Posted by Randy Gomez.
In Business Law class, I learned about business ethics and how an entity should behave as a good citizen. In this article that I found online, it explains how the Federal Communications Commission fined AT&T 100 million dollars for slowing down data speeds to some customers. According to the FCC, AT&T violated a transparency rule by misleading customers saying that their plans were unlimited, when there was a maximum speed that customers would receive. AT&T is accused of not sufficiently informing its subscribers. The FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said “consumers deserve to get what they paid for,” and that, “[b]roadband providers must be upfront and transparent about the services they provide.”
It seems that the corporation was trying to maximize their short-term profits, by not being clear enough about the services provided to the consumer. As it usually happens when a corporation acts unethically to increase their profits, AT&T hurt their profits and now is receiving bad publicity. This is a great example of why companies have to take in consideration moral and ethical principles toward their decisions, instead of just trying to maximize profits.
Randy is a business administration major with a concentration in finance at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.