DT may not impose speed caps, court rules

The Cologne District Court has ruled that Deutsche Telekom (DT), which provides fixed line and mobile services in its domestic market under the brand name Telekom Deutschland, will not be able to cap fixed broadband speeds if a customer exceeds data allowances. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, DT said in April that it would throttle the speeds of its fixed broadband plans to 384kbps if customers exceeded the monthly data limit, before announcing the following month that it had increased the speed reduction to 2Mbps following customer feedback. In a press release on its website, the court said that the proposed limits would be an ‘unreasonable disadvantage’ to DT customers, who would not necessarily expect restrictions to apply to a ‘flat rate’ package. The court’s decision is not final; the Bonn-based telco has one month to appeal to the Higher Regional Court of Cologne.