Motorola's $500 Moto Z4 is finally official, bringing an updated design with a near-notchless 6.4-inch OLED display, headphone jack, and support for the company's Moto Mods. Other specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor, 4GB of RAM with 128GB of storage (expandable via microSD to 2TB) and Android 9.0 Pie, with Motorola promising an update to Q in the future. CNET reports: To improve photography Motorola has added what it calls "Quad Pixel technology," which uses pixel-binning to allow for 48-megapixel shots with the rear lens, following a trend of other recent higher-end midrange phones including OnePlus' 7 Pro. Around front is a 25-megapixel shooter which takes advantage of the same "Quad Pixel" tech. Motorola says both sensors should offer improved details and colors as well as better low-light performance. The company has even added its own rival to the Pixel 3's Night Sight called Night Vision.

In some brief hands-on time with the phone, the phone feels more premium than the rival cheaper Pixel 3a, which starts at $399. Videos looked sharp on the OLED display and the Night Vision did a solid job of enhancing images taken in a dark room. Whether the Z4 can rival the Pixel 3A's camera or if its cheaper price can top the value of $669 OnePlus 7 Pro's performance remains to be seen. An optical fingerprint sensor is built into the display, similar to the technology used on OnePlus' 6T and 7 Pro. As with the OnePlus phones, setup was seamless and unlocking was responsive during our brief use of the phone. Wireless charging isn't present nor is IP-rated water resistance (Motorola says the phone can withstand spills and rain). The phone will be available from Verizon on June 13, and will support the carrier's 5G network via the 5G Moto Mod (sold separately).

T-Mobile and Sprint submitted a new plan for their proposed $26 billion merger to the FCC -- including enhanced 5G buildout commitments and an agreement to spin off Sprint's Boost Mobile -- which got the nod from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. From a report: T-Mobile and Sprint first announced their plans to merge in April 2018, looking to combine forces to take on the two industry leaders -- AT&T and Verizon. To clear regulatory hurdles, the companies have been forced to make additional guarantees. Those include a commitment to deploying a 5G network that would cover 97% of the U.S. population within three years of the closing of the merger and 99% within six years. In addition, the revised T-Mobile/Sprint plan guarantees that their 5G network would reach deep into rural areas, with 85% of rural Americans covered within three years and 90% covered within six years. T-Mobile and Sprint also have promised that 90% of Americans would have access to mobile broadband service at speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and 99% would have access to speeds of at least 50 Mbps.

A month ago, Verizon's 5G coverage in Chicago was exceedingly difficult to find and the speeds were only noticeably faster than LTE. Now, Chris Welch from The Verge says the company "has ramped things up." While coverage "remains extremely limited" and "varies widely block by block," the speed is lightning fast. From the report: I just ran a speed test that crossed 1Gbps, and my mind is frankly a little blown. This is in the real world, where my iPhone XS Max is barely hitting 20Mbps in the same spot. Download speeds on Verizon's 5G network now feel like a proper next-gen leap over current LTE performance. Going over 700Mbps is very typical, and crossing that gigabit marker can happen regularly if you're standing near one of the carrier's 5G nodes, which utilize millimeter wave technology to achieve the faster download rates.

I'm still walking around Chicago and testing things out, but here are a few quick tests I ran: The pilot episode of The Office downloaded from Netflix at "high" quality in eight seconds. That's not a typo. I pulled down Marvel's Iron Man 2 from the Amazon Prime Video app at "best" quality in 90 seconds. Welch balances his excitement by saying that "indoor coverage on Verizon's 5G network is basically nonexistent." Also, "uploads are still limited to LTE on Verizons 5G network" and "tethering with the Galaxy S10 5G isn't yet supported (at 5G speeds)."

Another thing to think about is the fact that barely anyone is on Verizon's 5G network right now. When people actually start buying 5G devices, the 1Gbps speeds will surely drop.

In a collection of letters published by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on Thursday, representatives of T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon all said they had ceased or significantly curtailed the sale of their customers' location data to companies whose shady practices brought to light triggered alarms among privacy advocates and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. From a report: The companies were responding to questions from Rosenworcel prompted by news reports that location data originating with America's largest telecoms was being acquired and sold downstream by bounty hunters and others without the consent of the companies themselves or their customers. The New York Times, for instance, reported last year that law enforcement officials had also purchased access to location data, circumvented the usual need for a warrant. On Wednesday, House lawmakers grilled the FCC's chairman, Ajit Pai, for details about the status of the commission's nearly year-long investigation into the malpractice. After two hours, it adjourned with no new information.

In a May 15 letter, AT&T said that as of March 29 it was no longer sharing its customers' data with location aggregators. Sprint said in its letter that it is now only sharing location data with one location aggregator and two customers "with a public interest," a roadside assistance company and another that facilities compliance with state lottery requirements. T-Mobile said that, as of February 8, it had "terminated all service provider access to location data" under its aggregator program, and that, as of March 9, it had terminated all existing aggregator contracts. "Except for four roadside assistance companies," Verizon terminated its location aggregator program as of November 2018, the company said. It added that the four remaining contracts were terminated by the end of March.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The four major U.S. wireless carriers are facing proposed class-action lawsuits accusing them of violating federal law by selling their customers' real-time location data to third parties. The complaints seeking class action status and financial damages were filed last week against AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. The four suits, filed on behalf of customers by lawyers from the Z Law firm in Maryland, all begin with text nearly identical to this intro found in the suit against AT&T: "This action arises out of Defendant's collection of geolocation data and the unauthorized dissemination to third-parties of the geolocation data collected from its users' cell phones. AT&T admittedly sells customer geolocation data to third-parties, including but not limited to data aggregators, who in turn, are able to use or resell the geolocation data with little or no oversight by AT&T. This is an action seeking damages for AT&T gross failure to safeguard highly personal and private consumer geolocation data in violation of federal law."

The proposed classes would include all of the four carriers' customers in the U.S. between 2015 and 2019. In all, that would be 300 million or more customers, as the lawsuits say the proposed classes consist of at least 100 million customers each for AT&T and Verizon and at least 50 million each for Sprint and T-Mobile. Each lawsuit seeks damages for consumers "in an amount to be proven at trial." In June 2018, the four major U.S. carriers promised to stop selling their mobile customers' location info to third-party data brokers after a security problem leaked the real-time location of U.S. cellphone users. Despite the carriers' promises, a Motherboard investigation found in January 2019 that they were still selling access to their customers' location data.

"The lawsuits accuse the carriers of violating Section 222 of the U.S. Communications Act, which says that carriers may not use or disclose location information 'without the express prior authorization of the customer,'" reports Ars Technica. "The lawsuits also say that each carrier failed to follow its own privacy policy and 'profited from the sale and unauthorized dissemination of Plaintiff and Class Members' [private data].'"

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes the Verge: Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr, the blogging platform it acquired along with other Yahoo assets in 2017... The platform hosts 465.4 million blogs and 172 billion posts, according to its about page... On Thursday evening, Pornhub VP Corey Price claimed in a statement to BuzzFeed News that his company is "extremely interested" in buying Tumblr and "very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content..."

Price is referring to a major change implemented late last year, when Tumblr took the controversial step of banning porn on its platform. The company has been using AI to detect and automatically block images and videos that contain certain adult content. Existing posts containing porn were made private and are no longer publicly accessible.
Both Fortune and TechCrunch warned the acquisition might actually have bad consequences for adult content producers, since PornHub's owner MindGeek has been accused of ignoring piracy on its streaming sites, "a significant factor in the deflation of salaries for performers in the industry."

In a thread on Twitter, Engadget's senior news editor added "I guess the good news is that things PornHub announces as a publicity stunt don't usually happen, so..."

On Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel demanded answers from AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon on their sale of customers' phone location information to data aggregators. From a report: As Motherboard has shown in multiple investigations, this data, which sometimes included highly precise assisted-GPS data, ended up in the hands of bounty hunters, bail bondsmen, or private investigators. The demands are the latest move to pressure telecom companies, who said they would stop the sale of location data to third parties after Motherboard's coverage. AT&T and T-Mobile previously told Motherboard that sale has ended, and Sprint said it would stop at the end of May. But there are still serious concerns about how that data may have been stored and accessed. The letters from Commissioner Rosenworcel to the heads of each telco asked that the companies clarify whether data aggregators or others were allowed to save phone location data they received, and what steps the telcos are going to take to ensure the deletion of any shared data.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The U.S. mobile industry's top lobbying group is opposing a proposed California state law that would prohibit throttling of fire departments and other public safety agencies during emergencies. As reported yesterday by StateScoop, wireless industry lobby group CTIA last week wrote to lawmakers to oppose the bill as currently written. CTIA said the bill's prohibition on throttling is too vague and that it should apply only when the U.S. president or California governor declares emergencies and not when local governments declare emergencies.

The group's letter also suggested that the industry would sue the state if the bill is passed in its current form, saying the bill would result in "serious unintended consequences, including needless litigation." "[T]he bill's vague mandates, problematic emergency trigger requirement, and failure to include notification requirements could work to impede activities by first responders during disasters," CTIA wrote. The group said that it "must oppose AB 1699 unless it is amended to address the foregoing concerns." CTIA represents Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and other carriers. Despite CTIA's opposition, the bill proposed by State Assemblymember Marc Levine (D-Marin County) sailed through an Assembly committee yesterday. The Committee on Communications and Conveyance voted 12-0 to advance the bill, Levine's chief of staff, Terry Schanz, told Ars today. A committee analysis of the bill says that CTIA was the only organization to register opposition. The next stop for the bill is an April 30 hearing with the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee. It is in response to Verizon throttling an "unlimited" data plan used by Santa Clara firefighters last year during the state's largest-ever wildfire.

Apple allegedly wanted to hurt Qualcomm before it ever filed suit against the company, according to documents obtained by Qualcomm as the two companies prepared to meet in court. CNET reports on what has been made public: In September 2014, a document from Apple titled "QCOM - Future scenarios" detailed ways the company could exert pressure on Qualcomm, including by working with Intel on 4G modems for the iPhone. Apple and its manufacturing partners didn't actually file suit against Qualcomm until more than two years later. A second page of that document, titled "QCM - Options and recommendations (2/2)" revealed that Apple considered it "beneficial to wait to provoke a patent fight until after the end of 2016," when its contracts with Qualcomm would expire. "They were plotting it for two years," Qualcomm attorney Evan Chesler, of the firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, said during his opening arguments last week. "It was all planned in advance. Every bit of it."

The unknown Apple team behind the September 2014 document recommended applying "commercial pressure against Qualcomm" by switching to Intel modems in iPhones. Apple ultimately started using Intel modems in about half of its iPhones with devices that came out in 2016. In the US, it embedded Intel modems in AT&T and T-Mobile models of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, but it still used Qualcomm in versions for Verizon and Sprint. Qualcomm, for its part, knew by June 2014 about Apple's plans to use Intel chips in 2016, according to an internal email from its president, Cristiano Amon, that was displayed during opening arguments. "Decision already has been made and beyond the point of no return on the 2nd source (Intel) for the 2016 premium tier," Amon wrote to CEO Steve Mollenkopf, CTO Jim Thompson, General Counsel Don Rosenberg and then-licensing chief Derek Aberle.

Apple "said that as a result of our policies, other chip companies can't compete with us," Chesler said during his opening arguments. "Where did Intel get the chips from? From god? They made them using our technology." Another Apple internal document from June 2016 said the company wanted to "create leverage by building pressure three ways," according to a slide shown in court. The internal document said, in part, that Apple wanted to "hurt Qualcomm financially" and "put Qualcomm's business model at risk."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Wireless customers are hanging on to their old phones longer than ever. That's the message from Verizon, which said its upgrade rate fell to a record low last quarter -- a harbinger of tough times ahead for the iPhone and other devices. Faced with $1,000 price tags on moderately improved phones, consumers may be waiting to hear more about new 5G networks before committing to new models. The faster, more advanced services won't roll out in earnest until 2020. "Incremental changes from one model the the next, hasn't been that great, and it hasn't been enough of an incentive," Verizon Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis said in an interview Tuesday after the company reported fewer-than-expected new customers for the first quarter. He expects replacement rates to be down for the year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has proposed denying China Mobile USA's application to offer telecom services in the U.S., saying the Chinese government-owned company poses a security risk. The FCC is scheduled to vote on an order to deny the application at its open meeting on May 9, and Pai yesterday announced his opposition to China Mobile entering the U.S. market. "After reviewing the evidence in this proceeding, including the input provided by other federal agencies, it is clear that China Mobile's application to provide telecommunications services in our country raises substantial and serious national security and law enforcement risks," Pai said. "Therefore, I do not believe that approving it would be in the public interest. I hope that my colleagues will join me in voting to reject China Mobile's application."

China Mobile filed its application in 2011, and has repeatedly complained about the government's lengthy review process. According to Pai's announcement, China Mobile's application sought authority "to provide international facilities-based and resale telecommunications services between the U.S. and foreign destinations." In simpler terms, the company was seeking "a license to connect calls between the United States and other nations" and "was not seeking to provide domestic cell service and compete in the country with businesses like AT&T and Verizon," The New York Times wrote yesterday. An FCC official told reporters that such calls "could be intercepted for surveillance and make the domestic network vulnerable to hacking and other risks," the Times wrote.

pgmrdlm shares a report: Calls between T-Mobile users and Comcast's Xfinity Voice home subscribers will now be "verified," the latest move in the ongoing fight against robocalls. The two companies announced Wednesday that they have launched cross-network verification, allowing users to know that the calls they are receiving is from an actual person and not a spammer or robocaller.

They use a handoff system recommended by the FCC where the caller's network verifies that a legitimate call is being made with a "digital signature." The recipient's network then confirms the signature on its side. A number of major wireless and traditional home voice providers have pledged support for the verification method, including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Charter, Cox and Vonage, with several announcing plans to roll out or test the feature in 2019.

House lawmakers on Wednesday approved a Democrat-backed bill (alternative source) that would restore rules requiring AT&T, Verizon and other Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, marking an early step toward reversing one of the most significant deregulatory moves of the Trump era. From a report: But the net neutrality measure is likely to stall from here, given strong Republican opposition in the GOP-controlled Senate and the White House, where aides to President Trump this week recommended that he veto the legislation if it ever reaches his desk. The House's proposal, which passed by a vote of 232-190, would reinstate federal regulations that had banned AT&T, Verizon and other broadband providers from blocking or slowing down customers' access to websites. Adopted in 2015 during the Obama administration, these net neutrality protections had the backing of tech giants and startups as well as consumer advocacy groups, which together argued that strong federal open Internet protections were necessary to preserve competition and allow consumers unfettered access to movies, music and other content of their choice.

Verizon is sending out an update for millions of its routers after security researchers discovered vulnerabilities that could allow potential attackers to take over the devices. From a report: Researchers from Tenable, a security company, detailed three vulnerabilities with Verizon's Fios Quantum Gateway router on Tuesday. The company said it disclosed these security flaws to Verizon last December, and that the company issued a fix on March 13. Verizon said that a small percentage of its customers did not get the update automatically, and will still need a patch to protect against this security flaw. "We were recently made aware of three vulnerabilities related to login and password information on the Broadband Home Router Fios-G1100," a Verizon spokesman said in a statement.

"As soon as we were made aware of these vulnerabilities, we took immediate action to remediate them and are issuing patches." The company said that several customers with a particular type of router did not get the update, but said that people affected will not need to take any action. If your router's firmware is running version 02.02.00.13, you're up to date and safe from the vulnerabilities.

Verizon announced today that it has turned on its 5G wireless network in Chicago and Minneapolis -- two of the first markets in the world to receive this next-gen network. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg told CNBC that the company will activate 30 additional markets this year. From a report: Vestberg added that Verizon is unlikely to see any impact on revenue from people who upgrade to new 5G phones until around 2021. This network complements Verizon's existing "5G Home" service which launched in October in select areas and is a wireless alternative to a traditional cable-based home internet connection, but does not work far beyond the walls of your home.

Verizon said the wireless network will give customers access to peak speeds up to 1 Gbps. That's about 10 times faster than you might traditionally find on the LTE connection you have now. Put plainly: You'll be able to download movies in seconds instead of minutes. Only a select number of phones will support the network at first. Samsung will launch a Galaxy S10 5G model later this quarter that will be exclusive to Verizon to start. AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint will begin to sell it in the second half of the year. That leaves the Motorola Z3 as the only phone that supports Verizon's new 5G network right now, and it requires a separate accessory to work on it.

Friday CNN reported on "what you can do right now to stop robocalls."

"Short of throwing your phone in the garbage, there's no way to avoid them altogether. But wireless providers and smartphone developers offer tools to filter out at least some unwanted calls." - Verizon's Call Filter app is free to download on iPhones and Android devices. The company announced Thursday the app will offer some free features -- including auto-blocking calls from known fraudsters, showing warning banners for suspicious calls, and a spam reporting tool. For $2.99 a month per line, the Call Filter app can use a phonebook feature to look up the names of unknown callers, and it can show a "risk meter" for spam calls.

- AT&T's Call Protect has similar free features and add-ons with a $3.99 per month subscription. (iOS and Android)

- T-Mobile phones come loaded with Scam ID, which warns customers about suspicious phone numbers. It's also free to activate Scam Block, which automatically rejects calls from those numbers. An additional app called Name ID offers premium caller identification for $4 per line monthly. (iOS and Android)

- Sprint's Premium Caller ID , which comes pre-installed, looks up unknown numbers and filters and blocks robocalls for $2.99 per line.

- Google's Pixel phones also give you the option to have your voice assistant answer suspicious calls for you. The phone can transcribe the conversation and lets you decide whether to answer.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Federal Trade Commission, in what could be considered a prelude to new regulatory action, has issued an order to several major internet service providers requiring them to share every detail of their data collection practices. The information could expose patterns of abuse or otherwise troubling data use against which the FTC -- or states -- may want to take action. The letters requesting info went to Comcast, Google, T-Mobile, and both the fixed and wireless sub-companies of Verizon and AT&T. These "represent a range of large and small ISPs, as well as fixed and mobile Internet providers," an FTC spokesperson said. I'm not sure which is mean to be the small one, but welcome any information the agency can extract from any of them.

To be clear, the FTC already has consumer protection rules in place and could already go after an internet provider if it were found to be abusing the privacy of its users -- you know, selling their location to anyone who asks or the like. (Still no action there, by the way.) But the evolving media and telecom landscape, in which we see enormous companies devouring one another to best provide as many complementary services as possible, requires constant reevaluation. As the agency writes in a press release: "The FTC is initiating this study to better understand Internet service providers' privacy practices in light of the evolution of telecommunications companies into vertically integrated platforms that also provide advertising-supported content." The report provides this example as to the kind of situation the FTC is concerned about: "If Verizon wants to offer not just the connection you get on your phone, but the media you request, the ads you are served, and the tracking you never heard of, it needs to show that these businesses are not somehow shirking rules behind the scenes."

"For instance, if Verizon Wireless says it doesn't collect or share information about what sites you visit, but the mysterious VZ Snooping Co (fictitious, I should add) scoops all that up and then sells it for peanuts to its sister company, that could amount to a deceptive practice," TechCrunch adds. "Of course it's rarely that simple (though don't rule it out), but the only way to be sure is to comprehensively question everyone involved and carefully compare the answers with real-world practices."

"The fight against robocalls can even bring telecom rivals together," reports USA Today: AT&T and Comcast said Wednesday that they can authenticate calls made between the two different phone providers' networks, a potential industry first and the latest in the long-running battle against spam calls... The system, which uses a method developed in recent years, verifies that a legitimate call is being made instead of one that has been spoofed by spammers, scammers or robocallers with a "digital signature." The recipient network then confirms the signature on its side. The companies said consumers will get a notification that a call is verified, but exactly what that will look like is not yet known.

Both AT&T and Comcast will roll out the system to home phone users later this year at no extra charge. AT&T also said it will introduce the feature to its mobile users this year... Other major wireless and traditional home voice providers have pledged support for the verification method, including Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Charter, Cox and Vonage, with several announcing plans to roll out or test the feature in 2019.
The day Comcast and AT&T made their announcement, AT&T's CEO was giving a live interview that was interrupted by a robocall.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a new report calling for a "fiber for all" plan to combat the broadband access crisis in the United States. Government data and independent analysis show we are falling behind the rest of the developed world in this area, and "the U.S. is the only country that believes having no plan will solve this issue," writes Ernesto Falcon from the EFF. "We are the only country to completely abandon federal oversight of an uncompetitive, highly concentrated market that sells critical services to all people, yet we expect widely available, affordable, ultra-fast services. But if you live in a low-income neighborhood or in a rural market today, you know very well this is not working and the status quo is going to cement in your local broadband options to either one choice or no choice." From the report: Very small ISPs and local governments with limited budgets are at the frontline of deploying fiber to the home to fix these problems, but policymakers from the federal, state, and local level need to step up and lead. At least 19 states still have laws that prohibit local governments from deploying community broadband projects. Worst yet, both AT&T and Verizon are actively asking the FCC to make it even harder for small private ISPs to deploy fiber, so that the big incumbents can raise prices and suppress competition, a proposal EFF has urged the FCC to reject.

This is why we need to push our elected officials and regulators for a fiber-for-all-people plan to ensure everyone can obtain the next generation of broadband access. Otherwise, the next generation of applications and services won't be usable in most of the United States. They will be built instead for markets with better, faster, cheaper, and more accessible broadband. This dire outcome was the central thesis to a recently published book by Professor Susan Crawford (appropriately named Fiber) and EFF agrees with its findings. If American policymakers do not remedy the failings in the US market and actively pursue ways to drive fiber deployment with the goal of universal coverage, then a staggering number of Americans will miss out on the latest innovations that will occur on the Internet because it will be inaccessible or too expensive. As a result, we will see a worsening of the digital divide as advances in virtual reality, cloud computing, gaming, education, and things we have not invented yet are going to carry a monopoly price tag for a majority of us -- or just not be accessible here. This does not have to be so, but it requires federal, state, and local governments to get to work on policies that promote fiber infrastructure to all people. Most of the talk lately has been about 5G networks, but the less-spoken truth about these networks is that they need dense fiber networks to make them work. "One estimate on the amount of fiber investment that needs to occur is as much as $150 billion -- including fiber to the home deployments -- in the near future, and we are far below that level of commitment to fiber," the report says.

AT&T's "5G Evolution" cellular service isn't just controversial and arguably misleading, it's also slower than the 4G speeds offered by rivals T-Mobile and Verizon, according to a new report today from OpenSignal. From a report: Over a one-month period spanning January 28 through February 26, OpenSignal compared the average performance of "5G E capable" phones and "all others" on AT&T's network with similarly equipped devices on T-Mobile's, Verizon's, and Sprint's networks -- a fair test in that all four of the major U.S. carriers have deployed pre-5G, late-stage 4G technologies across the country. Only Sprint's network fell behind AT&T's performance, though that's no surprise, as the fourth-place carrier's network has lagged behind its rivals in performance for years.