AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile face Net neutrality complaint
AUGUST 06, 2014
AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile face Net neutrality
complaint
Digital rights group Public Knowledge plans to file
mobile traffic-throttling complaints against big four U.S. carriers
By Grant Gross | IDG News Service
Digital rights group Public Knowledge will file Net
neutrality complaints against each of the four largest mobile carriers in the
United States over their practice of throttling some traffic, in some cases on
so-called unlimited data plans.
Public Knowledge on Wednesday sent letters to AT&T,
Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile USA, telling the carriers it plans to
file traffic-throttling complaints at the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission. The letters are the first step toward filing a formal complaint
with the FCC.
The complaints will focus on practices at AT&T,
Verizon, and Sprint of throttling mobile data subscribers who pay for unlimited
data plans and T-Mobile's practice of exempting network-speed-test app Ookla
from throttling after subscribers reach their data cap, thus disguising their
throttled speeds.
The carriers' practices violate some parts of the FCC Net
neutrality rules that survived a court challenge earlier this year, Public
Knowledge said in a press release.
Sprint and Verizon violate the FCC's Net neutrality
transparency rule by failing to "meaningfully disclose which subscribers
will be eligible for throttling," the group said.
AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon violate the transparency
rule by failing to disclose which areas of the network are congested and are
subject to throttling, Public Knowledge said. T-Mobile violates the
transparency rule by preventing throttled subscribers from determining the
actual network speed available to them, it said.
"If the FCC's transparency rules mean anything, they
must require carriers to let subscribers know why, when, and to what speed
their connections might be throttled," Public Knowledge Vice President
Michael Weinberg said in a statement.
"Today, Sprint and Verizon subscribers will not know
if they are eligible for throttling until after they have crossed the usage
threshold," he added. "AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon subscribers will
not know they will be throttled until they are actually connected to a
congested cell site. T-Mobile subscribers do not know the actual speed of their
throttled connection. This is far from transparent."
Sprint and Verizon must publish monthly data thresholds
showing when subscribers face throttling in order to comply with the FCC's
transparency rule, and AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon must publish real-time
information about parts of their network that are congested enough to trigger
throttling, Public Knowledge said.
The information must be available in open and accessible
formats, the group said.
The practice of mobile data throttling came to the
forefront after Verizon announced in July that it planned to slow the traffic
of the top 5 percent of LTE data users.
After FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler questioned Verizon's
decision, Verizon defended its decision, saying other carriers also engage in
traffic throttling.
A representative of Sprint declined to comment on Public
Knowledge's planned complaint. Representatives of the three other carriers
didn't immediately respond to a request for comments.
Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the
U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at
GrantGross. Grant's email address is grant_gross@idg.com.
Comments
Post a Comment