By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -T-Cellular has reached a $31.5 million settlement to resolve a probe by the Federal Communications Fee into important knowledge breaches over three years that impacted tens of thousands and thousands of U.S. shoppers, the company stated on Monday.

T-Cellular can pay a $15.75 million civil penalty and has agreed to spend one other $15.75 million over two years to strengthen its cybersecurity program. The FCC stated T-Cellular suffered knowledge breaches in 2021, 2022 and 2023 that impacted thousands and thousands of present, former or potential T-Cellular clients.

The 2021 breach alone impacted 76.6 million U.S. shoppers whereas a 2023 breach impacted 37 million, the FCC stated.

The FCC stated T-Cellular, the nation’s third largest wi-fi provider with 119.7 million clients, will handle “foundational safety flaws, work to enhance cyber hygiene, and undertake strong trendy architectures, like zero belief and phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication.”

“At this time’s cell networks are prime targets for cybercriminals,” stated FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “We are going to proceed to ship a powerful message to suppliers entrusted with this delicate info that they should beef up their methods or there can be penalties.”

T-Cellular didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Earlier this month, the FCC stated AT&T (NYSE:) had agreed to pay $13 million to resolve an investigation over a knowledge breach of a cloud vendor in January 2023 that impacted 8.9 million AT&T wi-fi clients.

AT&T disclosed in July a separate large hacking incident in April that resulted within the unlawful downloading of about 109 million buyer accounts that’s underneath FCC investigation.

In July, the FCC stated Verizon (NYSE:)’s TracFone Wi-fi agreed to pay $16 million over knowledge breaches and implement reforms.