The company was throttling speeds for plans offered under the Affordable Broadband Act.
New York's attorney general found that T-Mobile was not following the state's Affordable Broadband Act, which sets requirements for offering service to low-income residents. Under the ABA, eligible households must be able to purchase broadband at speeds of at least 25 Mbps for $15 a month or 200 Mbps for $20 a month without additional taxes or equipment fees. Providers are also required to make "reasonable efforts" to promote these low-cost options.
The Office of the Attorney General discovered that T-Mobile had placed monthly data caps on its ABA plans. According to the press release, T-Mobile would throttle speeds to as low as 650 kilobits per second after a customer had used 50GB of data, which could happen in about four days of typical broadband use. The company was also only offering its ABA plans in areas where it had 5G wireless deployed and was preventing information about those plans on its website from being seen by search engines.
Following the investigation, T-Mobile will remove those data caps, make its ABA plans available in all places in the state where it offers home internet service, and will ensure that search engines can access details about ABA plans.
