Low-end smartphones sold to Americans with low-income via a government-subsidized program contain unremovable malware, security firm Malware bytes said today in a report. From a report: The smartphone model is Unimax (UMX) U686CL, a low-end Android-based smartphone made in China and sold by Assurance Wireless, a cell phone service provider part of the Virgin Mobile group. The telco sells cell phones part of Lifeline, a government program that subsidizes phone service for low-income Americans. "In late 2019, we saw several complaints in our support system from users with a government-issued phone reporting that some of its pre-installed apps were malicious," Malwarebytes said in a report published today. The company said it purchased a UMX U686CL smartphone and analyzed it to confirm the reports it was receiving.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Now that most smartphones don't have headphone jacks, there's no shortage of complaints about Bluetooth. This year at CES, the industry group in charge of defining the standard, the Bluetooth SIG, is introducing new features that should address some of them. Later this year, it will finalize new support for Bluetooth LE Audio, which is an umbrella term for a bunch of new features for Bluetooth devices. The new features include higher-quality audio, hearing aid support, broadcasting to many people, and working better with wireless earbuds. Unfortunately, as is the way with all industry specs, it will take some time for these features to make their way into consumer products. The old joke that "Bluetooth will be better next year" still holds true.

The feature that will likely affect the most people is the new "Low Complexity Communication Codec," or LC3. LC3 simultaneously reduces power consumption while increasing audio quality. Right now, the lowest common denominator for Bluetooth audio is the relatively old and relatively bad SBC codec, though many phones support Qualcomm's proprietary codec, AptX. In order to get SBC to sound good, you have to increase the bitrate, which increases power consumption. The Bluetooth SIG claims that, in its testing, users preferred the new LC3 codec, even at significantly lower bitrates. The group is also finally beefing up official support for Bluetooth hearing aids. It has worked in conjunction with a European hearing instrument association to ensure broad support in the coming years, including working with TVs and other devices. A new "broadcast" feature will theoretically allow an entire movie theater audience to use their Bluetooth headphones to tune in to the movie, although how exactly the pairing process would work is "TBD," the report says.

Bluetooth LE will natively support multistream audio, which "means wireless earbuds will be able to receive their own independent signal from a phone instead of having to communicate with each other," the report adds. "Multistream also will allow for easier sharing of Bluetooth audio among multiple users from the same source."

Sprint is officially pulling the plug on its decaying Virgin Mobile prepaid service and will transfer current customers to its Boost Mobile brand starting in February. From a report: The move doesn't come as a complete surprise as Sprint has long been pulling back marketing and distribution for the brand, most recently in October severing ties with Walmart as a distribution partner. Since then Virgin Mobile could only be purchased through an online portal, as Walmart was the last remaining brick-and-mortar sales channel, following earlier decisions in 2019 to pull the brand from Best Buy stores and Meijer. These moves were noticed by Jeffrey Moore at Wave7 Research, who previously predicted that Virgin Mobile was not long for this world. Back in November he told FierceWireless that it had been 31 months since Virgin Mobile had changed its rate card and the brand's press portal hadn't seen an update in 19 months.

Audio company Sonos has sued Google for allegedly copying its patented speaker technology while undercutting it at market. From a report: The New York Times reports that it filed two lawsuits covering five patents on its wireless speaker design. Sonos is also asking for a sales ban on Google's laptops, phones, and speakers in the US through a separate case with the International Trade Commission. Sonos claims that Google stole its multiroom speaker technology after getting access to it through a 2013 partnership. The original partnership would let Sonos speakers support Google Play Music, but the company allegedly used patented technology in its now-discontinued Chromecast Audio device, then continued to use it in the Google Home lineup of smart speakers and the Pixel product lineup. Meanwhile, Sonos says Google subsidized its own products to sell them at a cheaper price while using them to extract more data from buyers.

Bluetooth will soon roll out some of its technology's biggest improvements in its nearly 20-year history. From a report: The new Bluetooth standard will be known as LE Audio and one of the biggest improvements it will include will be a feature called Multi-Stream Audio. Bluetooth is currently limited to streaming audio to just a single device. That's fine for portable speakers and headphones where both sides are connected with a wire, but for wireless earbuds, such as Apple's AirPods, your smartphone can actually only connect to one side. That earbud then has to forward the audio stream onto the one in your other ear, which requires some clever software tricks to ensure everything remains in sync. Multi-Stream Audio will solve that, as it will allow a single device, such as a smartphone, to stream flawlessly synced audio to multiple audio devices at the same time.

The most obvious benefit is that it will be much easier to make wireless earbuds work more reliably, without any audio lag issues. But the feature promises to also benefit those who want to use their wireless headphones with multiple devices at the same time, such as a tablet, phone, and a laptop, streamlining the process of switching between each audio source without having to go through an annoying disconnect/reconnect process each time. Bluetooth LE Audio will also make sharing a music stream with others possible. Users should be able to easily share audio from their smartphone with friends, as multiple sets of wireless headphones can be connected to a single source device at once, and each should receive the exact same audio stream in perfect sync with all the others. Further expanding on that idea is another new feature known as Broadcast Audio which allows a single audio source device to broadcast several audio streams to an unlimited number of wireless headphones, without any private pairing required.

"First they came for our headphone jacks. Now, they're taking our ports," writes CNET: Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has reported that the company is gearing up to remove the Lightning connector from the flagship iPhone released in 2021... Kuo predicts that having a totally wireless phone will help differentiate the flagship iPhone from all other models in the lineup. Having no physical ports mean iPhones will have less moving parts and it can improve water resistance or make more room for a bigger battery...

We've also seen other rumors indicating that Apple may bundle AirPods with the new iPhones, which makes sense if we get a portless phone. Apple would not be the first to experiment with a portless phone: Other companies have shown off concepts, like the Vivo Apex from earlier in 2019.

The fight against annoying robocalls just got another boost. This week President Trump signed the Traced Act into law, giving government agencies and law enforcement officials more weapons to go after individuals and companies who break telephone consumer-protection laws. From a report: The bi-partisan legislation was previously approved by the House and Senate, respectively, earlier this month before arriving on the president's desk. Crafted by Sens. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, and Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, among the act's features are an increase in penalties for those scammers who knowingly initiate illegal robocalls and the requirement that phone companies authenticate calls to determine if the number calling you is real. As part of a Federal Communications Commission push, major wireless carriers and home phone providers have been implementing a verification process known as STIR/SHAKEN throughout 2019 to authenticate calls and fight spammers. In addition to raising penalties and pushing for authentication, the bill also gives regulators like the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission four years to go after scammers, as opposed to the one-year statute of limitations that was previously in place.

Hundreds of thousands of American students are being tracked by their colleges to monitor attendance, analyze behavior and assess their mental health, the Washington Post reported this week. That article has now provoked some responses...

Jay Balan, chief security researcher at Bitdefender, told Gizmodo that the makers of the student-tracking apps should at least offer bug bounties and disclose their source code -- while rattling off easily foreseeable scenarios like the stalking of students. Gizmodo notes one app's privacy policy actually allows them to "collect or infer" students' approximate location -- even when students have turned off location tracking -- and allows third parties to "set and access their own tracking technologies on your devices."

And cypherpunk Lance R. Vick tweeted in response to the article, "If you are at one of these schools asking you to install apps on your phone to track you, hit me up for some totally hypothetical academic ideas..."

Gizmodo took him up on his offer -- and here's a bit of what he said: Students could reverse engineer the app to develop their own app beacon emulators to tell the tracking beacons that all students are present all the time. They could also perhaps deploy their own rogue tracking beacons to publish the anonymised attendance data for all students to show which teachers are the most boring as evidenced by lack of attendance. If one was hypothetically in an area without laws against harmful radio interference (like outside the U.S.) they could use one of many devices on the market to disrupt all Bluetooth communications in a target area so no one gets tracked... If nothing else, you could potentially just find a call in the API that takes a bit longer to come back than the rest. This tells you it takes some amount of processing on their side. What happens if you run that call a thousand times a second? Or only call it partway over and over again? This often brings poorly designed web services to a halt very quickly...

Assuming explorations on the endpoints like the phone app or beacon firmware fail you could still potentially learn useful information exploring the wireless traffic itself using popular SDR tools like a HackRF, Ubertooth, BladeRF. Here you potentially see how often they transmit, what lives in each packet, and how you might convert your own devices, perhaps a Raspberry Pi with a USB Bluetooth dongle, to be a beacon of your own.

Anyone doing this sort of thing should check their local and federal laws and approach it with caution. But these exact sorts of situations can, for some, be the start of a different type of education path -- a path into security research. Bypassing annoying digital restrictions at colleges was a part of how I got my start, so maybe a new generation can do similar. :)
Gizmodo calls his remarks "hypothetical hacking that you (a student with a bright future who doesn't want any trouble) should probably not do because you might be breaking the law."

But then how should students respond to their school's surveillance systems?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal regulators that want to let T-Mobile complete its acquisition of rival wireless carrier Sprint are pushing back on a collective effort by some states to block the deal. The $26 billion transaction was subject to federal approval by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. The agencies both blessed the deal, with the DOJ reaching a settlement in July and the FCC granting a green light in October. The deal also requires approval by regulators in several states, however. While about a dozen have in some way approved the deal or signaled support for the federal settlements, attorneys general representing 13 states and the District of Columbia filed suit to block the merger.

The FCC and DOJ on Friday submitted a filing [400-page PDF] in that case arguing that the deal is in the best interest of the U.S., and any nationwide injunction holding up the merger would block "substantial, long-term, and procompetitive benefits for American consumers." The argument, in large part, boils down to: trust us, we're the experts. "Both the Antitrust Division and the FCC have significant experience and expertise in analyzing these types of transactions and do so from a nationwide perspective," the agencies write. "Thus, their conclusions that the merger as remedied is in the public interest deserve appropriate weight in this remedy inquiry by this honorable court."

"We're at a turning point for driving surveillance," reports the Washington Post (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader davidwr ). "In the 2020 model year, most new cars sold in the United States will come with built-in Internet connections, including 100 percent of Fords, GMs and BMWs and all but one model Toyota and Volkswagen."

Often included for free (or sold as an add-on), these connections mean "Cars are becoming smartphones on wheels," collecting and sending data "pretty much wherever their makers want. Some brands even reserve the right to use the data to track you down if you don't pay your bills...." On a recent drive, a 2017 Chevrolet collected my precise location. It stored my phone's ID and the people I called. It judged my acceleration and braking style, beaming back reports to its maker General Motors over an always-on Internet connection... Modern vehicles don't just have one computer. There are multiple, interconnected brains that can generate up to 25 gigabytes of data per hour from sensors all over the car... Most hide what they're collecting and sharing behind privacy policies written in the kind of language only a lawyer's mother could love...

The Tesla Model 3 can collect video snippets from the car's many cameras. Coming next: face data, used to personalize the vehicle and track driver attention... Coming 5G cellular networks promise to link cars to the Internet with ultra-fast, ultra-high-capacity connections. As wireless connections get cheaper and data becomes more valuable, anything the car knows about you is fair game. GM's view, echoed by many other automakers, is that we gave them permission for all of this...

Five years ago, 20 automakers signed on to volunteer privacy standards, pledging to "provide customers with clear, meaningful information about the types of information collected and how it is used," as well as "ways for customers to manage their data." But when I called eight of the largest automakers, not even one offered a dashboard for customers to look at, download and control their data.... GM's privacy policy, which the company says it will update before the end of 2019, says it may "use anonymized information or share it with third parties for any legitimate business purpose." Such as whom? "The details of those third-party relationships are confidential," said GM spokesman David Caldwell.

There are more questions. GM's privacy policy says it will comply with legal data demands. How often does it share our data with the government? GM doesn't offer a transparency report like tech companies do....
GM said "much" of their data can't be linked to a specific person, though the Post adds that "there were clues to what more GM knows on its website and app. It offers a Smart Driver score -- a measure of good driving -- based on how hard you brake and turn, and how often you drive late at night."

Meanwhile, the Post also reports that OnStar's privacy policy lets them keep the data they collect "pretty much forever... At least smartphone apps like Google Maps let you turn off and delete location history."

Car and Driver noted that the Post's reporter even found photos of his phone's contacts, concluding "Your car is collecting and transmitting a lot more data than you think." In 2017, the U.S. Government Accountability Office looked at automakers and their data privacy policies and found that the 13 car companies it looked at are not exactly using best practices. For example, while the automakers say they obtain "explicit consumer consent before collecting data," the GAO says they "offered few options besides opting out of all connected vehicle services to consumers who did not want to share their data."

Apple has a secret team working on satellites and related wireless technology, striving to find new ways to beam data such as internet connectivity directly to its devices, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the work. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker has about a dozen engineers from the aerospace, satellite and antenna design industries working on the project with the goal of deploying their results within five years, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal company efforts. Work on the project is still early and could be abandoned, the people said, and a clear direction and use for satellites hasn't been finalized. Still, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has shown interest in the project, indicating it's a company priority. Apple's work on communications satellites and next-generation wireless technology means the aim is likely to beam data to a user's device, potentially mitigating the dependence on wireless carriers, or for linking devices together without a traditional network. Apple could also be exploring satellites for more precise location tracking for its devices, enabling improved maps and new features.

There are real concerns about the way 5G is being deployed in the US, including security issues, the potential to interfere with weather forecasting systems, and the FCC steamrolling local regulators in the name of accelerating the 5G rollout. But concerns over the potential health impacts of 5G are overblown. From a report: If you weren't worried about prior generations of cellular service causing cancer, 5G doesn't produce much new to worry about. And you probably didn't need to be worried before. Few 5G services will use higher frequencies in the near term, and there's little reason to think these frequencies are any more harmful than other types of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light. Most concerns about health impacts from 5G stem from millimeter-wave technology, high-frequency radio waves that are supposed to deliver much faster speeds. The catch is that millimeter-wave transmissions are far less reliable at long distances than transmissions using the lower frequencies that mobile carriers have traditionally used. To provide reliable, ubiquitous 5G service over millimeter-wave frequencies, carriers will need a larger number of smaller access points.

That's led to two fears: That the effects of millimeter-wave signals might be more dangerous than traditional frequencies; and that the larger number of access points, some potentially much closer to people's homes, might expose people to more radiation than 4G services. But millimeter waves aren't the only, or even the main, way that carriers will deliver 5G service. T-Mobile offers the most widespread 5G service available today. But it uses a band of low frequencies originally used for broadcast television. Sprint, meanwhile, repurposed some of the "mid-band" spectrum it uses for 4G to provide 5G. Verizon and AT&T both offer millimeter-wave-based services, but they're only available in a handful of locations. The wireless industry is focused more on using mid- and low-band frequencies for 5G, because deploying a massive number of millimeter-wave access points will be time-consuming and expensive. In other words, 5G will continue using the same radio frequencies that have been used for decades for broadcast radio and television, satellite communications, mobile services, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

Google, Amazon, Apple, and other technology companies have teamed up to develop a smart home connectivity standard that makes it easier for software and devices to play ball across the smart home ecosystem. From a report: Connected Home Over IP, as the new working group is called, will be spearheaded by the Zigbee Alliance, a group of companies that develop and maintain the ZigBee standard, which enables close-proximity devices (e.g light switches, smart speakers, locks) to talk to each other in the home. Smart home devices can use any number of protocols, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wireless USB, Z-Wave, and ZigBee. Google also develops two open source protocols -- called Weave and Thread. All of these various protocols have inherent benefits and may appeal to equipment manufacturers and IoT system makers for different reasons, but manufacturers have to invest considerable resources to ensure their devices will work with all the others. So the working group is setting out to achieve a common standard for the smart home, based on internet protocol (IP).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission is giving $87.1 million in rural-broadband funding to satellite operator Viasat to help the company lower prices and raise data caps. The FCC's Connect America Fund generally pays ISPs to expand their networks into rural areas that lack decent home Internet access. Viasat's satellite service already provides coverage of 98 percent of the US population in 50 states, so it doesn't need government funding to expand its network the same way that wireline operators do. But Viasat will use the money to offer Internet service "at lower cost to consumers, while also permitting higher usage allowances, than it typically provides in areas where it is not receiving Connect America Fund support," the FCC said in its announcement yesterday.

Viasat's $87.1 million is to be used over the next 10 years "to offer service to more than 121,700 remote and rural homes and businesses in 17 states." Viasat must provide speeds of at least 25Mbps for downloads and 3Mbps for uploads. While the funding for Viasat could certainly improve access for some people, the project helps illustrate how dire the broadband shortage is in rural parts of many states. Viasat's service is generally a last-ditch option for people in areas where there's no fiber or cable and where DSL isn't good enough to provide a reasonably fast and stable connection. Viasat customers have to pay high prices for slow speeds and onerous data limits. A Viasat spokesperson wouldn't comment on what prices and data caps will be applied to the company's FCC-subsidized plans. Viasat said it will provide the required 25Mbps service "along with an evolving usage allowance, and at FCC-defined prices, to certain areas, where we will be subject to a new range of federal and state regulations."

Slashdot reader alaskana98 writes: In the February 2001 issue of Maximum PC, technical editor Will Smith described in his column what he would like to see in the "perfect set-top box". At a time when arguably the best 'PVR' experience was being provided by the first iterations of the Tivo (with no HDTV or LAN connectivity), Will's description of what a set-top box could and should be comes eerily close to what we now know as the Apple TV and other 'set-top' boxes such as Roku and Amazon Firestick...

To be fair, not every feature on his list would come to pass. For example, he envisioned this device as essentially serving as the main "broadband router of a household, sharing your Internet connection with any networkable device in your house". Also, he envisions the media box as providing a "robust web experience" for the whole family, something that today's set-top boxes aren't especially good at (anyone remember WebTV?).

Still, in wanting an "elusive magical box" that "will set on top of our HDTV's and do everything our computers, game consoles, and VCRs do, only better", he was prescient in his descriptions of what would eventually materialize as the Apple TV and other like-minded set-top boxes, impressive for a denizen of the year 2001.
Are you impressed with Smith's predictive ability? Here's what he wrote...

• On networking: "My set-top box will have to have a high-speed broadband connection...sharing your Internet connection with any networkable device in your house via standard Ethernet, Wi-Fi compatible wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth".

• On gaming: "[W]ill include state-of-the-art 3D acceleration and gaming support" and "will include Bluetooth-style wireless connections for all your controllers".

• On media playback: "[W]ill also serve as a media store, handing the duties of both my high-def personal video recorder (HD-PVR) and digital audio jukebox".

• On device collaboration: "integrating the ability to automatically synchronize with Bluetooth-enabled" devices. [Though the original article says "PDAs"]

"The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously Thursday to push a plan forward that would take away several channels of airwaves from automakers and local governments that have been planning to build out a communication network for cars and surrounding smart infrastructure," writes Consumer Reports, in an article shared by McGruber.

"The 5-0 commission vote indicated how much ground the auto industry has lost in protecting the airwaves that have been reserved since 1999 as a so-called safety spectrum." The industry and some state and local governments have been counting on it to deliver vehicle-to-everything communications, or V2X, that could improve safety and also help in the development of self-driving-car technology... The FCC plan would all but kill an approach to V2X that relies on short-range radio, called DSRC, that has been deployed by local governments at some 100 test sites around the country, safety advocates say. That could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded local investments into smart traffic lights and other smart road technology would be wasted, according to state officials. The FCC plan would divide 75 MHz of the safety spectrum between WiFi and auto safety applications. The FCC proposal allocates 20 MHz for a newer V2X technology, known as C-V2X, and leaves 10 MHz for either C-V2X or DSRC.

All five FCC commissioners spoke about the vast economic potential of more airwaves dedicated to WiFi, and said not enough had happened with the V2X technology to continue to set aside so much spectrum for its exclusive use.

Republican Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said some opponents of the FCC plan might say the move puts vehicle safety in jeopardy or will lead to increased fatalities. "That is pure gibberish," O'Rielly said at the hearing. "Everyone on this dais wants our families, friends, neighbors, countrymen, and countrywomen to be safe when traveling in motor vehicles. DSRC hasn't come anywhere close to fruition." Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said other countries were dedicating less than 75 MHz to V2X applications, and the 10 MHz that could be available for DSRC in the FCC plan matches what Japan is doing.
The article concludes that the commission "will collect and analyze public comments over the next several months before any plan becomes final.

"But the comments of the commissioners and FCC staff left little doubt about the direction the agency is moving in.

At the 2019 Game Awards today, Microsoft revealed the name and console design of its next-generation gaming console: Xbox Series X. The Verge reports: The console itself looks far more like a PC than we've seen from previous Xbox consoles, and Microsoft's trailer provides a brief glimpse at the new design. The console itself is designed to be used in both vertical and horizontal orientations, and Microsoft's Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, promises that it will "deliver four times the processing power of Xbox One X in the most quiet and efficient way."

The Xbox Series X will include a custom-designed CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 and Radeon RDNA architecture. Microsoft is also using an SSD on Xbox Series X, which promises to boost load times. Xbox Series X will also support 8K gaming, frame rates of up to 120 fps in games, ray tracing, and variable refresh rate support. Microsoft also revealed a new Xbox Wireless Controller today. "Its size and shape have been refined to accommodate an even wider range of people, and it also features a new Share button to make capturing screenshots and game clips simple," explains Spencer. This updated controller will work with existing Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs, and will ship with every Xbox Series X.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says there will be four new OLED iPhone models in 2020, followed by a new iPhone without a Lightning port in 2021. 9to5Mac reports: In 2021, Kuo is predicting a followup to the iPhone SE 2 as well as a new iPhone model without Lightning connectivity. Kuo says that this would "provide the completely wireless experience," meaning there would be no ports at all rather than a switch to USB-C from Lightning. Kuo implies that Apple only plans to remove the Lightning port from the "highest-end model" at first, rather than from the entire iPhone lineup at once. Kuo says The 2021 followup to the iPhone SE 2, which Kuo refers to as the "iPhone SE 2 Plus," will reportedly feature an all-screen design without a Home button. Kuo predicts this device will have a screen size of either 5.5-inches or 6.1-inches. Interestingly, Kuo says the iPhone SE 2 Plus still won't include Face ID authentication. Instead, Apple is reportedly planning to integrate Touch ID into the power button on the side of the device. As for the 2020 OLED iPhones, here's what Kuo had to say: Kuo predicts that Apple will introduce 5.4-inch, two 6.1-inch, and a 6.7-inch OLED iPhone models in 2020. He says that all four of these iPhones will also feature 5G connectivity. The difference between all of these models, other than screen sizes, will be camera technology. According to Kuo, the 5.4-inch OLED iPhone will feature a dual-camera setup on the back. The lower-end 6.1-inch iPhone will feature a similar dual-camera system. The higher-end 6.1-inch model and the 6.7-inch model will include triple-lens camera setups as well as time-of-flight 3D sensing technology. In terms of design for the 2020 OLED iPhone, Kuo says the form factor will be "similar to the iPhone 4."

A new FCC study confirms what most people already knew: when it comes to wireless coverage maps, your mobile carrier is often lying to you. From a report: If you head to any major wireless carrier website, you'll be inundated with claims of coast to coast, uniform availability of wireless broadband. But, as countless studies have shown, these claims usually have only a tenuous relation to reality, something you've likely noticed if you've ever driving across the country or stopped by mobile carrier forums. But just how bad is the disconnect? A new FCC study released this week suggests that wireless carriers may be lying about mobile coverage 40 percent of the time or more. The full study, part of the FCC's efforts to beef up wireless subsidies ahead of fifth-generation (5G) deployments, states that FCC engineers measured real-world network performance across 12 states. Staffers conducted a total of 24,649 tests while driving more than 10,000 miles.

"Only 62.3% of staff drive tests achieved at least the minimum download speed predicted by the coverage maps -- with U.S. Cellular achieving that speed in only 45.0% of such tests, T-Mobile in 63.2% of tests, and Verizon in 64.3% of tests," the FCC said. And while carriers have historically claimed they offer faster 4G LTE service to the vast majority of the country, the FCC found that wasn't actually true either. "Staff was unable to obtain any 4G LTE signal for 38% of drive tests on U.S. Cellular's network, 21.3% of drive tests on T-Mobile's network, and 16.2% of drive tests on Verizon's network, despite each provider reporting coverage in the relevant area," the agency said. But of course, the FCC also has no plans to punish the carriers.

In early 2018, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into whether AT&T, Verizon and the GSM Association (GSMA) worked together to limit eSIM technology. Today, The New York Times reports that the DOJ is closing the investigation and has found no evidence of wrongdoing. From a report: The DOJ was initially concerned that AT&T and Verizon attempted to lock devices on their networks even if the device had an eSIM. But the parties have agreed to change how they determine standards for eSIM, which will allow consumers to use eSIM to switch carriers, rather than having to insert a new SIM card. And as a result, the DOJ is dropping the investigation.