Tech

AT&T overcharged Washington, DC, for 5 years, must pay $1.5 million, AG says

Enlarge (credit: Chris Young) AT&T overcharged the District of Columbia government for more than five years and has “agreed to pay $1.5 million for its failure to comply with its long-term contract with the District for cell phone and Internet services,” DC Attorney General Karl Racine announced Monday. The settlement doesn’t recoup the full amount of […]

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Verizon forces users onto pricier plans to get $50-per-month gov’t subsidy

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images ) Verizon and other Internet service providers are preventing some low-income customers from getting new $50-per-month government subsidies unless they switch to different plans that are sometimes more expensive. Over 825 ISPs nationwide are selling plans eligible for the new subsidies that the US government made available to […]

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AT&T to spin off WarnerMedia, basically admitting giant merger was a mistake

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg) AT&T today announced it will spin off WarnerMedia—including HBO and Warner Bros.—into a new company, less than three years after AT&T bought Time Warner Inc. for $108 billion. AT&T said it struck a deal with Discovery, Inc. to combine WarnerMedia and Discovery’s assets into a “standalone global entertainment company.” […]

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Verizon “leads” all US carriers in mmWave 5G availability at 0.8%

Enlarge / A Verizon booth at Mobile World Congress Americas in Los Angeles in September 2018. (credit: Verizon) US mobile customers are almost never able to connect to millimeter-wave networks even though the cellular industry and Verizon in particular have spent years hyping the fastest form of 5G. AT&T and T-Mobile customers with devices capable […]

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AT&T/Verizon workers’ union urges states to regulate ISPs as utilities

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | jangeltun) The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union is lobbying state governments to regulate Internet service providers as utilities. The CWA, which represents more than 150,000 workers at AT&T and over 30,000 at Verizon, announced on Monday a “multi-state effort to pass state legislation that would establish public utility commission […]

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AT&T lobbies against nationwide fiber, says 10Mbps uploads are good enough

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | vexworldwide) AT&T is lobbying against proposals to subsidize fiber-to-the-home deployment across the US, arguing that rural people don’t need fiber and should be satisfied with Internet service that provides only 10Mbps upload speeds. AT&T Executive VP Joan Marsh detailed the company’s stance Friday in a blog post titled “Defining Broadband […]

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AT&T lies about Calif. net neutrality law, claiming it bans “free data”

Enlarge / Longtime AT&T executive John Stankey, who became CEO in July 2020, speaks onstage at the HBO Max WarnerMedia Investor Day on October 29, 2019, in Burbank, California. (credit: Getty Images | Presley Ann) AT&T lied about California’s net neutrality law yesterday when it claimed the law requires AT&T to stop providing “free data” […]