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+22 +1
Wireless companies fight for their futures
The setting was ornate, the subject esoteric, but the implications huge. The crowd that filed last month into the wood-paneled room 226 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building included lawmakers, lobbyists, company executives, and a few mystery guests — a roster that reflected the enormity of the issue at hand: nothing less than control of the growing wireless market and the hundreds of billions of dollars that go with it.
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+5 +1
FBI 'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash
For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.
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+4 +1
Malaysian Air 370: Passenger Cellphones Didn't Ring
Cellphones don't work like landlines; when you call them, the ringing happens on the network server, not on the other phone.
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+12 +1
Prepare to Hang Up the Phone, Forever
Telecom giants AT&T and Verizon Communications are lobbying states, one by one, to hang up the plain, old telephone system, what the industry now calls POTS--the copper-wired landline phone system whose reliability and reach made the U.S. a communications powerhouse for more than 100 years.
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+16 +1
Google reportedly wants to launch its own wireless network
Google is reportedly considering running its own wireless network. Sources tell The Information that company executives have been discussing a plan to offer wireless service in areas where it's already installed Google Fiber high-speed internet. Details are vague, but there are hints that it's interested in becoming a mobile virtual network operator or MVNO, buying access to a larger network at wholesale rates and reselling it to customers.
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+21 +1
How Comcast gets whatever it wants despite being one of America's most hated companies
Comcast may be one of the most hated companies in the United States, but it does have a lot of friends where it matters most: In government.
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+14 +1
Privacy price gouging, courtesy of phone companies
Charging customers repeatedly to make their phone numbers unlisted is nothing more than a money grab by companies that already pocket billions of dollars a year in profit.
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+21 +1
Remote German forest depot where thousands of phone booths go to die
ts wares splayed in dazzlingly pink neat rows, this is the remote forest depot where thousands of phone booths go to die. Some 3,000 pink and yellow boxes are stored at the secluded site near Berlin - and they are being sold to the public for as little as £250 each.
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+16 +1
A Primer: Just What Is Net Neutrality - and Why All the Fuss?
The battle over Net neutrality is once again heating up. But not everyone has followed this somewhat complicated issue. Here, then, is a primer for understanding what’s at stake in the fight for an open Internet.
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+15 +1
FCC fines robocaller $2.9 million for making over 180 calls without permission
The Federal Communications Commission has been working to crack down on robocalls, and today it's issuing a $2.9 million fine against a company that it says made more than 4.7 million automated calls without permission to cellphones during the 2012 US Presidential elections.
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+16 +1
A Web Host Is Forcing the FCC's Internet to Run at Dial-Up Speeds
It’s doubtful that many employees of the Federal Communications Commission spend their days browsing Geocities-era websites, but if they do, they’re going to have to do it the same way they did in the mid 1990s—very slowly.
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+23 +1
Why Your Cell-Phone Bill Should Be Going Down—But Isn't
How much do you really know about 4G data service on your smartphone? Did you know that it not only provides you with faster data, but is also cheaper for cellular carriers to deliver? And yet it still costs you the same or more as slower 3G service? Probably not. Here's why.
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+15 +1
How Big Cable is organizing against net neutrality
Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler is under intense pressure from both sides as he crafts a new set of network neutrality rules. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wheeler was revising rules he released last month in response to lobbying from liberals who regarded them as too weak.
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+9 +1
Soon you’ll be able to phone your friend a fragrance
After recently reporting that Oscar Meyer has created an iPhone alarm-clock app that wakes someone with a bacon odor, we should have anticipated what would come next. Somebody has created a phone with that can infuse the images it sends with innumerable scents.
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+14 +1
Comcast says it will test an innovative new service: “Unlimited data”
"WHO’S LAUGHING NOW," says Ars editor who pays Comcast $133.79 a month.
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+12 +1
Why Antonin Scalia Totally Gets Net Neutrality
In 2005, the justice told us to imagine the Internet was a pizzeria. We should’ve taken his advice.
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+17 +1
Comcast: We Don't Have Caps, We Have 'Data Thresholds'
Comcast has slowly but surely been expanding their deployment of usage caps, largely in less competitive markets where users can't vote with their wallet. It's really no secret that Comcast would like to see every user on a cap eventually, something their top lobbyist David Cohen recently tried to downplay at an investor conference.
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+19 +1
Google is working with Ruckus Wireless to build a Wi-Fi network in the cloud
Gigaom has learned Google’s plans to offer business Wi-Fi services in a very Google-like way. It’s building a virtual Wi-Fi network in the cloud that could connect hundreds of thousands of wireless nodes.
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+17 +1
Cox will start its gigabit internet rollout in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Omaha
Bandwidth-hungry internet users can register a few new cities as potentially acceptable places to live. Following Google Fiber and AT&T, Cox Communications is one of the first big cable companies to announce plans for internet service at gigabit speeds, and the initial areas on its list are Phoenix, Las Vegas and Omaha.
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+13 +1
A Cable Merger Too Far
There are good reasons the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission should block Comcast’s $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable. The merger will concentrate too much market power in the hands of one company, creating a telecommunications colossus the likes of which the country has not seen since 1984 when the government forced the breakup of the original AT&T telephone monopoly.
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