An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Verizon will shut down its 3G services on December 31st, 2022, VP of network engineering Mike Haberman announced today. According to Haberman, less than 1 percent of Verizon customers still access the 3G network, with 99 percent on 4G LTE or 5G. Verizon has roughly 94 million customers, so by the company's own math, as many as 940,000 people are still using Verizon's 3G network.

"Customers who still have a 3G device will continue to be strongly encouraged to make a change now," Haberman wrote. "As we move closer to the shut-off date customers still accessing the 3G network may experience a degradation or complete loss of service, and our service centers will only be able to offer extremely limited troubleshooting help on these older devices." Verizon has been teasing a shut-off of its 3G CDMA services for years. [...] The delay to 2022 is final — there will be no more extensions, Haberman said. He noted that this will be "months after our competitors have shut off their networks completely."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: All of the major carriers made a significant change to how SMS messages are routed to prevent hackers being able to easily reroute a target's texts, according to an announcement from Aerialink, a communications company that helps route text messages. The move comes after a Motherboard investigation in which a hacker, with minimal effort, paid $16 to reroute our text messages and then used that ability to break into a number of online accounts, including Postmates, WhatsApp, and Bumble, exposing a gaping hole in the country's telecommunications infrastructure.

"The Number Registry has announced that wireless carriers will no longer be supporting SMS or MMS text enabling on their respective wireless numbers," the March 25 announcement from Aerialink, reads. The announcement adds that the change is "industry-wide" and "affects all SMS providers in the mobile ecosystem." "Be aware that Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T have reclaimed overwritten text-enabled wireless numbers industry-wide. As a result, any Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T wireless numbers which had been text-enabled as BYON no longer route messaging traffic through the Aerialink Gateway," the announcement adds, referring to Bring Your Own Number.

A decade after the failed Atrix 4G Laptop Dock, Motorola is taking another stab at turning a phone into your computer. From a report: By way of an Android 11 update, Edge Plus users on Verizon can now connect the handset to a bigger screen for a desktop-style experience in the vein of Samsung's Dex. In a nutshell, that means you'll be able to access all the productivity, gaming and streaming apps on your phone on a monitor or TV. Motorola hopes that you'll use it for everything from editing work documents and making video calls (which should look great thanks to the solid collection of cameras on the Edge Plus) to playing Fortnite -- or a cloud gaming service like Xbox Game Pass or Google Stadia (via a Bluetooth controller) -- to watching Netflix. The new "Ready For" platform uses a multi-window interface that launches when you connect to a screen through the USB-C or HDMI port. You can also add accessories like a keyboard or mouse to further match the feel of a desktop. There's no dedicated app and you can use your phone as a second screen while working on a bigger display. To help with that, Motorola is releasing a "Ready For" dock on April 19th on Amazon, with pricing to be announced closer to launch.

"The Border Gateway Protocol was first described in 1989...," according to Wikipedia, "and has been in use on the Internet since 1994."

But now long-time Slashdot reader jovius reports that a startup named Syntropy "aims to replace BGP as the default routing method of the internet, by using nodes around the world to constantly gather data of the inefficiencies of the current network." The intelligence is then used to route data via the most efficient routes. Actual tests with hundreds of servers have proved that latencies can be reduced by tens to hundreds of milliseconds. The connections are by default encrypted, and jitter is also reduced.

Eventually, the company-run servers are augmented with tens of thousands of nodes run by users/smart devices, who are rewarded for their work.

The team was recently joined by former SVP at Verizon Shawn Hakl and former Chief Product Officer at AT&T Roman Pacewicz. One of the founders of Syntropy is the co-founder of Equinix and NANOG Bill Norton. Syntropy is an Oracle and Microsoft partner, and transforming into a foundation and DAO to govern the protocol work.
Decentralised autonomous routing protocol (or DARP) has just been opened for community testing, and the system is live on https://darp.syntropystack.com/.

T-Mobile this week pledged that 200 million people in the U.S. will have access to a fast version of 5G wireless service by the end of the year, a far larger number than can be expected from AT&T or Verizon. From a report: Long the upstart challenger, T-Mobile has a strong network story when it comes to 5G, thanks to its possession of a key swath of mid-band spectrum -- which offers a good balance of faster speed and decent coverage compared to other chunks of airwaves. Each of the major carriers is making fresh 5G commitments this week, increasing the number of people they hope to reach with different flavors of the high-speed wireless technology.

Verizon detailed its 5G plans on Wednesday, including how it plans to use the $53 billion in spectrum it bought in a recent government auction as the airwaves become available. It plans to offer midband service in 46 markets this year, per CNET. AT&T holds its investor event Friday. It has been faster than Verizon at rolling out broad 5G coverage, but not as fast as T-Mobile. Also, like Verizon, it is relying on just-acquired midband spectrum to build out its network.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced a new certificate program and other courses that will provide a gateway to positions at companies like Anthem, Bayer, Deloitte, Verizon and SAP. From a report: In a blog post, Pichai explained that on March 11, Coursera users will have access to a new Associate Android Developer Certification course in addition to the three new certificates in user experience (UX) design, project management and data analytics that have been available since September. "With more businesses embracing digital ways of working, it's estimated that 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025. As U.S. job growth returns with more people getting vaccinated, we are committed to ensuring that all Americans have the skills they need to benefit from greater economic opportunity," Pichai wrote.

"To help, today we're announcing new efforts, including opening up enrollment for our latest career certificates, expanding our employer consortium, and introducing new tools to improve the job search." Google will be providing 100,000 scholarships for its Career Certificates program and said it has already helped bring 170,000 Americans into the tech industry through their certificate platform. Once the program is completed, students will gain access to a job board populated by companies like Accenture, Infosys, Zennify, SiriusXM+ Pandora, and, of course, Google.

"Are you noticing your battery life is draining faster than normal?" tweeted Verizon Wireless customer support on Sunday, the Verge reports: Despite its relentless promotion of 5G phones and the fact that it spent more than $45 billion bidding on a new faster spectrum, Verizon support now is advising people on Twitter to turn off their phones' 5G access to preserve battery life.

In a Sunday morning tweet, Verizon support helpfully suggested that "one way to help conserve battery life is to turn on LTE" if users found their batteries were "draining faster than normal." That step would, of course, turn off 5G in a phone that has it available. It's also worth pointing out that you don't actually "turn on LTE" when doing this step — LTE is always enabled as a fallback for the 5G network. But Verizon is obviously being cautious so as not to actually tell its customers to "turn off 5G".
Verizon's tweet is now "unavailable," having apparently been since deleted.

The Verge also points out that Verizon's nationwide 5G network "uses a technology called DSS, which in many instances is actually slower than the LTE network it's trying to replace."

Verizon Communications committed $45 billion for 5G wireless airwaves in a government auction that attracted record bidding as the largest U.S. mobile carriers race to build faster networks. From a report: At $23 billion, AT&T was the second-highest bidder, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which ran the auction. Participants also included T-Mobile US Inc. and pay-TV providers such as Dish Network, Comcast and Charter Communications. Some have already tapped the debt market to help pay the tab. The auction started in December, and within days the tally exceeded analysts' estimates of $47 billion before settling at $81.2 billion. The budget-stretching bidding underscores how crucial these so-called midband frequencies are to companies trying to seize global leadership in emerging 5G technology. The airwaves are prized for their combined ability to travel far and carry lots of data. They are expected to drive years of growth when deployed for next-generation mobile devices, autonomous vehicles, health-care equipment and manufacturing facilities.

Comcast is delaying a plan to enforce its 1.2TB data cap and overage fees in the Northeast US until 2022 after pressure from customers and lawmakers in multiple states. From a report: "[W]e are delaying implementation of our new data plan in our Northeast markets until 2022," Comcast said in an announcement yesterday. "We recognize that our data plan was new for our customers in the Northeast, and while only a very small percentage of customers need additional data, we are providing them with more time to become familiar with the new plan." Comcast has enforced the data cap in 27 of the 39 states in which it operates since 2016, but not in the Northeast states where Comcast faces competition from Verizon's un-capped FiOS fiber-to-the-home service. In November 2020, Comcast announced it would bring the cap to the other 12 states and the District of Columbia starting in January 2021. But with yesterday's announcement, no one in those 12 states and DC will be charged overage fees by Comcast in all of 2021.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In response to Comcast imposing a data cap on Massachusetts residents, state lawmakers have proposed a ban on data caps, new fees, and price increases on home-Internet services for the duration of the pandemic. The legislation was filed on Tuesday this week by Democratic state representatives Andy Vargas and Dave Rogers. Vargas called the bill a "response to Comcast Internet data cap plans," while Rogers said the goal is "to push back at Comcast and any other service providers who try to raise prices or fees during a pandemic." Verizon FiOS and RCN also provide Internet service in Massachusetts but do not impose data caps.

Vargas and Rogers previously led a group of 71 Massachusetts lawmakers who urged Comcast to halt enforcement of its 1.2TB monthly data cap, arguing that the cap hurts low-income people and is unnecessary because of Comcast's robust network capacity. While Comcast already enforced the data cap in 27 states for several years, the cable company brought the cap to the rest of its territory -- an additional 12 states including Massachusetts and the District of Columbia -- this month. Comcast is easing-in enforcement so that the first overage charges for newly capped customers will be assessed for data usage in the April 2021 billing period. The Massachusetts House has a 128-30 Democratic majority. Besides Vargas and Rogers, the bill so far has 21 cosponsors, most of whom just signed on today.

A wide-range of services including Gmail, Google, business collaboration service Slack, Amazon, Twitch, Hulu, and Spotify are suffering outages, several users and readers have reported. The reports started to come in half an hour ago, but the cause of the disruption is yet to be identified.

Update: Verizon says there is a fiber cut in Brooklyn. Further reading: Verizon Fios is experiencing outages on the East Coast.

Verizon has backtracked on its plan to turn off its 3G network by the end of 2020. Light Reading reports: In response to questions from Light Reading, Verizon spokesperson Kevin King said "our 3G network is operational and we don't have a plan to shut it down at this time. We'll work with customers to move them to newer technology." That's a decided change from Verizon's plans from roughly a year ago. In July 2019, Verizon spokesperson Howie Waterman confirmed to Light Reading that the operator had delayed the shuttering of its 3G network from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020. He said the action would give impacted customers "an extra year to decide what they want to do." Verizon's decision to keep its 3G network up and running means the service provider will continue to operate three separate wireless network technologies -- 3G, 4G and 5G -- for the foreseeable future. As for the other carriers, AT&T plans to shutter its own 3G network in "early" 2022 and T-Mobile has said it will shut down its 3G network "over the next several years" but "we haven't shared timing."

The Federal Communications Commission's ongoing sale of wireless licenses has fetched more than $66.4 billion after three weeks of bidding, a record sum that could alter cellphone carriers' prospects for the next decade. From a report: The auction proceeds have already topped the $44.9 billion raised in 2015 by an earlier sale of midrange cellular licenses, which U.S. cellphone carriers used at the time to enhance their 4G service. Those companies are now investing billions of dollars in the next wave of fifth-generation coverage. The 5G standard promises to speed the flow of data to phones and other wireless devices like personal computers, cars and industrial machinery. The recent bids have blown past Wall Street's highest forecasts, suggesting that several companies are fighting over the most valuable wireless rights. The 5G auction kicked off Dec. 8 and will pause for the holidays until Jan. 4, when total bids could move even higher. Each bid is swathed in secrecy until the auction process ends. Analysts expect big names like AT&T and Verizon Communications to walk away with a large share of the licenses to match assets that rival T-Mobile captured with its February takeover of Sprint.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Verizon's new nationwide 5G network is reportedly slower than its LTE network, to the point that users are apparently better off just disabling 5G entirely unless they're near a mmWave network. The results come from testing done by PC Magazine's Sascha Sagan, who points to Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, or DSS, as the culprit. The tech lets carriers run LTE and 5G networks side by side, which is useful if, like Verizon, you don't yet have enough dedicated 5G spectrum. While the carrier has largely focused on its mmWave network until recently, it also has begun rolling out a mid-band nationwide 5G network, which promises to avoid mmWave's range issues by using DSS. The only catch is that, with Verizon, it seems like this tech leads to worse performance in most cases for phones running in 5G mode.

The solution, at least for now, is to just turn 5G off if you're a Verizon customer. If that has your concerned about speeds compared to your T-Mobile customer friends, don't worry too much: in it's nationwide speed test earlier this year, PC Magazine found that T-Mobile's 5G can often still be slower than Verizon's LTE, even though it uses dedicated 5G bands. That same nationwide test also revealed that AT&T's 5G can be slower than its LTE as well -- which makes sense, given that it also uses the DSS technology for it's 5G network. The results from PC Magazine were only done in New York City, so if you have a 5G phone on Verizon, it may be worth checking to see if you're actually getting faster speeds with 5G on. If you're not, it may be worth turning it off entirely for now. This is also likely just a temporary issue -- as Verizon continues to add dedicated 5G spectrum, their speeds are going to improve.

T-Mobile has been asked to stop advertising its 5G network as more reliable than the competition by the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), which investigated T-Mobile's claims made primarily in an ad featuring celebrity scientist Bill Nye after complaints from Verizon earlier this year. From a report: But the NARB also says T-Mobile shouldn't have to mention the speed of its network when broadly discussing coverage superiority in future ads. T-Mobile has said it will comply with the recommendation. But it cast the recommendations as a partial win in a statement saying it "appreciates that the panel agreed that T-Mobile can continue to advertise its superior 5G coverage without qualification." T-Mobile's compliance is notable because telecom giants don't have to follow the recommendations offered by the NARB, which, as a self-regulatory body under the umbrella of a nonprofit organization, has no governmental regulatory power. For instance, AT&T flatly ignored a request it stop using its misleading "5G E" logo to reference a superior form of 4G.

T-Mobile last week introduced the market's newest 5G moniker: "Ultra Capacity." The label, writes blog LightReading, will stew alongside "5G Ultra Wideband," "Extended Range 5G," "5G+," "5Ge," "5GTF," "5G Nationwide" and plain-old "5G" in the US wireless industry, ensuring that if American mobile customers aren't confused yet, it's only a matter of time before they're hopelessly bewildered by operators' thesaurus-toting marketing executives. So here's that 5G lexicon everyone is apparently going to need, the blog reports:
5G Ultra Capacity: This is the new brand that T-Mobile is applying to its 5G network running in the midband 2.5GHz spectrum it acquired from Sprint, as well as its highband, millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum. The operator said customers with "5G Ultra Capacity" phones and coverage can expect speeds around 300 Mbit/s up to peaks of 1 Gbit/s.
5G Ultra Wideband: This is the label Verizon has applied to its 5G network running in its own mmWave spectrum. Due to the physics of signal propagation in such spectrum, mmWave transmitters can't reach receivers that are more than a few thousand feet away.
5G+: This is the label AT&T has applied to its own mmWave network. However, the operator appears to be focusing its energies on 5G in other spectrum bands.
Extended Range 5G: This is the label T-Mobile has given to its 5G network in its lowband 600MHz spectrum, which supports slower speeds than mmWave or midband networks. As you can imagine, given the name, signals in Extended Range 5G go much, much further than signals in mmWave spectrum, again due to the physics of signal propagation in lowband spectrum like 600MHz. Verizon and AT&T also operate extensive lowband 5G networks.
5G Nationwide: This is the label Verizon has applied to its lowband 5G network. It's similar to T-Mobile's "Extended Range 5G," although T-Mobile has dedicated some 600MHz spectrum to 5G while Verizon is using a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) to put both 4G and 5G signals in its lowband spectrum.
5Ge: This is the moniker AT&T gave to its 4G LTE network in 2018, sparking plenty of controversy. The action allowed AT&T to quickly offer 5G icons to most of its customers without actually having to deploy a 5G network that adheres to the 3GPP's official 5G technology standard.
5GTF: This is the technology label that Verizon tacitly applied to its initial 5G Home fixed wireless service running in its mmWave spectrum. The network initially did not work on the official 3GPP 5G technology standard and instead worked on a derivation developed by Verizon and its vendors. However, Verizon has since shifted its 5G Home service to the official 3GPP 5G standard.
5G: This is the catch-all label that operators are applying to whatever their marketing teams haven't gotten their fingers on yet. T-Mobile used "5G" for a while until it introduced "Ultra Capacity," and AT&T still uses "5G" for its lowband 5G network.

Discovery is the latest media company to jump into the ever more crowded streaming wars. It will launch its streaming service Discovery+ on Jan. 4, 2021. The service will include a $4.99 per month ad-supported tier and a $6.99 per month ad-free tier. From a report: The lower $4.99 tier costs the same as NBCUniversal-owned Peacock's premium tier with ads. The ad-free $6.99 tier is on par with what Disney+ costs. Both offerings are much less expensive than WarnerMedia's HBO Max, which costs $14.99 a month, and Netflix, which raised its standard plan to $13.99 a month in Oct. Discovery is also partnering with Verizon, which will give 55 million customers up to 12 months of the ad-free Discovery+ plan for free, depending on their wireless plan with the carrier.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Verizon has agreed to bring FiOS fiber-to-the-home service to another 500,000 households in New York City by July 2023, settling a lawsuit over Verizon's failure to wire up the entire city as required in a franchise agreement. "Today's settlement will ensure that 500,000 households that previously lacked Verizon broadband access because of a corporate failure to invest in the necessary infrastructure will have the option of fiber broadband and create critical cost competition in areas where today only one provider exists," NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's office said in an announcement last week. The settlement's full text is available here.

New York City sued Verizon in March 2017, saying the company failed to complete a citywide fiber rollout by 2014 as required in its cable-TV franchise agreement. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Verizon said it had brought its fiber network to 2.2 million of NYC's 3.1 million households. The settlement will cover many but not all of the remaining residential housing units where FiOS is currently not available. As of July 2019, Verizon had brought FiOS to 2.7 million households, a number that will rise to 3.2 million households once Verizon complies with the settlement, de Blasio's office told Ars today. The city estimates there are now 3.45 million households, so about 250,000 will be left without FiOS. With the settlement providing coverage of over 90 percent of households, "this is part of our overall strategy to increase competition in the market," a de Blasio spokesperson told Ars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast's 1.2TB monthly data cap is coming to 12 more states and the District of Columbia starting January 2021. The unpopular policy was already enforced in most of Comcast's 39-state US territory over the past few years, and the upcoming expansion will for the first time bring the cap to every market in Comcast's territory. Comcast will be providing some "courtesy months" in which newly capped customers can exceed 1.2TB without penalty, so the first overage charges for these customers will be assessed for data usage in the April 2021 billing period.

Comcast's data cap has been imposed since 2016 in 27 of the 39 states in Comcast's cable territory. The cap-less parts of Comcast's network include Northeastern states where the cable company faces competition from Verizon's un-capped FiOS fiber-to-the-home broadband service. But last week, an update to Comcast's website said that the cap is coming to Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The cap is also coming to parts of Virginia and Ohio where it wasn't already implemented. In all, Comcast has nearly 28 million residential Internet customers. "Comcast's overage charges are $10 for each additional block of 50GB, up to a maximum of $100 each month," notes Ars. "Customers can avoid overage charges by spending an extra $30 a month on unlimited data or $25 for the 'xFi Complete' plan that includes unlimited data and the rental cost for Comcast's xFi gateway modem and router."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: BuzzFeed is set to acquire HuffPost in a stock deal with Verizon Media, The Wall Street Journal's Benjamin Mullin and Keach Hagey first reported Thursday. Verizon will get a noncontrolling stake in BuzzFeed in return. In addition to the all-stock deal, Verizon is investing cash in BuzzFeed, according to The Journal. As a result of the deal, the two newsrooms will be able to syndicate each other's content and team up for advertising deals. Jonah Peretti, the BuzzFeed founder and CEO and a cofounder of The Huffington Post, will be in charge of the expanded media giant. The two newsrooms will continue to operate as separate entities, the companies said in a press release.

"Verizon Media's strategy has evolved over the past two years to focus on our core strengths -- ads, commerce, content and subscriptions," Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan said in the release. "We've created a powerhouse ecosystem, built on a trusted network, that delivers an end-to-end experience for consumers and advertisers. The partnership with BuzzFeed complements our roadmap while also accelerating our transformation and growth."

Peretti said in the statement: "We're excited about our partnership with Verizon Media, and mutual benefits that will come from syndicating content across each other's properties, collaborating on innovative ad products and the future of commerce, and tapping into the strength and creativity of Verizon Media Immersive. I have vivid memories of growing HuffPost into a major news outlet in its early years, but BuzzFeed is making this acquisition because we believe in the future of HuffPost and the potential it has to continue to define the media landscape for years to come," Peretti said. "With the addition of HuffPost, our media network will have more users, spending significantly more time with our content than any of our peers." Arianna Huffington, the HuffPost founder, tweeted: "So happy to see HuffPost and Buzzfeed coming together 15 years after Jonah Peretti started HuffPost with Kenny Lerer and me. Such exciting news and looking forward to all that's to come!"