli took AT&T to small claims court in February to protest the company's data throttling procedures for users of its unlimited smartphone data plans. AT&T previously throttled users when they reached the "top five percent" of bandwidth hogs in a location where network capacity struggled to meet user demand.

To Spaccarelli, however, no amount of throttling  after all, he was already paying $130 a month for his "unlimited" service plan. Judge Russell Nadel of the Ventura Superior Court in Simi Valley agreed, and he awarded Spaccarelli a total of $935 -- $850 for the 10 months remaining in Spaccarelil's contract times the estimated $85 monthly cost he might pay for his data use, and an additional $85 for court costs.

AT&T planned to appeal the ruling, but not before the two parties engaged in a little bit of back-and-forth: Spaccarelli wanted his money and began settlement discussions with AT&T, but AT&T threatened to terminate his contract (as a result of Spaccarelli admitting to tethering his smartphone, a contractual no-no) unless he agreed to keep settlement discussions confidential.

It's unclear what, if anything, changed AT&T's mind, but the company hand-delivered a check to Spaccarelli on Friday. That doesn't mean that AT&T stopped throttling Spaccarelli's phone, however. According to Mashable's Alissa Skelton, Spaccarelli still only enjoys a 0.31 Mbps download speed on his smartphone.

It remains to be seen just how strictly AT&T will enforce its new data throttling procedures against Spaccarelli. These new limits are split between all owners of 3G/4G devices and LTE-capable devices that are still grandfathered into AT&T's unlimited data plans. Users in the first camp will be able to enjoy a full three gigabytes of monthly data before they hit the speed caps, whereas LTE-sporting smartphone owners will get a five-gigabyte limit before the slowdowns hit.

As for Spaccarelli, he plans to cancel his AT&T contract and use his court winnings to help pay the early termination fee. He'll then use the rest to help him attend AT&T's April stockholders meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Something tells us this won't be the last time that Spaccarelli's throttling, or court case, make it onto the airwaves.

For more from David, subscribe to him on Facebook: David Murphy.