Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

T-Mobile slapped with $40 million fine for playing fake ringtones on rural calls

Christian de Looper
By

T-Mobile has agreed to pay a hefty $40 million fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission after an investigation found that the company was playing fake ringing sounds to customers who were calling rural areas, making them believe that their call was going through when in fact the call had never connected.

The issue is specific to rural areas. When a customer calls a rural area with spotty connectivity, it may take a few seconds for the call to connect — and a carrier may have to hand the call off to a local carrier to handle the call. That’s not the problem, though — the issue is that T-Mobile was filling those seconds with a fake calling sound, implying that the call had connected even if it had not.

Recommended Videos

When FCC laws changed in 2014 to prohibit this practice, users and carriers both complained — and the FCC started looking into it. T-Mobile then claimed that it had solved the issue, when in fact it had not. And now T-Mobile is facing a $40 million fine for not complying with the law.

Related

According to the FCC, false ringing sounds “cause callers to believe that the phone is ringing at the called party’s premises when it is not.” It also said that uncompleted calls “cause rural businesses to lose revenue, impede medical professionals from reaching patients in rural areas, cut families off from their relatives, and create the potential for dangerous delays in public safety communications.”

On top of the $40 million fine, T-Mobile will also have to stop the practice within 90 days and issue reports to the FCC every year for the next three years ensuring that it is still in compliance.

Of course, T-Mobile won’t necessarily have much of an issue in paying the fine. Earlier this year, the company announced record-breaking revenue for the fourth quarter of 2017, proving that the so-called Un-Carrier is only on the rise. For the fourth quarter of 2017, the company added a hefty 891,000 subscribers. A lot of this increase are related to the perks that come with being a T-Mobile subscriber — like discounted movie tickets, Netflix subscriptions, and other “free stuff every Tuesday.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper
Contributor
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
The FCC will hit phone carriers with a $200 million fine over location sharing
ajit pai

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is going to hit the big four U.S. phone carriers with a fine totaling $200 million for selling people’s location data. 

AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile will have the chance to dispute their fines, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The FCC hasn’t officially announced anything yet, but the agency is expected to make the announcement, with details on final numbers, on Friday, February 28. 

Read more
T-Mobile hack may have affected around a million customers
t-mobile

T-Mobile customers have been caught up in a recent hack, the company said on Friday.

T-Mobile told TechCrunch that “less than 1.5%” of its customers had been affected, meaning around a million people may have had their data compromised in the incident.

Read more
The FCC has officially approved the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint
susan collins net neutrality fcc commissioners

The Federal Communications Commission has officially approved the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. A few weeks ago, the FCC voted to approve the deal, but now it has released its official approval order and statements on the merger.

In the statements released by the FCC, the Commission made it clear that the approval was largely in an effort to create stronger 5G networks in the U.S. T-Mobile and Sprint have long argued that a merger would speed up the rollout of 5G, and it seems like the FCC agrees. The vote was approved 3-2, with the three Republican members voting in favor and two Democrats opposed.

Read more