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Is There Such A Thing as Unlimited Data Plans Anymore- FTC Crackdown

Earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission made a move to try to protect wireless consumer data plan rates. The FTC announced that it was ordering TracFone, the nation's largest prepaid wireless provider which operates StraightTalk, Net10, Simple Mobile, and Telcel America to pay $40 million in claims because the organization throttled its customers "unlimited" data plans and cut some of them off completely.

The FTC stated in a statement that internal papers showed the service slowed down consumer rates to reduce the high costs that are incurring with unlimited data plan packages.

Many TracFone consumers experienced throttled data speeds, 60% to 90 percent reduction, after only 1 GB to 3 GB of monthly use and some clients had been completely neutralized from all talk, text, and data service after they reached 5 GB.

The FTC actually does not have any problem with providers data plans being throttled but only when the terms are being communicated clearly to its customers. TracFone, on the other hand, marketed its data plan as unlimited and failed to explicitly alert their customers that the rates could be lowered after a threshold restriction had been reached.

And TracFone is not the only wireless carrier with this issue. The FCC is simply just stating to all "unlimited" data plan carriers, that if you are stating that your service is unlimited; then your services needs to be truly limitless and endless. Most aptly said, I might add.

And this leads us to AT&T. Back in October 2014, the FTC begin pursuing AT&T which was throttling its unlimited wireless data plan customers. Just like TracFone, the FTC says AT&T has been throttling at the least 3.5 million of their customer base since 2011. Their data plan speeds happen to be slowed upwards of 90 percent after so-called overage data plan limits were achieved. These slowdowns happened after making use of just 2 GB. This is in line with what the FTC had been stating. AT&T did not shy away from the allegations and instead, circulated a statement saying that the FTC had no jurisdiction to create a throttling lawsuit against them.

TracFone really as well as all the other major U.S. contract and prepaid carriers need to actually reimburse their throttled customers in the form of compensation. All these carriers need to start being more truthful and honest to their clients and make it plain to them what they actually offer versus leading people on with foolish advertisements just to attract more customers and sustain their current customer base.

Until then, you might want to find a carrier that is telling you the truth about them offering you completely non-throttled data plans. There are a few out there although very rare. For more information on non-restricted real unlimited data plans, visit http://www.neverpayacellphonebillagain.com/real-unlimited-data-plan.php .