Governor Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced an agreement with T-Mobile USA, Inc. (T-Mobile), requiring the company to improve and expand the home internet service it offers eligible New Yorkers under the New York Affordable Broadband Act (ABA).
As a result of OAG’s investigation, T-Mobile will remove the data caps associated with its ABA plans and deliver 25 Mbps download speeds to all ABA plan subscribers, unless network congestion requires temporary reductions. In addition, T-Mobile will offer ABA plans in all areas where it provides home internet service and make its ABA plan webpage discoverable by search engines.
WHERE’S THE MOTHERFUCKING PUNISHMENT?! All I see is where they’re making T-mobile pinky-promise to start following the law they’ve been breaking all this time, while being allowed to keep every single goddamn penny of their ill-gotten gains!
NO mention of prison time for executives.
NO mention of punitive fines.
NO mention even of restitution to wronged customers, which is less than the bare fucking minimum!!!
The only even slightly useful part of that press release is this at the bottom, because every New Yorker should be absolutely livid about this weak-ass corporatist shit:
Contact the Governor’s Press Office
Contact us by phone:
Albany: (518) 474-8418
New York City: (212) 681-4640
Someone with a better memory or search engine capability can weigh in, but I’m pretty sure T-Mobile had a bunch of restrictions lifted for no reason that were imposed on them because they were illegally charging customers who switched plans or something.
Edit: this was bothering me so I did some more digging. Verizon was the company I was thinking of, but I confused it with TMobile because the FCC waived restrictions on their merger with sprint and there were a bunch of antitrust lawsuits about that.
Any punishment to the company will be paid by it’s customers anyway… For any large company fines and legal fees are calculated in as a cost of doing business. Prison for execs will just lead to fall guys getting the job while the real beneficiaries i.e. major stakeholders will pull the string from the shadows. If you want this to stop you have to go after them. Something like community service or % of their stock holdings going to the victims would be more effective imo.
Edit: You may not like what i’m saying but deep down you know i’m right.
True. However, fining them will impact their profits, which impacts the valuation of the company and their competitiveness (due to needing to charge their customers higher prices as you mentioned, compared to their competitors), and both will hit the pockets of the shareholders. The only thing that needs to be kept in mind is that breaking the law should not increase profits more than the punishment would decrease it, so netto it should impact their profits.
And morally it is justified to compensate the victims.
In theory sure, but in practice there are ways a company can offload this burden onto the consumers with minimal impact to their bottom line, like raising prices in an area where there isn’t any competition. Hurting the competitiveness of a major player will likely negatively impact the whole market because it will allow their competition to charge more as well. Most likely it won’t impact large shareholders whose portfolio is diversified enough, as they can own stake in all players on the market simultaneously, it might even be good for them; less competitive market -> higher margins, shareholders with equal stake in T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T win regardless of any one company’s performance.
From the linked press release:
WHERE’S THE MOTHERFUCKING PUNISHMENT?! All I see is where they’re making T-mobile pinky-promise to start following the law they’ve been breaking all this time, while being allowed to keep every single goddamn penny of their ill-gotten gains!
NO mention of prison time for executives.
NO mention of punitive fines.
NO mention even of restitution to wronged customers, which is less than the bare fucking minimum!!!
The only even slightly useful part of that press release is this at the bottom, because every New Yorker should be absolutely livid about this weak-ass corporatist shit:
Contact the Governor’s Press Office
Contact us by phone:
Albany: (518) 474-8418
New York City: (212) 681-4640
Contact us by email:
[email protected]
What do you mean? Low-income consumers who feel they were wronged have the right to fair compensation through forced arbitration.
(Tonge firmly in-cheek, if not obvious)
I wonder if the low income people could get the maximum payout if they brought it to small claims?
Someone with a better memory or search engine capability can weigh in, but I’m pretty sure T-Mobile had a bunch of restrictions lifted for no reason that were imposed on them because they were illegally charging customers who switched plans or something.Edit: this was bothering me so I did some more digging. Verizon was the company I was thinking of, but I confused it with TMobile because the FCC waived restrictions on their merger with sprint and there were a bunch of antitrust lawsuits about that.
Any punishment to the company will be paid by it’s customers anyway… For any large company fines and legal fees are calculated in as a cost of doing business. Prison for execs will just lead to fall guys getting the job while the real beneficiaries i.e. major stakeholders will pull the string from the shadows. If you want this to stop you have to go after them. Something like community service or % of their stock holdings going to the victims would be more effective imo.
Edit: You may not like what i’m saying but deep down you know i’m right.
True. However, fining them will impact their profits, which impacts the valuation of the company and their competitiveness (due to needing to charge their customers higher prices as you mentioned, compared to their competitors), and both will hit the pockets of the shareholders. The only thing that needs to be kept in mind is that breaking the law should not increase profits more than the punishment would decrease it, so netto it should impact their profits.
And morally it is justified to compensate the victims.
In theory sure, but in practice there are ways a company can offload this burden onto the consumers with minimal impact to their bottom line, like raising prices in an area where there isn’t any competition. Hurting the competitiveness of a major player will likely negatively impact the whole market because it will allow their competition to charge more as well. Most likely it won’t impact large shareholders whose portfolio is diversified enough, as they can own stake in all players on the market simultaneously, it might even be good for them; less competitive market -> higher margins, shareholders with equal stake in T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T win regardless of any one company’s performance.
Guess we shouldn’t ever punish them then.
Yeah, it makes no difference, the system is rigged, you have to go after the real beneficiaries.