Jon Brodkin

Verizon is touting its commitment to firefighters and public safety in a new ad, released weeks after Verizon throttled the Santa Clara County fire department while it was fighting California's largest-ever wildfire. "From coast to coast and everywhere in between, people rely on us to ensure they can communicate when they need it most," Verizon said in an introduction to the new ad. "Our innovations and technology allow first responders to do their jobs.

Four lobby groups representing the broadband industry sued California to stop the state's new network neutrality law. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of California by mobile industry lobby CTIA, cable industry lobby NCTA, telco lobby USTelecom, and the American Cable Association, which represents small and mid-size cable companies.

A number of cities plan to sue the Federal Communications Commission over its decision to preempt local rules on deployment of 5G wireless equipment. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and City Attorney Pete Holmes said their city intends to appeal the FCC order in federal court. Seattle will be coordinating with other cities on a lawsuit, they said. The FCC says its order will save carriers $2 billion, less than one percent of the estimated $275 billion it will take to deploy 5G across the country.

AT&T and Verizon are trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission that mobile broadband is good enough for Internet users who don't have access to fiber or cable services, in filings they submitted for the FCC's annual review of broadband deployment. The carriers made this claim despite the data usage and speed limitations of mobile services. In the mobile market, even "unlimited" plans can be throttled to unusable speeds after a customer uses just 25GB or so a month.

The Federal Communications Commission must stop withholding records that may shed light on fraudulent comments submitted in the FCC's network neutrality repeal proceeding, a US District Court judge ruled the week of Sept 10. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in Sept 2017 by freelance journalist Jason Prechtel, who sued the FCC after it failed to provide documents in response to his Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile US, and Sprint unveiled a system that would let them manage your logins across third-party websites and apps. The \system would verify each person's identity with "a multi-factor profile based around the user's personal mobile device," taking into account the user's phone number, account tenure, IP address, phone account type, and SIM card details. The system "combines the carriers' proprietary, network-based authentication capabilities with other methods to verify a user's identity," the carriers say.

Facebook  gave a "false rating" to an article after the Weekly Standard, a conservative publication used by Facebook as a fact checker, claimed the article was incorrect. The article in question, published by ThinkProgress, was titled, "Brett Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v.

A court ruling that limits state regulation of cable company offerings was praised by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, who says the ruling supports his contention that the FCC can preempt state-level network neutrality rules. The new court ruling found that Minnesota's state government cannot regulate VoIP phone services offered by Charter and other cable companies because VoIP is an "information service" under federal law.

Frontier Communications is asking employees for help in its fight against state network neutrality rules in CA, claiming that the rules will give "free" Internet to major Web companies while raising costs for consumers. The Internet service provider urged employees to submit a form letter asking Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA) to veto the net neutrality bill that was recently approved by the state legislature. Frontier sent an email to employees and set up an online form for them to send the form letter to Gov Brown.

The California Senate voted on Aug 31 to approve the toughest state-level net neutrality bill in the US, one day after the California Assembly took the same action. The bill would prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or throttling lawful traffic and from requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers. The bill would also ban paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating").