T-Mobile’s been doing a lot of sh*t talking on other carriers lately, but they should probably work on keeping their own corner clean.
The FCC just slapped the US mobile “un-carrier” with a $40m fine after it found that the company was supplementing calls made in rural areas with fake ringing sounds to cover up spotty connections and “cause callers to believe that the phone [was] ringing at the called party’s premises.”
So, basically one step up from them having a T-Mobile employee just make “beep boop” sounds on the other end.
Apparently, it was a common practice until a few years ago
The FCC created new laws to ban the practice in 2014, and T-Mobile said they’d cleaned up their act. But guess what? They lied.
Users started complaining, and when the FCC looked into it, they found T-mobile has been violating the rule for years — covering up poor service on hundreds of millions of calls.
Getting a good connection in rural America is still a huge issue
Many people in the rural US still don’t have access to broadband internet or quality cell service.
The bad service is a big problem, and — as the FCC points out in its order — one that not only cuts families off from their city-slicker relatives, but also negatively impacts rural businesses, and can delay public safety communications.
Yet, despite the FCC’s case resting on T-Mobile harming consumers, users aren’t the ones receiving the lawsuit money — that’d be the US Treasury.