7 ms·

T-Mobile fined $40M for deceiving customers with fake ring tones

63 points by cfadvan 8y ago

kej 8y ago
This just links and poorly summarizes the much better article at https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mobile-deceived-customers-with-false-ring-tones-on-failed-phone-calls/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mob... .
- DrScump 8y ago
  Which was posted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 .
ekanes 8y ago
"Here’s how it worked. Whenever a phone couldn’t establish a connection with another phone, instead of remaining silent, the calling tone would start ringing in the caller’s ear. Logically, the person placing the call believes that the phone on the other side is actually ringing but nobody is picking up. ... If you think that’s not that bad, imagine this: You’re driving through the middle of nowhere in Midwest Square State, U.S.A. Your car breaks down, your A/C is nonfunctional in the hot summer weather, and you call road assistance. The phone rings and rings, but nobody picks up. You call again. And again. It seems that everyone at road assistance must be out partying, or they just hate you. By the 27th call, you’d probably be mad enough to break the phone–all without realizing that your those rings were pure fiction, and you needed to move to find a better signal. And what if someone with you was injured, or a more serious emergency took place?"
- compsciphd 8y ago
  it has nothing to do with signal strength. the fact that they were able to inject a fake ring tone, means that you were connected to the tower just fine. the issue was that they couldn't connect the call to the other phone's telephone company and pretended it had reached it. i.e. if you call overseas, you don't hear our ringtone, you hear whatever their ringtone is.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > the fact that they were able to inject a fake ring tone, means that you were connected to the tower just fine Do we know this? The tone could have been injected by the device.
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      The arstechnica story (linked in another comment) clarifies that the ring tone was injected in T-Mobile servers for calls that went over a SIP backbone. So yes we know it was not in the user terminal.
    - HenryBemis 8y ago
      I cannot believe that T-Mobile would remote 'Celebrite'/jailbreak/root a device just to add the necessary files and remote-execute a process to play an mp3 while the Phone-app has taken control. When the Phone-app is running, it automatically thwarts any other sound-using app (such as Spotify, Music, Skype, games)
      - solarkraft 8y ago
        Carriers have enormous control over devices. While we now know it didn't happen, they likely could have easily shipped a manipulated standard phone app since when a carrier gives out a device it is often running customized firmware with the carrier's logo on boot and preinstalled bloat ware like Spotify, Facebook or WPS Office (by my experience with branded os images for Sony Xperias).
sgillen 8y ago
T-Mobile reported $40B in revenue for FY 2017, so this fine represents 00.1% of their total revenue. Is this sort of fine really going to deter them?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thisisit 8y ago
  How big fine should be, according to you, to really deter them?
  - zeusk 8y ago
    10~20% of "net" yearly income imho or instead of a fine, levy penalty tax rate like how credit works.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
ams6110 8y ago
Unnecessary and gratuitous dig at Trump and Ajit Pai at the end of the article, especially with no supporting evidence or explanation given.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  No fan of Trump, but yea, just for SEO I think. Esp considering Obama had put him on the board to begin with, Trump only had him chair.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    > Esp considering Obama had put him on the board to begin with It should be noted that Obama was legally required to appoint a Republican to that slot, and took Mitch McConnell's recommendation. Making him Chairman is an explicit vote of confidence far greater than "I have to pick someone I don't really like, might as well be this guy".
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      Ah yes, I remember when Obama was forced to select this guy during the great rebulican shortage.
- rconti 8y ago
  I felt the dig at Pai was more warranted than the Trump one. But overall, neither added very much.
acjohnson55 8y ago
I've experienced this before. It's really frustrating. You could kind of tell when it was happening because the timing of the ring was not quite right, and there would be this audible switch when the phone really started ringing. For some reason, it mostly seemed to happen when calling my brother. I hope this fine means the end of this crappy behavior. I generally like T-Mobile.
rgbrenner 8y ago
The link in the article has a lot more info: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mobile-deceived-customers-with-false-ring-tones-on-failed-phone-calls/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mob... The fastcodesign link doesn't really add anything except a story that's not quite accurate (saying it's the signal.. which is wrong).
- DrScump 8y ago
  Which was posted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 .
chrismcb 8y ago
I don't get why they did this? Did they forget about busy tones? Or did they think people would prefer a ring tone that wasn't answered? I just don't get it, it didn't exactly feel malicious.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Perhaps unintentionally dangerous. But also very needlessly.
nabc45 8y ago
>With Trump-appointed Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC, the treatment of telecomm companies probably won’t change any time soon. Why not sprinkle a lil bit of politics there, eh?
- solarkraft 8y ago
  > Why not Maybe if it wasn't relevant to the story. Pai being a former telco lobbyist, it seems pretty relevant.
bluesign 8y ago
I guess this is related to bad implementation of using SIP for connecting call. I had similar experience with local telecom provider in Turkey, which is routing international calls over cheap SIP providers. Basically they are calling a SIP route, which you hear ringing, when it starts ringing other provider starting to initiate the call. In this case I think the cell tower is not Tmobile’s, but they have agreement with the tower owner to route call to their SIP trunk.
aaron695 8y ago
Why did they do it? Could they charge? Was it to look like their phones had more reception they they did? Or just a dumb decision?

63 points by cfadvan 8y ago

kej 8y ago

This just links and poorly summarizes the much better article at https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mobile-deceived-customers-with-false-ring-tones-on-failed-phone-calls/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mob... .

DrScump 8y ago
Which was posted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 .

ekanes 8y ago

"Here’s how it worked. Whenever a phone couldn’t establish a connection with another phone, instead of remaining silent, the calling tone would start ringing in the caller’s ear. Logically, the person placing the call believes that the phone on the other side is actually ringing but nobody is picking up. ... If you think that’s not that bad, imagine this: You’re driving through the middle of nowhere in Midwest Square State, U.S.A. Your car breaks down, your A/C is nonfunctional in the hot summer weather, and you call road assistance. The phone rings and rings, but nobody picks up. You call again. And again. It seems that everyone at road assistance must be out partying, or they just hate you. By the 27th call, you’d probably be mad enough to break the phone–all without realizing that your those rings were pure fiction, and you needed to move to find a better signal. And what if someone with you was injured, or a more serious emergency took place?"

compsciphd 8y ago
it has nothing to do with signal strength. the fact that they were able to inject a fake ring tone, means that you were connected to the tower just fine. the issue was that they couldn't connect the call to the other phone's telephone company and pretended it had reached it. i.e. if you call overseas, you don't hear our ringtone, you hear whatever their ringtone is.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > the fact that they were able to inject a fake ring tone, means that you were connected to the tower just fine Do we know this? The tone could have been injected by the device.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    The arstechnica story (linked in another comment) clarifies that the ring tone was injected in T-Mobile servers for calls that went over a SIP backbone. So yes we know it was not in the user terminal.
  - HenryBemis 8y ago
    I cannot believe that T-Mobile would remote 'Celebrite'/jailbreak/root a device just to add the necessary files and remote-execute a process to play an mp3 while the Phone-app has taken control. When the Phone-app is running, it automatically thwarts any other sound-using app (such as Spotify, Music, Skype, games)
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      Carriers have enormous control over devices. While we now know it didn't happen, they likely could have easily shipped a manipulated standard phone app since when a carrier gives out a device it is often running customized firmware with the carrier's logo on boot and preinstalled bloat ware like Spotify, Facebook or WPS Office (by my experience with branded os images for Sony Xperias).

sgillen 8y ago

T-Mobile reported $40B in revenue for FY 2017, so this fine represents 00.1% of their total revenue. Is this sort of fine really going to deter them?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
thisisit 8y ago
How big fine should be, according to you, to really deter them?
- zeusk 8y ago
  10~20% of "net" yearly income imho or instead of a fine, levy penalty tax rate like how credit works.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

ams6110 8y ago

Unnecessary and gratuitous dig at Trump and Ajit Pai at the end of the article, especially with no supporting evidence or explanation given.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
No fan of Trump, but yea, just for SEO I think. Esp considering Obama had put him on the board to begin with, Trump only had him chair.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > Esp considering Obama had put him on the board to begin with It should be noted that Obama was legally required to appoint a Republican to that slot, and took Mitch McConnell's recommendation. Making him Chairman is an explicit vote of confidence far greater than "I have to pick someone I don't really like, might as well be this guy".
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Ah yes, I remember when Obama was forced to select this guy during the great rebulican shortage.
rconti 8y ago
I felt the dig at Pai was more warranted than the Trump one. But overall, neither added very much.

acjohnson55 8y ago

I've experienced this before. It's really frustrating. You could kind of tell when it was happening because the timing of the ring was not quite right, and there would be this audible switch when the phone really started ringing. For some reason, it mostly seemed to happen when calling my brother. I hope this fine means the end of this crappy behavior. I generally like T-Mobile.

rgbrenner 8y ago

The link in the article has a lot more info: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mobile-deceived-customers-with-false-ring-tones-on-failed-phone-calls/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/t-mob... The fastcodesign link doesn't really add anything except a story that's not quite accurate (saying it's the signal.. which is wrong).

DrScump 8y ago
Which was posted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857864 .

chrismcb 8y ago

I don't get why they did this? Did they forget about busy tones? Or did they think people would prefer a ring tone that wasn't answered? I just don't get it, it didn't exactly feel malicious.

solarkraft 8y ago
Perhaps unintentionally dangerous. But also very needlessly.

nabc45 8y ago

>With Trump-appointed Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC, the treatment of telecomm companies probably won’t change any time soon. Why not sprinkle a lil bit of politics there, eh?

solarkraft 8y ago
> Why not Maybe if it wasn't relevant to the story. Pai being a former telco lobbyist, it seems pretty relevant.

bluesign 8y ago

I guess this is related to bad implementation of using SIP for connecting call. I had similar experience with local telecom provider in Turkey, which is routing international calls over cheap SIP providers. Basically they are calling a SIP route, which you hear ringing, when it starts ringing other provider starting to initiate the call. In this case I think the cell tower is not Tmobile’s, but they have agreement with the tower owner to route call to their SIP trunk.

aaron695 8y ago

Why did they do it? Could they charge? Was it to look like their phones had more reception they they did? Or just a dumb decision?