We all hear that AT&T iPhone throttling issue has affected a lot of users in the U.S. and the FCC even filed a lawsuit against this mobile operator. The commission believed that the carrier had to pay $100m fine however the Big Blue network thinks differently.
AT&T iPhone throttle workaround was suggested by the carrier itself. Instead of paying the $100m fine it wants to only pay $16k. Is this something the Federal Communications Commission would agree to or not? We don’t know yet.
The only thing we know is that AT&T throttling lawsuit is real. Customers who are subscribed to unlimited data plans can be throttled at heavy data usage times and AT&T iPhone 6 / 6 Plus / 5S / 5 users can unlock their contract / off contract smartphones right away if they are tired of not being able to use the truly unlimited data.
AT&T surely believes that the fine it is forced to pay is ‘excessive’ and the information provided by the FCC is ‘implausible’ in terms of harming customers and competition. The fine filed by the commission is the biggest in the history. No other mobile operator in the U.S. had to pay $100m for throttling users.
According to AT&T, the fine should not exceed $16,000 and this is less than a percent from the original penalty. When the FCC hit the carrier with this cost the company promised to ‘dispute’ and not pay this much. The carrier doesn’t want to lose anything from its annual revenue that is estimated $12bn and the ‘unlimited data’ packages are still being throttled.
The unlimited offers were proposed years ago and a lot of customers are granfathered on them and don’t want to upgrade to a newer play with limited monthly data. Some customers are even ok with being throttled and getting data speed reduced once in a while as long as they could still stay on the unlimited plan.