Ars Technica

After Hurricane Michael wreaked havoc on Florida in 2018, AT&T restored wireless service more quickly than Verizon because it relied on well-trained employees while Verizon instead used contractors that "did not have the proper credentials," according to the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents workers from both telecoms. The Federal Communications Commission recently found that carriers' mistakes prolonged outages caused by the hurricane. Many customers had to go without cellular service for more than a week.

AT&T has cut more than 23,000 jobs since receiving a big tax cut at the end of 2017, despite lobbying heavily for the tax cut by claiming that it would create thousands of jobs. AT&T in Nov 2017 pushed for the corporate tax cut by promising to invest an additional $1 billion in 2018, with CEO Randall Stephenson saying that "every billion dollars AT&T invests is 7,000 hard-hat jobs. These are not entry-level jobs.

The Federal Communications Commission has revised the 2019 Broadband Deployment Report to reflect a thorough review of the initial draft triggered by the discovery that a company submitted drastically overstated deployment data to the FCC.

More than 106,000 rural homes and small businesses in 43 states will get access to 25 megabit per second (Mbps) broadband at some point in the next decade thanks to a Federal Communications Commission policy change. The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF), which distributes money to internet service providers (ISPs) in exchange for new broadband deployments in underserved areas, had been requiring speeds of just 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream over the past few years.

Comcast said its customers' monthly Internet data usage increased 34 percent between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019, rising to a median of 200GB. The rise is being driven by streaming video, and, in particular, 4K video. The median customer is using only about 20 percent of Comcast's 1TB data cap, which is enforced in 27 of Comcast's 39 states.

CTIA, the US 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. CTIA recently wrote to lawmakers to oppose the bill as currently written, saying the bill's prohibition on throttling is too vague and that it should apply only when the US president or CA governor declares emergencies and not when local governments declare emergencies.

While all four major nationwide carriers in the US have overhyped 5G to varying degrees, T-Mobile made a notable admission about 5G's key limitation.