Policy

cable-isps-compare-data-caps-to-food-menus:-don’t-make-us-offer-unlimited-soup

Cable ISPs compare data caps to food menus: Don’t make us offer unlimited soup

“Commenters have clearly demonstrated how fees and overage charges, unclear information about data caps, and throttling or caps in the midst of public crises such as natural disasters negatively affect consumers, especially consumers in the lowest income brackets,” the filing said.

The groups said that “many low-income households have no choice but to be limited by data caps because lower priced plan tiers, the only ones they can afford, are typically capped.” Their filing urged the FCC to take action, arguing that federal law provides “ample rulemaking authority to regulate data caps as they are an unjustified, unreasonable business practice and unreasonably discriminate against low-income individuals.”

The filing quoted a December 2023 report by nonprofit news organization Capital B about broadband access problems faced by Black Americans in rural areas. The article described Internet users such as Gloria Simmons, who had lived in Devereux, Georgia, for over 50 years.

“But as a retiree on a fixed income, it’s too expensive, she says,” the Capital B report said. “She pays $60 a month for fixed wireless Internet with AT&T. But some months, if she goes over her data usage, it’s $10 for each additional 50 gigabytes of data. If it increases, she says she’ll cancel the service, despite its convenience.”

Free Press: “inequitable burden” for low-income users

Comments filed last month by advocacy group Free Press said that some ISPs don’t impose data caps because of competition from fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and fixed wireless services. Charter doesn’t impose caps, and Comcast has avoided caps in the Northeast US where Verizon’s un-capped FiOS fiber-to-the-home service is widely deployed, Free Press said.

“ISPs like Cox and Comcast (outside of its northeast territory) continue to show that they want their customers to use as much data as possible, so long as they pay a monthly fee for unlimited data, and/or ‘upgrade’ their service with an expensive monthly equipment rental,” Free Press wrote. “Comcast’s continued use of cap-and-fee pricing is particularly egregious because it repeatedly gloats about how robust its network is relative to others in terms of handling heavy traffic volume, and it does not impose caps in the parts of its service area where it faces more robust FTTH competition from FTTH providers.”

Cable ISPs compare data caps to food menus: Don’t make us offer unlimited soup Read More »

us-businesses-will-lose-$1b-in-one-month-if-tiktok-is-banned,-tiktok-warns

US businesses will lose $1B in one month if TikTok is banned, TikTok warns

The US is prepared to fight the injunction. In a letter, the US Justice Department argued that the court has already “definitively rejected petitioners’ constitutional claims” and no further briefing should be needed before rejecting the injunction.

If the court denies the injunction, TikTok plans to immediately ask SCOTUS for an injunction next. That’s part of the reason why TikTok wants the lower court to grant the injunction—out of respect for the higher court.

“Unless this Court grants interim relief, the Supreme Court will be forced to resolve an emergency injunction application on this weighty constitutional question in mere weeks (and over the holidays, no less),” TikTok argued.

The DOJ, however, argued that’s precisely why the court should quickly deny the injunction.

“An expedient decision by this Court denying petitioners’ motions, without awaiting the government’s response, would be appropriate to maximize the time available for the Supreme Court’s consideration of petitioners’ submissions,” the DOJ’s letter said.

TikTok has requested a decision on the injunction by December 16, and the government has agreed to file its response by Wednesday.

This is perhaps the most dire fight of TikTok’s life. The social media company has warned that not only would a US ban impact US TikTok users, but also “tens of millions” of users globally whose service could be interrupted if TikTok has to cut off US users. And once TikTok loses those users, there’s no telling if they’ll ever come back, even if TikTok wins a dragged-out court battle.

For TikTok users, an injunction granted at this stage would offer a glimmer of hope that TikTok may survive as a preferred platform for free speech and irreplaceable source of income. But for TikTok, the injunction would likely be a stepping stone, as the fastest path to securing its future increasingly seems to be appealing to Trump.

“It would not be in the interest of anyone—not the parties, the public, or the courts—to have emergency Supreme Court litigation over the Act’s constitutionality, only for the new Administration to halt its enforcement mere days or weeks later,” TikTok argued. “This Court should avoid that burdensome spectacle by granting an injunction that would allow Petitioners to seek further orderly review only if necessary.”

US businesses will lose $1B in one month if TikTok is banned, TikTok warns Read More »

teen-creates-memecoin,-dumps-it,-earns-$50,000

Teen creates memecoin, dumps it, earns $50,000


dontbuy. Seriously, don’t buy it

Unsurprisingly, he and his family were doxed by angry traders.

On the evening of November 19, art adviser Adam Biesk was finishing work at his California home when he overheard a conversation between his wife and son, who had just come downstairs. The son, a kid in his early teens, was saying he had made a ton of money on a cryptocurrency that he himself had created.

Initially, Biesk ignored it. He knew that his son played around with crypto, but to have turned a small fortune before bedtime was too far-fetched. “We didn’t really believe it,” says Biesk. But when the phone started to ring off the hook and his wife was flooded with angry messages on Instagram, Biesk realized that his son was telling the truth—if not quite the full story.

Earlier that evening, at 7: 48 pm PT, Biesk’s son had released into the wild 1 billion units of a new crypto coin, which he named Gen Z Quant. Simultaneously, he spent about $350 to purchase 51 million tokens, about 5 percent of the total supply, for himself.

Then he started to livestream himself on Pump.Fun, the website he had used to launch the coin. As people tuned in to see what he was doing, they started to buy into Gen Z Quant, leading the price to pitch sharply upward.

By 7: 56 pm PT, a whirlwind eight minutes later, Biesk’s son’s tokens were worth almost $30,000—and he cashed out. “No way. Holy fuck! Holy fuck!” he said, flipping two middle fingers to the webcam, with tongue sticking out of his mouth. “Holy fuck! Thanks for the twenty bandos.” After he dumped the tokens, the price of the coin plummeted, so large was his single trade.

To the normie ear, all this might sound impossible. But in the realm of memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency with no purpose or utility beyond financial speculation, it’s relatively routine. Although many people lose money, a few have been known to make a lot—and fast.

In this case, Biesk’s son had seemingly performed what is known as a soft rug pull, whereby somebody creates a new crypto token, promotes it online, then sells off their entire holdings either swiftly or over time, sinking its price. These maneuvers occupy something of a legal gray area, lawyers say, but are roundly condemned in the cryptosphere as ethically dubious at the least.

After dumping Gen Z Quant, Biesk’s son did the same thing with two more coins—one called im sorry and another called my dog lucy—bringing his takings for the evening to more than $50,000.

The backlash was swift and ferocious. A torrent of abuse began to pour into the chat log on Pump.Fun, from traders who felt they had been swindled. “You little fucking scammer,” wrote one commenter. Soon, the names and pictures of Biesk, his son, and other family members were circulating on X. They had been doxed. “Our phone started blowing up. Just phone call after phone call,” says Biesk. “It was a very frightening situation.”

As part of their revenge campaign, crypto traders continued to buy into Gen Z Quant, driving the coin’s price far higher than the level at which Biesk’s son had cashed out. At its peak, around 3 am PT the following morning, the coin had a theoretical total value of $72 million; the tokens the teenager had initially held were worth more than $3 million. Even now, the trading frenzy has died down, and they continue to be valued at twice the amount he received.

“In the end, a lot of people made money on his coin. But for us, caught in the middle, there was a lot of emotion,” says Biesk. “The online backlash became so frighteningly scary that the realization that he made money was kind of tempered down with the fact that people became angry and started bullying.”

Biesk concedes to a limited understanding of crypto. But he sees little distinction between what his son did and, say, playing the stock market or winning at a casino. Though under California law, someone must be at least 18 years old to gamble or invest in stocks, the unregulated memecoin market, which has been compared to a “casino” in risk profile, had given Biesk’s teenage son early access to a similar arena, in which some must lose for others to profit. “The way I understand it is he made money and he cashed out, which to me seems like that’s what anybody would’ve done,” says Biesk. “You get people who are cheering at the craps table, or angry at the craps table.”

Memecoins have been around since 2013, when Dogecoin was released. In the following years, a few developers tried to replicate the success of Dogecoin, making play of popular internet memes or tapping into the zeitgeist in some other way in a bid to encourage people to invest. But the cost and complexity of development generally limited the number of memecoins that came to market.

That equation was flipped in January with the launch of Pump.Fun, which lets people release new memecoins instantly, at no cost. The idea was to give people a safer way to trade memecoins by standardizing the underlying code, which prevents developers from building in malicious mechanisms to steal funds, in what’s known as a hard rug pull.

“Buying into memecoins was a very unsafe thing to do. Programmers could create systems that would obfuscate what you are buying into and, basically, behave as malicious actors. Everything was designed to suck money out of people,” one of the three anonymous cofounders of Pump.Fun, who goes by Sapijiju, told WIRED earlier in the year. “The idea with Pump was to build something where everyone was on the same playing field.”

Since Pump.Fun launched, millions of unique memecoins have entered the market through the platform. By some metrics, Pump.Fun is the fastest-growing crypto application ever, taking in more than $250 million in revenue—as a 1 percent cut of trades on the platform—in less than a year in operation.

However, Pump.Fun has found it impossible to insulate users from soft rug pulls. Though the platform gives users access to information to help assess risk—like the proportion of a coin belonging to the largest few holders—soft rug pulls are difficult to prevent by technical means, claims Sapijiju.

“People say there’s a bunch of different stuff you can do to block [soft rug pulls]—maybe a sell tax or lock up the people who create the coin. Truthfully, all of this is very easy to manipulate,” he says. “Whatever we do to stop people doing this, there’s always a way to circumnavigate if you’re smart enough. The important thing is creating an interface that is as simple as possible and giving the tools for users to see if a coin is legitimate or not.”

The “overwhelming majority” of new crypto tokens entering the market are scams of one form or another, designed expressly to squeeze money from buyers, not to hold a sustained value in the long term, according to crypto security company Blockaid. In the period since memecoin launchpads like Pump.Fun began to gain traction, the volume of soft rug pulls has increased in lockstep, says Ido Ben-Natan, Blockaid founder.

“I generally agree that it is kind of impossible to prevent holistically. It’s a game of cat and mouse,” says Ben-Natan. “It’s definitely impossible to cover a hundred percent of these things. But it definitely is possible to detect repeat offenders, looking at metadata and different kinds of patterns.”

Now memecoin trading has been popularized, there can be no putting the genie back in the bottle, says Ben-Natan. But traders are perhaps uniquely vulnerable at present, he says, in a period when many are newly infatuated with memecoins, yet before the fledgling platforms have figured out the best way to protect them. “The space is immature,” says Ben-Natan.

Whether it is legal to perform a rug pull is also something of a gray area. It depends on both jurisdiction and whether explicit promises are made to prospective investors, experts say. The absence of bespoke crypto regulations in countries like the US, meanwhile, inadvertently creates cloud cover for acts that are perhaps not overtly illegal.

“These actions exploit the gaps in existing regulatory frameworks, where unethical behavior—like developers hyping a project and later abandoning it—might not explicitly violate laws if no fraudulent misrepresentation, contractual breach, or other violations occur,” says Ronghui Gu, cofounder of crypto security firm CertiK and associate professor of computer science at Columbia University.

The Gen Z Quant broadcast is no longer available to view in full, but in the clips reviewed by WIRED, at no point does Biesk’s son promise to hold his tokens for any specific period. Neither do the Pump.Fun terms of use require people to refrain from selling tokens they create. (Sapijiju, the Pump.Fun cofounder, declined to comment on the Gen Z Quant incident. They say that Pump.Fun will be “introducing age restrictions in future,” but declined to elaborate.)

But even then, under the laws of numerous US states, among them California, “the developer likely still owes heightened legal duties to the investors, so may be liable for breaching obligations that result in loss of value,” says Geoffrey Berg, partner at law firm Berg Plummer & Johnson. “The developer is in a position of trust and must place the interests of his investors over his own.”

To clarify whether these legal duties apply to people who release memecoins through websites like Pump.Fun—who buy into their coins like everyone else, albeit at the moment of launch and therefore at a discount and in potentially market-swinging quantities—new laws may be required.

In July 2026, a new regime will take effect in California, where Biesk’s family lives, requiring residents to obtain a license to take part in “digital financial asset business activity,” including exchanging, transferring, storing or administering certain crypto assets. President-elect Donald Trump has also promised new crypto regulations. But for now, there are no crypto-specific laws in place.

“We are in a legal vacuum where there are no clear laws,” says Andrew Gordon, partner at law firm Gordon Law. “Once we know what is ‘in bounds,’ we will also know what is ‘out of bounds.’ This will hopefully create a climate where rug pulls don’t happen, or when they do they are seen as a criminal violation.”

On November 19, as the evening wore on, angry messages continued to tumble in, says Biesk. Though some celebrated his son’s antics, calling for him to return and create another coin, others were threatening or aggressive. “Your son stole my fucking money,” wrote one person over Instagram.

Biesk and his wife were still trying to understand quite how their son was able to make so much money, so fast. “I was trying to get an understanding of exactly how this meme crypto trading works,” says Biesk.

Some memecoin traders, sensing there could be money in riffing off the turn of events, created new coins on Pump.Fun inspired by Biesk and his wife: QUANT DAD and QUANTS MOM. (Both are now practically worthless.)

Equally disturbed and bewildered, Biesk and his wife formed a provisional plan: to make all public social media accounts private, stop answering the phone, and, generally, hunker down until things blew over. (Biesk’s account is active at the time of writing.) Biesk declined to comment on whether the family made contact with law enforcement or what would happen to the funds, saying only that his son would “put the money away.”

A few hours later, an X account under the name of Biesk’s son posted on X, pleading for people to stop contacting his parents. “Im sorry about Quant, I didnt realize I get so much money. Please dont write to my parents, I wiill pay you back [sic],” read the post. Biesk claims the account is not operated by his son.

Though alarmed by the backlash, Biesk is impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit and technical capability his son displayed. “It’s actually sort of a sophisticated trading platform,” he says. “He obviously learned it on his own.”

That his teenager was capable of making $50,000 in an evening, Biesk theorizes, speaks to the fundamentally different relationship kids of that age have with money and investing, characterized by an urgency and hyperactivity that rubs up against traditional wisdom.

“To me, crypto can be hard to grasp, because there is nothing there behind it—it’s not anything tangible. But I think kids relate to this intangible digital world more than adults do,” says Biesk. “This has an immediacy to him. It’s almost like he understands this better.”

On December 1, after a two-week hiatus, Biesk’s son returned to Pump.Fun to launch five new memecoins, apparently undeterred by the abuse. Disregarding the warnings built into the very names of some of the new coins—one was named test and another dontbuy—people bought in. Biesk’s son made another $5,000.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Photo of WIRED

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

Teen creates memecoin, dumps it, earns $50,000 Read More »

tiktok’s-two-paths-to-avoid-us-ban:-beg-scotus-or-woo-trump

TikTok’s two paths to avoid US ban: Beg SCOTUS or woo Trump

“What the Act targets is the PRC’s ability to manipulate that content covertly,” the ruling said. “Understood in that way, the Government’s justification is wholly consonant with the First Amendment.”

TikTok likely to appeal to Supreme Court

TikTok is unsurprisingly frustrated by the ruling. In a statement provided to Ars, TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes confirmed that TikTok intended to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” Hughes said.

Throughout the litigation, ByteDance had emphasized that divesting TikTok in the time that the law required was not possible. But the court disagreed that ByteDance being unable to spin off TikTok by January turned the US law into a de facto TikTok ban. Instead, the court suggested that TikTok could temporarily become unavailable until it’s sold off, only facing a ban if ByteDance dragged its feet or resisted divestiture.

There’s no indication yet that ByteDance would ever be willing to part with its most popular product. And if there’s no sale and SCOTUS declines the case, that would likely mean that TikTok would not be available in the US, as providing access to TikTok would risk heavy fines. Hughes warned that millions of TikTokers will be silenced next year if the appeals court ruling stands.

“Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people,” Hughes said. “The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.”

TikTok’s two paths to avoid US ban: Beg SCOTUS or woo Trump Read More »

booking.com-says-typos-giving-strangers-access-to-private-trip-info-is-not-a-bug

Booking.com says typos giving strangers access to private trip info is not a bug

For Booking.com, it’s essential that users can book travel for other users by adding their email addresses to a booking because that’s how people frequently book trips together. And if it happens that the email address added to a booking is also linked to an existing Booking.com user, the trip is automatically added to that person’s account. After that, there’s no way for Booking.com to remove the trip from the stranger’s account, even if there’s a typo in the email or if auto-complete adds the wrong email domain and the user booking the trip doesn’t notice.

According to Booking.com, there is nothing to fix because this is not a “system glitch,” and there was no “security breach.” What Alfie encountered is simply the way the platform works, which, like any app where users input information, has the potential for human error.

In the end, Booking.com declined to remove the trip from Alfie’s account, saying that would have violated the privacy of the user booking the trip. The only resolution was for Alfie to remove the trip from his account and pretend it never happened.

Alfie remains concerned, telling Ars, “I can’t help thinking this can’t be the only occurrence of this issue.” But Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, a senior staff technologist for the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars that after talking to other developers, his “gut reaction” is that Booking.com didn’t have a ton of options to prevent typos during bookings.

“There’s only so much they can do to protect people from their own typos,” Hoffman-Andrews said.

One step Booking.com could take to protect privacy

Perhaps the bigger concern exposed by Alfie’s experience beyond typos is Booking.com’s practice of automatically adding bookings to accounts linked to emails that users they don’t know input. Once the trip is added to someone’s account, that person can seemingly access sensitive information about the users booking the trip that Booking.com otherwise would not share.

While engaging with the Booking.com support team member, Alfie told Ars that he “probed for as much information as possible” to find out who was behind the strange booking on his account. And seemingly because the booking was added to Alfie’s account, the support team member had no problem sharing sensitive information that went beyond the full name and last four digits of the credit card used for the booking, which were listed in the trip information by default.

Booking.com says typos giving strangers access to private trip info is not a bug Read More »

judge-rejects-boeing-plea-deal-that-was-opposed-by-families-of-crash-victims

Judge rejects Boeing plea deal that was opposed by families of crash victims

The compliance monitor is supposed to ensure that “Boeing implements a program designed to prevent and detect violations of US fraud laws,” O’Connor wrote. Failing to retain a monitor would violate Boeing’s probation, but O’Connor said that Boeing wouldn’t actually have to comply with the monitor’s recommendations.

“[T]he plea agreement prohibits imposing as a condition of probation a requirement for Boeing to comply with the monitor’s anti-fraud recommendations. Additionally, the independent monitor is selected by and reports to the Government, not the Court,” O’Connor wrote.

O’Connor also rejected the deal on the grounds that “Boeing will have the opportunity to prevent the hiring of one of the six monitor candidates chosen by the Government,” and “the Government will select the independent monitor ‘in keeping with the Department’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.'”

Judge opposes diversity provision

O’Connor said that Boeing’s court briefs and its diversity policies suggest that “Boeing will exercise its strike of one of the Government’s six chosen monitor candidates in a discriminatory manner and with racial considerations.” O’Connor said he is also skeptical that the government will consider all possible monitors and choose one based solely on merit and talent.

“It seems fundamentally inconsistent for the Government to say ‘in keeping with the Department’s commitment to diversity and inclusion’ means that the Government will not consider race,” O’Connor wrote. “Otherwise, why would the Government represent to the Court in its briefing that the term ‘diversity’ in the plea agreement is ‘generally consistent’ with the 2021 Executive Order’s definition, which explicitly includes race? Indeed, the Government must adhere to this Executive Order, and, consequently, that definition of ‘diversity’ controls what is required by the plea agreement.”

“In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interest of justice that the public is confident this monitor selection is done based solely on competency,” O’Connor also wrote. “The parties’ DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] efforts only serve to undermine this confidence in the Government and Boeing’s ethics and anti-fraud efforts.”

Judge rejects Boeing plea deal that was opposed by families of crash victims Read More »

at&t-says-it-won’t-build-fiber-home-internet-in-half-of-its-wireline-footprint

AT&T says it won’t build fiber home Internet in half of its wireline footprint


AT&T is ditching copper and building fiber, but many will get only 5G or satellite.

Credit: Getty Images | Joe Raedle

AT&T this week detailed plans to eliminate copper phone and DSL lines from its network while leaving many customers in rural areas with only wireless or satellite as an alternative.

In a presentation for analysts and investors on Tuesday, AT&T said it has a “wireless first” plan for 50 percent of its 500,000-square-mile wireline territory and a “fiber first” plan for the rest. The more sparsely populated half accounts for 10 percent of the potential customer base, and AT&T does not plan to build fiber home Internet for those users.

AT&T said it expects to be able to ditch copper because of state-level deregulation and the impending shift in power at the Federal Communications Commission, where Trump pick Brendan Carr is set to become the chairman. California is the only state out of 21 in AT&T’s wireline territory that hasn’t yet granted AT&T’s request for deregulation of old networks.

An AT&T press release said the company “is actively working to exit its legacy copper network operations across the large majority of its wireline footprint by the end of 2029.” AT&T’s wireline footprint has 88 million locations, said Susan Johnson, an AT&T executive VP in charge of supply chain and wireline transformation.

About 21 million of those have access only to voice service. The other 67 million are eligible for Internet access, and 29 million of those have access to fiber already. AT&T plans to boost its number of fiber locations to 45 million by the end of 2029 but says it isn’t profitable enough to build fiber to the other parts of its old landline phone and DSL networks.

AT&T: Fiber not profitable enough in half of footprint

AT&T reported that its residential business has 13.97 million Internet connections, including 9.02 million fiber connections. Many copper users who don’t get fiber will be able to use 5G-based home broadband with AT&T Internet Air and wireless phone service with AT&T Phone-Advanced. Johnson said that Internet Air offers “up to 25 times faster speeds than legacy ADSL.” But customers who don’t get access to the terrestrial wireless service may have to use satellite.

“Wireless first is the name for our wire center areas where we have not built and do not plan to build residential fiber. There’s not an economic path to do so,” Johnson said. “These wire centers may still have fiber supporting businesses or cell sites but no consumer fiber. This is about 50 percent of our land area but it’s only 10 percent of the population.” These areas have “four remaining copper customers per square mile,” she said.

Wireless home phone service will be available to “the vast majority of our existing copper-based customers,” but not all, she said. In some areas, “we will need to work with our customers to move them to other technologies, including satellite. But we’ve made a pledge that we’re going to keep our customers connected through the process and make sure that no customer loses access to voice or 911 services.”

Johnson said AT&T’s “plan is to have no customers using copper services in these wire center areas by the end of 2027.” A Republican-majority FCC will help, she said.

“We are going to work with the FCC to speed up and scale this process, and with the new administration we are optimistic that we can make even more progress in simplifying our networks and migrating our customers over the next several years,” Johnson said.

She said that AT&T Phone-Advanced “was specifically designed to meet the FCC’s criteria as an adequate replacement product for our traditional landline phone service, and we have successfully completed the testing with the FCC and we are continuing to move through their preview process.”

AT&T has an application pending with the FCC in a small number of wire centers, “which, if approved, would allow us to replace traditional landline phone service, think POTS [Plain Old Telephone Service], our most regulated product, with AT&T Phone Advanced,” Johnson said.

California demanded more reliable service

AT&T already achieved what Johnson called “an absolutely critical precedent” earlier this year when the FCC allowed it to stop accepting new copper-based service orders in 60 wire centers across 13 states, she said. A wire center consists of a central office and the surrounding infrastructure, including the copper lines that stretch from the central office to homes and businesses. AT&T has 4,600 wire centers in the US, Johnson said.

Notably, AT&T’s plan to ditch copper currently excludes California, where the Public Utilities Commission rejected AT&T’s request to end its landline phone obligations in a June 2024 ruling. “California is not included in the plans I just laid out for you. We are continuing to work with policy makers to define our path in that state,” Johnson said.

AT&T is still classified as a Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) in California, and the state telecom agency rejected AT&T’s argument that VoIP and mobile services could fill the gap that would exist if AT&T escaped that obligation. Residents “highlighted the unreliability of voice alternatives” at public hearings, the agency said.

An administrative law judge at the California agency said AT&T falsely claimed that commission rules require it “to retain outdated copper-based landline facilities that are expensive to maintain.” AT&T is allowed to upgrade those lines from copper to fiber, the agency said.

AT&T achieved its goal of deregulation in the other 20 states where it has wireline operations, Johnson said. “While California is the last state to modernize, we’ve started a process there and we will continue to work towards this objective,” she said.

The deregulation in other states already helped AT&T stop offering old services in “about 250,000 square miles where we have met the regulatory requirements to no longer offer regulated services because our customers have moved on to other services,” Johnson said.

AT&T planned to hit that milestone by 2025 but achieved it this year, she said. But as Johnson stressed, AT&T wants to get rid of copper in the remaining 500,000 square miles. “This is really good progress… however, without the full discontinuance of services across an entire wire center geography, we’re unable to stop the maintenance, repair, and attack the more fixed infrastructure costs,” she said.

Copper network degrading

Johnson said that AT&T is “seeing declining reliability with storms and increased copper theft. Copper simply does not do well with water and flooding, and repairs are very labor-intensive.” State regulators have said the declining reliability is largely AT&T’s fault. Many copper lines deteriorated because AT&T failed to do maintenance that would prevent lengthy outages and other troubles, a 2019 investigation by California state regulators found.

As noted earlier, AT&T said it plans to have no customers using copper in half of its territory by the end of 2027. In the other half, where AT&T described a “fiber first” strategy, there will nonetheless be copper customers who won’t get a fiber upgrade and will have to stop using copper by the end of 2029, Johnson said.

AT&T plans to build lots of fiber in the more populated half, but “not every customer location will be reached with fiber in these areas and we will still serve some of the customers in these areas with wireless alternatives,” Johnson said. AT&T’s “plan is to have no customer using copper services in these wire center areas by the end of 2029.”

The biggest beneficiaries of AT&T’s copper retirement may be shareholders. Johnson said the old network is an energy hog and has $6 billion in annual expenses. “Overall, our legacy business is profitable today but the revenue declines are accelerating,” she said.

AT&T is selling copper after it is decommissioned and leasing out some unused central offices. “By targeting the complete customer transition in a wire center, with the least profitable wire centers first, we are able to remove these geographic costs and really optimize margins as we move towards exiting copper services,” Johnson said.

Besides the 45 million existing and planned fiber locations, AT&T said its total fiber footprint by 2029 will include another 5 million or so locations through Gigapower, a joint venture with Blackrock, and agreements with commercial open-access providers.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

AT&T says it won’t build fiber home Internet in half of its wireline footprint Read More »

us-recommends-encrypted-messaging-as-chinese-hackers-linger-in-telecom-networks

US recommends encrypted messaging as Chinese hackers linger in telecom networks

An unnamed FBI official was quoted in the same report as saying that phone users “would benefit from considering using a cellphone that automatically receives timely operating system updates, responsibly managed encryption, and phishing-resistant” multifactor authentication for email accounts, social media, and collaboration tools.

The FBI official reportedly said the hackers obtained metadata showing the numbers that phones called and when, the live phone calls of some specific targets, and information from systems that telcos use for court-ordered surveillance.

Despite recognizing the security benefits of encryption, US officials have for many years sought backdoors that would give the government access to encrypted communications. Supporters of end-to-end encryption have pointed out that backdoors can also be used by criminal hackers and other nation-states.

“For years, the security community has pushed back against these backdoors, pointing out that the technical capability cannot differentiate between good guys and bad guys,” cryptographer Bruce Schneier wrote after the Chinese hacking of telecom networks was reported in October.

Noting the apparent hacking of systems for court-ordered wiretap requests, Schneier called it “one more example of a backdoor access mechanism being targeted by the ‘wrong’ eavesdroppers.”

1994 surveillance law in focus

CISA issued a statement on the Chinese hacking campaign in mid-November. It said:

The US government’s continued investigation into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) targeting of commercial telecommunications infrastructure has revealed a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign.

Specifically, we have identified that PRC-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to US law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders.

The hacks raise concerns about surveillance capabilities required by a 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which requires “telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have the necessary surveillance capabilities to comply with legal requests for information.”

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Amazon secretly slowed deliveries, deceived anyone who complained, lawsuit says

In a statement to Ars, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said that claims that Amazon’s “business practices are somehow discriminatory or deceptive” are “categorically false.”

Nantel said that Amazon started using third-party services to deliver to these areas to “put the safety of delivery drivers first.”

“In the ZIP codes in question, there have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages,” Nantel said. “We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers.”

Nantel also pushed back on claims that Amazon concealed this choice, claiming that the company is “always transparent with customers during the shopping journey and checkout process about when, exactly, they can expect their orders to arrive.”

But that doesn’t really gel with Schwalb’s finding that even customers using Amazon’s support chat were allegedly misled. During one chat, a frustrated user pointing out discrepancies between DC ZIP codes asked if Amazon “is a waste of money in my zip code?” Instead of confirming that the ZIP code was excluded from in-house delivery services, the support team member seemingly unhelpfully suggested the user delete and re-add their address to their account.

“Amazon has doubled down on its deception by refusing to disclose the fact of the delivery exclusion, and instead has deceptively implied that slower speeds are simply due to other circumstances, rather than an affirmative decision by Amazon,” Schwalb’s complaint said.

Schwalb takes no issue with Amazon diverting delivery drivers from perceived high-crime areas but insists that Amazon owes its subscribers in those regions an explanation for delivery delays and perhaps even cheaper subscription prices. He has asked for an injunction on Amazon’s allegedly deceptive advertising urging users to pay for fast shipments they rarely, if ever, receive. He also wants Amazon to refund subscribers seemingly cheated out of full subscription benefits and has asked a jury to award civil damages to deter future unfair business practices. Amazon could owe millions in a loss, with each delivery to almost 50,000 users since mid-2022 considered a potential violation.

Nantel said that Amazon has offered to “work together” with Schwalb’s office “to reduce crime and improve safety in these areas” but did not suggest Amazon would be changing how it advertises Prime delivery in the US. Instead, the e-commerce giant plans to fight the claims and prove that “providing fast and accurate delivery times and prioritizing the safety of customers and delivery partners are not mutually exclusive,” Nantel said.

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US plan to protect consumers from data brokers faces dim future under Trump

Plan unlikely to survive Trump administration

CFPB Director Rohit Chopra touted the proposed rule, saying it targets brokers who sell “our most sensitive personal data without our knowledge or consent” and “profit by enabling scamming, stalking, and spying.” But whether the proposal ever becomes a rule is doubtful because of the impending leadership change in the White House.

Chopra, a Democrat, was nominated by President Biden in 2021 and confirmed by the Senate in a 50-48 party-line vote. President-Elect Donald Trump can nominate a replacement.

The CFPB’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is an initial step toward imposing rules, and any final action would have to come after Trump takes over. Comments on the proposal are due by March 3, 2025.

“Unfortunately, it will be up to Trump’s CFPB to finalize this proposed rule, and he and his billionaire donors are intent on shutting this agency down to take away a key advocate for American consumers,” US Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.) said in a statement issued today.

Wyden said the CFPB proposal “act[s] on my 2021 request to close a key loophole that enables sleazy data brokers to sell Americans’ personal data to criminals, stalkers, and foreign spies. Letting anyone with a credit card buy this data doesn’t just harm Americans’ privacy, it seriously threatens national security when sensitive information about law enforcement, judges, and members of the armed forces is on the open market.”

Trump DOGE appointee: “Delete the CFPB”

The CFPB itself could be defanged by the Trump administration and the incoming Republican-controlled Congress. Consumer advocacy groups have said they expect the agency to be targeted.

“President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are weighing vast changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, seeking to limit the powers and funding of a federal watchdog agency formed in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis,” The Washington Post reported on November 23. “The early discussions align the GOP with banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders and other large financial institutions, which have chafed at the CFPB under Democratic leadership and sought to invalidate many of its recent regulations.”

US plan to protect consumers from data brokers faces dim future under Trump Read More »

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China hits US with ban on critical minerals used in tech manufacturing

Although China’s response to the latest curbs was swift and seemingly strong, experts told Ars that China’s response to Biden’s last round of tariffs was relatively muted. It’s possible that this week’s ban on exports into the US could also be a response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to increase tariffs on all Chinese goods once he takes office.

Analysts warned Monday that new export curbs could end up hurting businesses in the US and allied nations while potentially doing very little to block China from accessing US tech. On Tuesday, four Chinese industry associations seemingly added fuel to the potential fire threatening US businesses by warning Chinese firms that purchasing US chips is “no longer safe,” Asia Financial reported.

Apparently, these groups would not say how or why the chips were unsafe, but the warning could hurt US chipmaking giants like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, the financial industry publication closely monitoring China’s economy forecast said.

This was a “rare, coordinated move” by industry associations advising top firms in telecommunications, autos, semiconductors, and “the digital economy,” Asia Financial reported.

As US-China tensions escalate ahead of Trump’s next term, the tech industry has warned that any unpredictable rises in costs may end up spiking prices on popular consumer tech. With Trump angling to add a 35 percent tariff on all Chinese goods, that means average Americans could also end up harmed by the trade war, potentially soon paying significantly more for laptops, smartphones, and game consoles.

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Judge again rejects the Elon Musk Tesla pay plan now valued at $101 billion

The new stockholder vote could shift the burden of proof, but only if the vote is “fully informed and uncoerced,” McCormick wrote. Shareholder Richard Tornetta, the plaintiff who launched the lawsuit that got Musk’s pay rescinded, “has demonstrated that the vote was not fully informed,” today’s ruling said.

The January ruling in which McCormick voided the pay package said the deal was unfair to shareholders and that most of the board members were beholden to Musk or had compromising conflicts. In Tesla’s subsequent request asking shareholders to re-approve the pay plan, the company said that a yes vote could “extinguish claims for breach of fiduciary duty by authorizing an act that otherwise would constitute a breach” and correct “disclosure deficiencies” and other problems identified in the 2018 stock award.

“Tesla debuted the argument in the Proxy Statement, which described stockholder ratification as a powerful elixir that could cure fiduciary wrongdoing—not for those harmed by the wrongdoing, but for the wrongdoers. Tesla told stockholders that the Post-Trial Opinion got Delaware law wrong and that their vote would ‘fix’ it,” McCormick wrote.

But the claims in Tesla’s proxy statement are “materially false or misleading,” McCormick wrote today. “As discussed above, under Delaware law, ratification cannot be deployed post-trial to extinguish an adjudicated breach of the duty of loyalty,” and it “cannot cleanse a conflicted-controller transaction” without a full suite of required legal protections.

304 million Tesla shares

Musk’s pay plan would provide options to purchase nearly 303.96 million Tesla shares for $23.33 each, McCormick wrote. Tesla’s stock price soared in recent months and was at $357.09 today.

The plaintiff argued that the value gained by shareholders when the pay package was rescinded “equals the intrinsic value of the freed-up shares, which is the trading price, minus the exercise price, multiplied by the number of options,” McCormick wrote. The plaintiff came up with a value of $51 billion based on the $191.59 per-share closing price on the date of the January 2024 ruling. As previously noted, the latest Tesla price suggests the pay package could have been worth $101 billion to Musk.

Judge again rejects the Elon Musk Tesla pay plan now valued at $101 billion Read More »