A federal judge handed AT&T a legal victory last week when he ruled that a lawsuit against the company's throttling practices for unlimited data must be decided in arbitration instead of a class-action lawsuit. The ruling, highlighted by MediaPost, will allow AT&T to sidestep a public and potentially expensive battle against a class-action lawsuit and instead deal with the issue through an arbiter.
U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen noted that the customers involved in the lawsuits signed contracts that specified individual arbitration in case of disputes with the company, thus preventing lawsuits.
However, AT&T continues to face legal action on the topic of throttling the speeds of users' unlimited data plans. The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against AT&T over the same topic in 2014, alleging that the carrier misled as many as 3.5 million customers with legacy unlimited data plans by throttling their data speeds and changing the terms of their plans. AT&T has said the lawsuit does not have any merit, and MediaPost noted that case is still pending in federal court. Article