Marguerite Reardon

AT&T may ask Supreme Court for strip FTC of authority to police net neutrality

AT&T may ask the US Supreme Court to end a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission over the carrier’s data throttling policies for unlimited plans. In 2014, the FTC sued AT&T in the US District Court of Northern California, accusing the company of promising unlimited data service to customers and then slowing that service …

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AT&T to judge: We don’t need conditions on Time Warner acquisition

AT&T told the judge deciding its antitrust case that it sees no need to put conditions on its merger with Time Warner, according to a brief filed late Thursday. The US Department of Justice is suing to block AT&T’s $85 billion deal to acquire Time Warner. The trial concluded earlier this week and the decision is now in the hands …

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Sprint shuffles execs as it looks toward future under T

Sprint is looking ahead to its $26 billion merger with T-Mobile as it shuffles top executives and makes its pitch for the merger to federal regulators in Washington, DC. On Wednesday, the company announced CEO Marcelo Claure will become executive chairman while the company’s chief financial officer, Michel Combes, will take over as CEO by the end of this month. …

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Could T

T-Mobile’s success could undo its $26 billion bid to buy Sprint. The Seattle-based mobile carrier continued a run of adding new customers, saying on Tuesday it had grabbed 617,000 postpaid phone subscribers in the quarter that ended in March. Postpaid subscribers are customers who pay their bills at the end of the month.  The growth was greater than that of …

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‘Red alert’ protest for net neutrality starts May 9

Net neutrality activists and websites like Etsy, Tumblr, Postmates, Foursquare and Twilio will post “red alerts” starting May 9 to protest the FCC’s effort to roll back Obama-era net neutrality protections. This latest protest, announced Monday, is set to coincide with the next step in an ongoing process in the Senate to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to halt …

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Justice Dept. opposes AT&T

The Justice Department reiterated Monday why it’s against AT&T’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner, saying the deal would hurt pay TV rivals and raise prices for consumers. In closing arguments for the antitrust trial, Craig Conrath, the lead attorney for the Justice Department, said if the deal were to go through, AT&T would have an incentive to use Time …

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AT&T, Time Warner merger trial: What’s happened so far

AT&T and Time Warner are done making their case that the US government needs to get out of the way of their marriage. AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, and John Stankey, the AT&T executive in charge of the merger, all took the stand this week to defend the $85 billion media deal, which the …

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AT&T and Verizon under investigation by DOJ over eSIM

The feds are looking into whether AT&T and Verizon, along with an international standards body, have been in cahoots to make it difficult for people to switch carriers, according to a report from The New York Times. The US Department of Justice has been investigating the companies and the GSMA, an industry standards group, for the past five months after …

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Alleged robocall scammer denies wrongdoing to U.S. Senate

An alleged serial robocaller who was fined $120 million by the FCC denied wrongdoing in testimony before a US Senate committee on Wednesday. The Federal Communications Commission fined Adrian Abramovich in June last year for allegedly making more than 96 million robocalls during a three-month period in 2016. The FCC accused the Florida man of tricking consumers with “exclusive” vacation …

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First 5G FCC spectrum auction to begin in November

The Federal Communications Commission has set the date for its first wireless spectrum auction to usher in the era of 5G. The five-member commission voted unanimously at its April meeting this week to begin the auction of 28 Gigahertz spectrum on Nov. 14. Another auction for spectrum in the 24GHZ band will immediately follow. All told, the FCC hopes to …

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