By Peter Svensson
New York - AT&T is offering to discuss a settlement with an iPhone user
who won a small-claims case that alleged the company was slowing down
his "unlimited" data service.
A
law firm retained by AT&T Inc. also threatened in a letter dated
Friday to shut off Matthew Spaccarelli's phone service if he doesn't sit
down to talk.
The
phone company doesn't say if the settlement would involve money beyond
the $850 award the Simi Valley, Calif., resident won from the company in
small claims court on Feb. 24.
AT&T
has about 17 million smartphone customers on "unlimited" plans, and has
started slowing down service for users who hit certain traffic
thresholds. Spaccarelli maintained at his Feb. 24 small-claims hearing
that AT&T broke its promise to provide "unlimited" service, and the
judge agreed.
Spaccarelli
has posted online the documents he used to argue his case and
encourages other AT&T customers copy his suit. Legal settlements
usually include non-disclosure agreements that would force Spaccarelli
to take down the documents.
In
its letter, AT&T asked Spaccarelli to be quiet about the settlement
talks, including the fact that it offered to start them, another common
stipulation. Spaccarelli said he was not interested in settling, and
forwarded the letter to The Associated Press.
Spaccarelli
has admitted that he has used his iPhone to provide Internet access for
other devices, a practice known as tethering, which violates AT&T's
contract terms. AT&T says that means it has the right to turn off
his service.
Spaccarelli says he doesn't care — the important thing to him was defeating AT&T in court, he said.
Dallas-based
AT&T has said it will appeal the Feb. 24 decision. Appeals in
California small claims court are similar in format to the original
hearings, except that lawyers may attend.
AT&T did not comment further on its offer.
Late
last year, AT&T started "throttling," or slowing down data service
for "unlimited" subscribers once they reached the top 5 percent of data
users in their area. The slowdown, which makes a phone difficult to use
for anything but calls, texts and some emails, lasts until the end of
the subscriber's billing cycle.
Subscribers
complained that they hit the limits at unexpectedly low levels, and
that they had no idea what they levels were before getting warning
messages from the company that they were approaching the limit.
Two
weeks ago, AT&T said it would stop throttling the top 5 percent,
and instead apply the slowdown after 3 gigabytes of data consumption.
Customers on a "limited" AT&T plan get 3 gigabytes of data for $30
per month, the same price paid by "unlimited" users.
Spaccarelli's
victory in small-claims court is similar to that of Heather Peters, a
California woman who won $9,867 from Honda last month because her Civic
Hybrid did not live up to the promised gas mileage. She, too, is helping
others bring similar cases.
