The carriers sold access to location data to third parties without customer consent.
Location data is considered customer proprietary network information (CPNI).
The carriers often sold the data to aggregators who then sold to third party location based service providers and in every step, the company did not get customer consent.
Violated section 222 of Communications act (47 USC 222) where carriers must take reasonable measures to protect certain customer information, including location data.
Per the act, carriers avoid obligations to protect CPNI by delegating to third parties.
Chair and Commissioner Statements
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel vowed to hold all carriers accountable, but Commissioner Brendan Carr believes the decision steps outside of FCC's authority.
Commissioner Nathan Simington also dissented the decision to fine the wireless carriers, and believes that decision exceeds the 503 statutory authority of the FCC.
Also believes fines stemmed from an arbitrary selection of a violation class to increase number of violations emerging from a single act, that FCC's decision was too harsh.
Enforcement
Sprint and T-Mobile, who merged since the investigation, were fined over $12mn and $80mn, respectively, AT&T was fined over $57mn, Verizon was fined almost $47mn.
