Bellevue, Wash., telecom T-Mobile has been cited by the federal government for using fake ring tones on some customers’ calls—sounds that made the caller think the phone was ringing on the recipient’s side, when it really wasn’t.
T-Mobile has agreed to pay a $40 million settlement to end a Federal Communications Commission investigation that found some of its customers weren’t able to complete calls to certain rural areas.
The investigation started in 2016 when the FCC heard from a few customers and rural telephone companies in Wisconsin that some calls originating on T-Mobile phones weren’t reaching phones in three rural areas. As the FCC investigated, it found seven more areas with the same issues and found the company hadn’t fixed the issues after learning about them.
