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Home » US Gov’t sue carriers who promise unlimited data

US Gov’t sue carriers who promise unlimited data

They say that you ought to fulfill everything that you promise, and that’s what the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) over in the United States is doing: suing telecoms who can’t keep up with their ‘‘ promises to their consumers.

fast-internet

Last October 28, the FTC filed a complaint against American telecom giant AT&T for misleading millions of its smartphone customers by charging them for “unlimited” data plans while reducing their data speeds by up to 90 percent in some cases. According to the complaint, AT&T’s marketing materials emphasized the “unlimited” amount of data that would be available to consumers who signed up for its unlimited plans. Even as unlimited plan consumers renewed their contracts, the company still failed to inform them of the throttling program. When customers canceled their contracts after being throttled, AT&T charged those customers early termination fees, which typically amount to hundreds of dollars.

Also according to the FTC’s complaint, consumers in AT&T focus groups strongly objected to the idea of a throttling program and felt “unlimited should mean unlimited.” AT&T documents also showed that the company received thousands of complaints about the slow data speeds under the throttling program.

Does the word ‘unlimited’ sound really familiar?

unlimitedsurfing

That’s what our local telcos have been advertising all along — Unlimited internet emphasized on promos, only to be met with data throttling or capping along the way. They enforce fair usage policies, they say, but don’t they mean unlimited as in unrestricted or not limited, as the word itself means?

As a paying customer of a telecom network that should’ve been providing a very stable internet connection and not a free internet user, whether prepaid or postpaid, we deserve every bit of speed that we think we paid for. We deserve every bit of consumer protection we think we need against these kinds of deceptive and misleading advertisements.

Maybe it’s time that the government should look at these. But then, are they really doing their jobs if advertisements like these slip though?

However, we’re closely seeing a shift in the way mobile data offers are being marketed by local telcos.

For several months now, local carriers have been avoiding the use of the word unlimited data in their promotional materials. Globe has slowly shifted their SuperSurf and Powersurf plans into GoSurf which indicates the amount of data allocation. Smart has also recently changed their labeling of their Unli Data Plans into just Data Plans which now implements a tiered data cap. They’ve also introduced All Day Surfing and All Month Surfing to define a restricted unlimited access to data (no video streaming, downloading and P2P).

So it looks like we’re seeing the trend going towards data caps instead of flat out unlimited data.

  1. Walang silbi ang NTC. Dapat tanggalin lahat ng namumuno dyan.

  2. The solution is easy: local telecoms will not use the word unlimited in their advertisements anymore. Problem solved.

  3. Oo, binago na ng telcos ang terminologies na ginagamit nila ngayon, eh paano noong panahon na misleading sila at nakabingwit sila ng maraming subscribers at natali na sa postpaid tapos biglang pinalitan yung unli policy sa kalagitnaan ng contract?

  4. EDSA 5 na ba!? hahaha

  5. Yan ang tama.
    Dito sa atin ay hindi magawa ng mga NTC commissioners dahil iba yata ang pagkakaintindi jola sa title nila na Commissioner

  6. Unlimited data is different from unlimited speed.*

    *Minimum speed is 256 Kbps. Minimum service reliability is 80%

    :D

  7. Kahit anong gawin natin na pagpaparinig sa gobyerno, wala paring mangyayari. Sabi nga sa kanta ni Gloc-9, “Walang doktor na makapagpapalinaw ng mata niyo
    Kaya…”

    Dapat yang mga manhid na pulitiko at gahaman na opisyal ng gobyerno ang namamatay, hindi yung mga inosenteng tao dyan.

  8. ISP’s have the ability to block web sites! But NTC & PLDT are doing a lousy job in Quality Control, we need a Task force to investigate this heap of mess that existed since the early days of Internet! These entities should take lessons from the U.K. about freakin’ Quality Control!

  9. i called globe earlier to complain about the data throttling and I had an agent tell me that the “FUP” (Fuck Ur Customer Policy) took effect Jan. 2014 and that all customers on data plans would be affected. funny thing is, i’ve called globe a handful of times to verify if i’ll get affected considering i got my Unlisurf Plan 999 in 2013 and every time a representative told me that i didn’t need to worry. “no need to worry sir” my ass!

    now i’m stuck with a brick and there’s nothing i can do other than to get a dsl connection (which is infinitely worse here in our area). can’t we go after these people/telcos? di ba tayo pwede mkfile ng class action/suit laban sa kanila? i mean, i think we have all the evidence we need in the form of their ads and even the contract we signed (lost mine due to Sendong). they baited us with unlimited service and then screw us over with their F*cked Up Policy once we subscribed. dba unfair/unethical business practices yun? kelangan ba talaga na dumaan pa muna sa gobyerno ang mga ganitong complaints? man, the philippines is f*cked up and people are just smiling it off and proud that their *ssholes are getting a beating hai.

  10. walang kwenta ntc… not like TIO in australia na kinatatakutan ng mga telcos. if someone sent a complint talagang maadress talaga yung issue. regardless the issue concerned telco will pay certain amount once tjey got the complaint. Eh dito mamatay ka nat lahat lahat complaint mo waley paring nangyayari. Hindi magada cust service dito less priority ang mga customers. Pagnagcomplaint ka or ask for manger or upervisor naku mamumuti buhok mo wala parin yan sup na yan not like u. S or australia pag nakarinig ng complaint or sup or manager, bigay agad

  11. NTC now means National Telcos Collector

  12. We signed for a 2-year contract na unlimited internet. during that time, wala pang FUP. dapat granted yung contract hanggang 2 years na unlimited. Ang ginawa ng globobo, effective sa laaht agad yung FUP.

    Pag tayo nag violate/nag cut sa contract, may bayad tayo. pag sila ang nagbago for their advantage, OK lang sa kanila. Di ba unfair yun?

    Tapos, lalabas sa balita

    “Globe Telecom reports 385% rise in H1 profit ”

    BS talaga.

  13. As of 4 Nov 2014 Globe has chose to put all users under Private IP addresses. People might think wow, I get a private address. But don’t think that… basically a private address is a limiting of your internet connection.

    So how does this effect the users? Well if you play multiplayer games or use applications that have packet data flow then you basically are not able to use those games and or applications any more. Yep… they put the user behind a 10.xxx.xxx.xxx IP address where users are likely sharing that public address with others.

    And did they warn any of their subscribers of such plans? Of course not.

    To point on the subject a tech team ticket has been in to Globe for 2 weeks now on my own issue of why they have chosen to not allow any public IP addresses to users.

    And for 2 weeks they keep saying someone from the Tech Team will call me in 24hrs. (we know that never happened) Finally today all fed up with not being able to connect online to any multiplayer gaming I contacted their support team yet again and finally am able to get a supervisor online who ends up reading through all the transcripts and tells me of this change of service to users and that I can spend 700Pesos to upgrade to a dedicated IP address. Yep… add another 700pesos on and you will actually be able to use the internet. Don’t pay and you get the restricted internet service.

    Is this even legal? I mean really… I have a policy in place for unlimited internet service but they restrict the kind of internet I can connect to? And are trying to strong arm an extra 700pesos out of me just to meet the minimum needs???

  14. Kaya nga NGANGA MGA TAO:-) dont worry some people doing good things to benifits other people:->

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