AT&T has managed to successfully tap dance around a class action lawsuit filed by customers whose “unlimited” wireless data connections were throttled without AT&T making the restrictions clear. US District Court Judge Edward Chen has told customers suing the telco for its misleading throttling practices that they can’t sue as part of a class action — because they signed a contract with AT&T locking them into binding arbitration.

Unfortunately for AT&T, the company still faces accountability on several other fronts.

In June of last year the FCC fined AT&T $100 million for throttling the company’s “unlimited” wireless data users without making it clear it was occurring.

According to the FCC, AT&T consumers were deceived by misleading marketing materials and insufficient disclosure when the company arbitrarily began throttling those users who exceeded 2-5 GB of usage — even when the network wasn’t facing any meaningful congestion.

Regular readers know AT&T’s been waging a not-so-subtle war on these grandfathered users ever since it got rid of unlimited data plans.

In October of last year, AT&T was also sued by the FTC for its behavior related to throttling.

Specifically, the FTC accused AT&T of falsely claiming user connections were “unlimited,” despite the fact these lines were throttled after as little as 2 GB Of usage. The FTC complaint stated that AT&T violated the FTC Act by changing the terms of customers’ unlimited data plans while those customers were still under contract, and by “failing to adequately disclose the nature of the throttling program to consumers who renewed their unlimited data plans.”

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