AT&T faces a US$100 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for allegedly misleading unlimited data customers by throttling the connection speeds of heavy users.
"The FCC will not stand idly by while consumers are deceived by misleading marketing materials and insufficient disclosure," said FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, in a statement on Wednesday.
AT&T began offering unlimited data plans in 2007. Those plans have since been withdrawn, but existing customers were permitted to renew their contracts.
According to the FCC, in 2011, AT&T introduced a policy whereby it capped the maximum connection speed of an unlimited data customer once they had consumed a set amount of data within a billing cycle.
The U.S. regulator claims this policy impaired the ability of AT&T customers to use data services for the remainder of the billing cycle.
The FCC said the telco’s practice breached its transparency rules by falsely labelling plans as unlimited and by failing to inform customers that their connection speed could be throttled.
"Unlimited means unlimited, " said FCC enforcement bureau chief Travis LeBlanc. "The Commission is committed to holding accountable those broadband providers who fail to be fully transparent about data limits."
The action taken by the FCC is in addition to that taken by the Federal Trade Commission, which sued AT&T in October 2014 over throttling unlimited data users.
