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Last month, T-Mobile and Sprint officially announced plans to merge companies. A big talking point that the two used to create excitement was that it would allow for the rapid creation of a nationwide 5G network. Now, ten states have sued T-Mobile and Sprint in order to prevent the merger. The states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Michigan, Mississippi, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The main argument centers around how this merger will stifle competition. If there are fewer choices for cellphone services, then the few that exist can easily rack up prices. This can cause headaches for low-income communities, where even the smallest price increase could cause a family to lose service. In a statement, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James said: “When it comes to corporate power, bigger isn’t always better. The T-Mobile and Sprint merger would not only cause irreparable harm to mobile subscribers nationwide by cutting access to...
AT&T’s competitors have taken note of the company’s “5G Evolution” branding on phones and networks using 4G LTE Advanced Technology, but it hasn’t gone beyond crafty tweets or company blog posts –until now. Sprint recently filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking an injunction to stop AT&T from using 5GE tags on its devices or advertising. In Sprint’s legal complaint , the company said it surveyed customers and found 54 percent of them believed AT&T’s “5GE” is as fast as, or faster than, actual 5G. Sprint also found that 43 percent of customers believed if they bought an AT&T phone today it would be 5G capable. According to Sprint, neither of those are true. Basically, Sprint says AT&T is cheating. While AT&T did launch the nation’s first 5G network last year, it’s not available everywhere. What AT&T calls 5GE is technology apart of the years-old 4G LTE-Advanced standard used by Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint on their 4G Networks. Despite this, AT&T has already incorporated 5GE...
(Cues Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me”) AT&T and other phone companies are restructuring their policies on selling customers’ location data to third-parties after a report by Motherboard found the information was being misused by law enforcement agencies and bounty hunters. AT&T said it would completely stop selling users’ location data, even to firms that had clear, helpful uses for the information. Last year, the company said it would stop selling the information to third parties after it was revealed that location data was being used to track people by law enforcement. “This is outrageous. I didn’t sign up for this when I signed up for wireless service and I bet neither did you,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said to CBS. “It turns out that they’re selling that information to companies called location aggregators who in turn are selling that to shady middlemen who for a few hundred dollars will sell to anyone, your location within a few hundred meters. I think that is a...