Jon Brodkin

The New York City government sued T-Mobile, alleging that its Metro stores routinely use "abusive sales tactics" such as selling used phones as if they are new and charging customers for services they didn't order. "Abusive sales tactics are rampant at Metro stores," the complaint says.

When the Department of Justice approved T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint, the DOJ's antitrust officials insisted that an unusual remedy could replace the competition lost in the merger. Sprint will no longer exist as a separate entity if the DOJ's plan is finalized, reducing the number of major nationwide mobile carriers from four to three.

A new broadband mapping system is starting to show just how inaccurate the Federal Communications Commission's connectivity data is. In Missouri and Virginia, up to 38 percent of rural homes and businesses that the FCC counts as having broadband access actually do not, the new research found. That's more than 445,000 unconnected homes and businesses that the FCC would call "served" with its current system.

Verizon has sued the City of Rochester (NY) in order to avoid paying fees for deploying 5G equipment and fiber lines. Verizon's lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the Western District of New York on Aug 8, claims that the fees are higher than those allowed by federal law. As proof, Verizon points to a Federal Communications Commission preemption order from 2018 that attempts to limit the fees and aesthetic requirements cities and towns impose on carrier deployments. Rochester imposed its new fees in February.

Frontier Communications customers are reporting more outages and longer repair times, and state government officials have decided to investigate.

A small library that lends out mobile hotspots is facing a tough budget decision because one of its borrowers accidentally ran up $880 in roaming fees, and Verizon refuses to waive or reduce the charges. The Tully (NY) Free Library has an "unlimited" data plan for the hotspots, but Verizon says it has to pay the $880 to cover less than half a gigabyte of data usage that happened across the border with Canada. Generally, the library pays $40 a month for each of the three hotspots, for a total of $120 a month.

The Federal Communications Commission has finally gotten around to denying a network neutrality complaint filed against Verizon in July 2016, two years before the FCC eliminated its net neutrality rules. The complaint by Verizon customer Alex Nguyen was the only formal net neutrality complaint the FCC received during the three years its rules were in place.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is continuing his multi-year battle against local broadband regulation with a plan that would stop cities and towns from using their authority over cable TV networks to regulate Internet access. Chairman Pai's proposal, scheduled for a vote at the FCC's Aug 1 meeting, would also limit the fees that municipalities can charge cable companies. Cable industry lobbyists have urged the FCC to stop cities and towns from assessing fees on the revenue cable companies make from broadband.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to preempt part of a San Francisco ordinance that promotes broadband competition in apartment buildings and other multi-tenant structures. The FCC's decision "stop[s] efforts in California designed to encourage competition in multi-tenant environments," said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. "Specifically, we say to the city of San Francisco—where more than half of the population rents their housing, often in multi-tenant units—that they cannot encourage broadband competition.

Amazon is seeking government permission to launch 3,236 broadband satellites that would cover nearly all of the US and much of the rest of the world.