It's a bad day for T-Mobile. The company will pay $40 million as part of a settlement with the FCC for playing "ringing sounds" to make customers think their phone calls were going through, when in fact, they had never connected. The company admitted it had done this "hundreds of millions" of times when people tried to place calls in areas with poor service.
The FCC describes the technology behind the fake ringing as, "the calling party believes the phone is ringing...when it is not. An originating or intermediate provider may do this to mask the silence that the caller would otherwise hear during excessive call setup time." This practice, called "false audible ringing" became against the law in 2014 with the FCC's Rural Call Completion Order.
The company admitted it had been violating the rule for years and in great volume. T-Mobile will have to take action within 90 days to stop the practice and issue reports to the FCC every year for the next three years to make sure they don't do it again.
