March 4, 2008: Intel Tumbles and AT&T Fined
- MarketWatch: Intel Shares Fall after Chipmaker Lowers Margins
- News.com Cutting the Cord with all You Can Eat Wireless Plans
- Tech Confidential: Video Interview with Google’s VP of Content Partnerships
- Tampa Tribune: Florida Fines AT&T for Pushing Ringtones
- Broadband Reports: U.S. Eighth in FTTH Deployment
- Technology Review: Radios Built from Nanotubes
More on the AT&T saga:
This time the regulatory authorities have nabbed a big fish in the quest to clean up the ringtones and mobile content subscription business: AT&T (NYSE: T) Mobility. The company has been fined by the Florida Attorney General’s CyberFraud Task Force, and is paying $2.5 million to the AG’s office in addition to refunding customers for supposedly “free” ringtones and other mobile content sold by third party providers, reports ClickZ. AT&T also must pay an additional $500K to be used to educate consumers about safe mobile use. Also, the refunds to customers could be anywhere from $10 million to $45 million, depending on the number of customers who claim they were wrongly billed, reports Tampa Tribune.
These “free” services are what we have been covering from the start: fine print shows they aren’t, and are usually operated by third party aggregators. Under the settlement, AT&T Mobility agreed to police third-party advertisers to make sure consumers are no longer misled. The company also agreed to make billing more transparent.
The task force also is launching investigations of Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Sprint/Nextel, Alltel (NYSE: AT) and T-Mobile…and then smaller carriers could be next. Italian mobile content provider Buongiorno (BIT: BNG) is also being sued by Florida AG, though the company has been defending itself.
[...] linkfilter.net – fresh links daily wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt MarketWatch: Intel Shares Fall after Chipmaker Lowers Margins News.com Cutting the Cord with all You Can Eat Wireless Plans Tech Confidential: Video Interview with Google’s VP of Content Partnerships Tampa Tribune: Florida Fines AT&T for Pushing Ringtones Broadband Reports: U.S. Eighth in FTTH Deployment Technology Review: Radios Built from Nanotubes [...]