It’s a busy carrier-related week for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, as Tuesday saw the commission announce U.S. wireless carrier AT&T will pay out $60 million to settle a case alleging the carrier throttles the data transfer speeds of customers on “unlimited” data plans. The FCC on Tuesday granted formal approval for the $26 billion merger between Sprint and T-Mobile.
Reuters reports the settlement will be placed in holding to finance partial reimbursements for current and past customers who had their data speeds throttled after hitting an unspecified data cap. The settlement applies to subscribers and former subscribers who signed up for unlimited plans before 2011.
In addition to the payout, AT&T must include information regarding restrictions about data transfer speeds or amount of available data in ads and representations of those features.
Although AT&T has settled this case, the carrier was quick to point out that none of the FTC’s allegations had been proven in court. AT&T says it was “fully prepared to defend” itself in a pending legal fight, but decided a settlement to be “in the best interests of consumers.”
