"In July 2011, AT&T decided to begin reducing the speed
at which unlimited data plan users receive data on their
smartphones. Under AT&T’s data throttling program,
unlimited data plan customers are throttled for the remainder
of a billing cycle once their data usage during that cycle
exceeds a certain threshold. Although AT&T attempts to
justify this program as necessary to prevent harm to the
network, AT&T’s throttling program is not actually tethered
to real-time network congestion. Instead, customers are
subject to throttling even if AT&T’s network is capable of carrying the customers’ data. AT&T does not regularly
throttle its tiered plan customers, no matter how much data
those customers use."
Yet, as the Ninth Circuit holds today, there's nothing the FTC can do about AT&T's conduct.
