FCC Data Fines Misread Protections Provided by Communications Act: CTIA
CTIA Monday filed in support of a T-Mobile petition asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to rehear en banc the August decision by a three-judge panel upholding the FCC’s data fines against it and Sprint, which it subsequently purchased (see 2509220056).
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The panel “misread” the Communications Act’s definition of customer proprietary network information, CTIA argued. The court “wrongly held that CPNI covers information obtained by virtue of both a carrier-customer relationship and an information-service-provider-customer relationship, even though the definition reaches only information made available ‘solely by virtue of the carrier-customer relationship,’” CTIA said in docket 24-1224.
The panel also found “that CPNI includes information collected even where a subscriber does not ‘use’ a ‘service’ to place a call,” the brief said. “Together, these errors expand the FCC’s authority to reach data never contemplated by Congress, create new, burdensome compliance obligations for providers, and undermine consumer privacy.”
CTIA questioned the panel’s stance that if T-Mobile wanted a trial by jury it could have decided not to pay the fine. The panel “failed to appreciate the ‘real-world impacts’ of violating the Orders,” CTIA argued. The FCC actions also “cause reputational harm” by declaring that the companies “violated the law and are subject to substantial penalties,” the brief said. “A binding command to pay tens of millions of dollars undermines access to credit and investment and makes it difficult to close transactions or capitalize on business opportunities.”