Regulations last checked for updates: Apr 27, 2025

Title 28 - Judicial Administration last revised: Apr 18, 2025
§ 202.509 - Telecommunications services.

(a) Exemption. Subparts C, D, J, and K (other than § 202.1102 and § 202.1104) of this part do not apply to data transactions, other than those involving data brokerage, to the extent that they are ordinarily incident to and part of the provision of telecommunications services.

(b) Examples—(1) Example 1. A U.S. telecommunications service provider collects covered personal identifiers from its U.S. subscribers. Some of those subscribers travel to a country of concern and use their mobile phone service under an international roaming agreement. The local telecommunications service provider in the country of concern shares these covered personal identifiers with the U.S. service provider for the purposes of either helping provision service to the U.S. subscriber or receiving payment for the U.S. subscriber's use of the country of concern service provider's network under that international roaming agreement. The U.S. service provider provides the country of concern service provider with network or device information for the purpose of provisioning services and obtaining payment for its subscribers' use of the local telecommunications service provider's network. Over the course of 12 months, the volume of network or device information shared by the U.S. service provider with the country of concern service provider for the purpose of provisioning services exceeds the applicable bulk threshold. These transfers of bulk U.S. sensitive personal data are ordinarily incident to and part of the provision of telecommunications services and are thus exempt transactions.

(2) Example 2. A U.S. telecommunications service provider collects precise geolocation data on its U.S. subscribers. The U.S. telecommunications service provider sells this precise geolocation data in bulk to a covered person for the purpose of targeted advertising. This sale is not ordinarily incident to and part of the provision of telecommunications services and remains a prohibited transaction.

authority: 50 U.S.C. 1701
source: 90 FR 1706, Jan. 8, 2025, unless otherwise noted.
cite as: 28 CFR 202.509