Big four US carriers will be fined by the FCC

The big four US carriers appear to be in big trouble with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Earlier this week, the government agency announced that it will be fining the four wireless networks a total of over $200 million for selling customer location data. 

The announcement does not come as a shock, especially since it’s been well over two years since news about this practice broke in the public. The networks were said to be selling customer location data to third party aggregators, who then sold these to others. This was a breach in customer privacy and consent. 

According to the report, each network will be facing a different fine:

• T-Mobile: $91 million
• AT&T: $57 million
• Verizon: $48 million
• Sprint: $12 million

The amount of the proposed fines differ among the wireless carriers “based on the length of time each carrier apparently continued to sell access to its customer location information without reasonable safeguards and the number of entities to which each carrier continued to sell such access” 

Ever since the networks were called out for the practice, they have stopped selling customer location data. But the FCC has already made its decision. 

The fines will be finalized after each company responds to it, which could result in the fine amount being lowered by the FCC.