back to article FCC levies largest ever fine: $614m on Verizon (that's about three days of profit for telco giant)

Verizon's $3.1bn Straight Path gobble got a little more expensive this week, thanks to a $614m fine dished out by America's broadband watchdog, the Federal Communications Commission. The regulator sought to punish Straight Path for breaking its promise to roll out working high-speed cellular networks across the US using its …

  1. croc

    I think that bandwidth auctions should include a use-it-or-lose-it proviso. Two years should be adequate.

  2. Phil Kingston

    I'm sure someone can enlighten me - where do fines such as these actually end up?

  3. Long John Baldrick

    Popcorn. Popcorn. Get your popcorn!

    It will only be a matter of days before the first sue-ball is thrown at Verizon. A fine of this size and loss of spectrum will most certainly affect stock price(or be claimed to have).

    Sit back and enjoy!

  4. DerekCurrie
    WTF?

    No, the 5G standard isn't finished!

    This situation is NOT about any rollout of 5G, because that's not even possible thus far. Please rewrite this story with finer details about the actual dirty deeds of Straight Path.

    BTW: Verizon is the only mobile provider in the USA to even bother to dip their toe into a rollout of REAL 4G technology in the USA, aka LTE Advanced. (Fake 4G is what we've got at this point as it is called '4G' only due to marketing disinformation to the public. It's actually only high end 3G technology that doesn't meet the quality standards of the real 4G standard. Kind of stupid and deceptive).

    I'm wondering if the clown show at the Pai FCC is too ignorant of 5G technology to comprehend that it's not ready for prime time. Then again, Verizon has perhaps the worst lazy reputation regarding network expansion within the USA. They've promised, they've even been paid via approved customer fees to extend their network. Instead they ate the money and their customer's patience by sitting on their spotty behinds eating ¢a$h. Therefore, I'd easily believe their Straight Path project is BS. Better reporting at The Register could straighten out this confusion.

  5. Sil

    3 days of profit ?

    614m /3 * 365 = 74.7 billion dollars.

    The net income of Verizon in 2017 was 30.55 bn.

    614 m fine = 7,34 days of Verizon profit.

  6. Kev99 Silver badge

    The FCC actually enforcing its own rules and regs? Man, who did Verizon forget to grease?

    1. ratfox

      Broken clock

      I was going to say the same.

      Note the complete lack of mention of Ajit Pai in the article. Not that I like the guy or his policies, but it would be fair to mention him whenever the FCC happens to be doing the right thing.

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