An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Verizon is changing the way it sells its internet and cable packages as customers are increasingly seeking ways to cut the costly cord. The company is eliminating bundles and contracts, Verizon announced Thursday. Instead, it will sell its Fios TV and internet services separately. Long-term contracts are also being trashed in favor of charging customers month-to-month. That is similar to how streaming services charge customers. Verizon is calling the new offers "Mix and Match on Fios." There are now three internet packages and five Fios TV packages. Notably, Verizon will continue selling Google's YouTube TV for $49.99 per month as a TV option under an agreement the two companies signed last year. A home telephone package will also be sold for $20 per month. The new bundle-free packages offer more price transparency for customers, Verizon claims. Not all surcharges are going away though. "Verizon will continue charging a $15 monthly fee for routers in some of its internet packages and a $12 set-top monthly fee in most of its Fios TV packages," the report adds. "But other fees it previously charged, including for regional sports networks, will now be included in the total Fios TV price."

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: CNBC Explores released a 14-minute documentary this month called "The Rise Of Open-Source Software." It's already racked up 558,802 views on YouTube, arguing that open-source software "has essentially taken over the world. Companies in every industry, from Walmart to Exxon Mobile to Verizon, have open-sourced their projects. Microsoft has completely changed its point of view, and is now seen as a leader in the space. And in 2016 the U.S. government even promised to open-source at least 20% of all its new custom-developed code."

The documentary does mention the 1990s, when Microsoft "even went so far as to call Open Source 'Unamerican' and bad for intellectual property rights." But two and a half minutes in, they also tell the famous story of that 1970s printer jam at MIT which led to the purchase of a proprietary printer that inspired Richard Stallman to quit his job to develop the GNU operating system and spearhead the free software movement. And at three and a half minutes in, they also describe how Linus Torvalds "unceremoniously released" Linux in 1991, and report that "By the turn of the century, NASA, Dell, and IBM were all using it." And at 4:18, they mention "other open source projects" gaining popularity, including MySQL, Perl, and Apache.

"But for the layperson at the turn of the century, the rise of these technologies could have gone unnoticed. After all, hardly anyone ran Linux on their personal computers. But then in 2008, Google released Android devices, which ran on a modified version of Linux. Suddenly the operating system blew up the smartphone market..." (Chen Goldberg, Google's Director of Engineering, cites 2.5 billion active Android devices.) The documentary then traces the open source movement up through our current decade, even mentioning Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub, IBM's acquisition of Red Hat, and various monetization models (including GitHub's new "Sponsors" program). And it ends with the narrator calling open source development "the new norm..."

"After all, the success of Open Source reveals that collaboration and knowledge-sharing are more than just feel-good buzzwords. They're an effective business strategy. And if we're going to solve some of the world's biggest problems, many believe that we can't afford to hoard our resources and learnings."
Here's a list (in order of appearance) of the people interviewed:

• Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub
• Devon Zuegel, Open-Source Product Manager, GitHub
• Chris Wright, CTO of Red Hat
• Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation
• Feross Aboukhadijeh, Open-Source Maintainer
• Chen Goldberg, Google's Director of Engineering

Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, even tells CNBC that 10,000 lines of code are added to Linux every day. "It is by far the highest-velocity, the most effective software development process in the history of computing... As the idea of sharing technology and collaborating collectively expands, we're moving into open hardware initiatives, data-sharing initiatives. And that's really going to be the future...

"The complexity of building these technologies isn't going down, it's only going up. We can get that technology out there faster when everybody works together."

After months of negotiations, Congress approved a landmark bill on Thursday to stop the flood of illegal robocalls. The president is expected to sign it into law within the next few days. The Verge reports: The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, or the TRACED Act, empowers the federal government with new abilities to go after illegal robocallers. Once TRACED is enacted, the Federal Communications Commission could fine robocallers up to $10,000 per call. It also would require major carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to deploy a new technology called STIR/SHAKEN into their networks, which will make it easier for consumers to know if they're receiving a call from a spoofed number.

The House voted overwhelmingly to approve the measure earlier this month, and Thursday's unanimous Senate vote means the bill only requires President Trump's signature to become law. Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) said that the bill should be signed into law within the "next week or so."

There are real concerns about the way 5G is being deployed in the US, including security issues, the potential to interfere with weather forecasting systems, and the FCC steamrolling local regulators in the name of accelerating the 5G rollout. But concerns over the potential health impacts of 5G are overblown. From a report: If you weren't worried about prior generations of cellular service causing cancer, 5G doesn't produce much new to worry about. And you probably didn't need to be worried before. Few 5G services will use higher frequencies in the near term, and there's little reason to think these frequencies are any more harmful than other types of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light. Most concerns about health impacts from 5G stem from millimeter-wave technology, high-frequency radio waves that are supposed to deliver much faster speeds. The catch is that millimeter-wave transmissions are far less reliable at long distances than transmissions using the lower frequencies that mobile carriers have traditionally used. To provide reliable, ubiquitous 5G service over millimeter-wave frequencies, carriers will need a larger number of smaller access points.

That's led to two fears: That the effects of millimeter-wave signals might be more dangerous than traditional frequencies; and that the larger number of access points, some potentially much closer to people's homes, might expose people to more radiation than 4G services. But millimeter waves aren't the only, or even the main, way that carriers will deliver 5G service. T-Mobile offers the most widespread 5G service available today. But it uses a band of low frequencies originally used for broadcast television. Sprint, meanwhile, repurposed some of the "mid-band" spectrum it uses for 4G to provide 5G. Verizon and AT&T both offer millimeter-wave-based services, but they're only available in a handful of locations. The wireless industry is focused more on using mid- and low-band frequencies for 5G, because deploying a massive number of millimeter-wave access points will be time-consuming and expensive. In other words, 5G will continue using the same radio frequencies that have been used for decades for broadcast radio and television, satellite communications, mobile services, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

Verizon is laying off 150 U.S. staffers this week across multiple teams in the organization. CNN reports: Verizon Media employs around 10,500 people [across media brands that include Yahoo, AOL, TechCrunch and HuffPost], so these cuts will amount to 1.4% of its work force. It's unclear which brands will be affected. In January, Verizon Media laid off roughly 800 employees, or about 7% of its staff at the time, as the division's revenues failed to meet expectations.

A spokesperson for Verizon Media confirmed the layoffs to CNN Business. "Our goal is to create the best experiences for our consumers and the best platforms for our customers. Today we are investing in premium content, connections and commerce experiences that connect people to their passions and continue to align our resources to opportunities where we feel we can differentiate ourselves and scale faster," the spokesperson said in a statement.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Verizon, which bought Yahoo in 2017, has suspended email addresses of archivists who are trying to preserve 20 years of content that will be deleted permanently in a few weeks. As Verizon announced in October, the company intends to wipe all content from Yahoo Groups. As of December 14, all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. The mass deletion includes files, polls, links, photos, folders, database, calendar, attachments, conversations, email updates, message digests, and message histories that was uploaded to Yahoo servers since pre-Google 1990s. Verizon planned to allow users to download their own data from the site's privacy dashboard, but apparently it has a problem with the work of The Archive Team who wants to save content to upload it to the non-profit Internet Archive, which runs the popular Wayback Machine site.

"Yahoo banned all the email addresses that the Archive Team volunteers had been using to join Yahoo Groups in order to download data," reported the Yahoo Groups Archive Team. "Verizon has also made it impossible for the Archive Team to continue using semi-automated scripts to join Yahoo Groups -- which means each group must be rejoined one by one, an impossible task (redo the work of the past four weeks over the next 10 days)."

A new FCC study confirms what most people already knew: when it comes to wireless coverage maps, your mobile carrier is often lying to you. From a report: If you head to any major wireless carrier website, you'll be inundated with claims of coast to coast, uniform availability of wireless broadband. But, as countless studies have shown, these claims usually have only a tenuous relation to reality, something you've likely noticed if you've ever driving across the country or stopped by mobile carrier forums. But just how bad is the disconnect? A new FCC study released this week suggests that wireless carriers may be lying about mobile coverage 40 percent of the time or more. The full study, part of the FCC's efforts to beef up wireless subsidies ahead of fifth-generation (5G) deployments, states that FCC engineers measured real-world network performance across 12 states. Staffers conducted a total of 24,649 tests while driving more than 10,000 miles.

"Only 62.3% of staff drive tests achieved at least the minimum download speed predicted by the coverage maps -- with U.S. Cellular achieving that speed in only 45.0% of such tests, T-Mobile in 63.2% of tests, and Verizon in 64.3% of tests," the FCC said. And while carriers have historically claimed they offer faster 4G LTE service to the vast majority of the country, the FCC found that wasn't actually true either. "Staff was unable to obtain any 4G LTE signal for 38% of drive tests on U.S. Cellular's network, 21.3% of drive tests on T-Mobile's network, and 16.2% of drive tests on Verizon's network, despite each provider reporting coverage in the relevant area," the agency said. But of course, the FCC also has no plans to punish the carriers.

T-Mobile's nationwide 5G network launches on Friday, the company announced Monday morning. But don't fall for the marketing hype. From a report: It's still too early to buy a 5G phone, even though T-Mobile is now taking orders for two new ones, including the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ and OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren. It's still a big step, though. T-Mobile will turn on its 600 Mhz 5G network, which will cover most of the country. That's impressive, since most of the 5G networks you've heard about so far are only available in limited areas in a small number of cities. The trade-off though, is T-Mobile's network is using low-band 5G, which means it's good at providing slightly boosted speeds inside buildings and is available in far more places than what competitors offer. Some of the 5G Ultra Wideband networks you've heard about from AT&T and Verizon provide the opposite. They have super fast speeds, but only work in really small pockets when you're standing near a tower outside.

A standard used by phone carriers around the world can leave users open to all sorts of attacks, like text message and call interception, spoofed phone numbers, and leaking their coarse location, new research reveals. From a report: The Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard is essentially the replacement for SMS. The news shows how even as carriers move onto more modern protocols for communication, phone network security continues to be an exposed area with multiple avenues for attack in some implementations of RCS. "I'm surprised that large companies, like Vodafone, introduce a technology that exposes literally hundreds of millions of people, without asking them, without telling them," Karsten Nohl from cybersecurity firm Security Research Labs (SRLabs) told Motherboard in a phone call.

SRLabs researchers Luca Melette and Sina Yazdanmehr will present their RCS findings at the upcoming Black Hat Europe conference in December, and discussed some of their work at security conference DeepSec on Friday. RCS is a relatively new standard for carrier messaging and includes more features than SMS, such as photos, group chats, and file transfers. Back in 2015, Google announced it would be adopting RCS to move users away from SMS, and that it had acquired a company called Jibe Mobile to help with the transition. RCS essentially runs as an app on your phone that logs into a service with a username and password, Nohl explained.

In early 2018, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into whether AT&T, Verizon and the GSM Association (GSMA) worked together to limit eSIM technology. Today, The New York Times reports that the DOJ is closing the investigation and has found no evidence of wrongdoing. From a report: The DOJ was initially concerned that AT&T and Verizon attempted to lock devices on their networks even if the device had an eSIM. But the parties have agreed to change how they determine standards for eSIM, which will allow consumers to use eSIM to switch carriers, rather than having to insert a new SIM card. And as a result, the DOJ is dropping the investigation.

Chairman Ajit Pai is pressing for a public auction of wireless frequencies in the C-band spectrum (the 4GHz to 8GHz range often used by satellite companies) for the sake of 5G service. Engadget reports: This would help the FCC clear up "significant" frequency space in a quick fashion, generate money for the government and "ensure continued delivery" of existing services, Pai argued. He hoped to auction off a 280MHz slice while leaving the upper 200MHz available. An FCC official told the Wall Street Journal that the regulator hoped to bring the C-band auction up for a vote in 2020 and start the auction by the end of that year.

Satellite companies, however, might not be so happy. Industry giants like Intelsat and SES haven't been averse to selling their spectrum, but they've wanted a private auction to share the money they make and have claimed the FCC isn't allowed to take in-use spectrum without paying them. A public auction flies in the face of that. The C-Band Alliance, a group representing the satellite firms, has hinted at "protracted litigation" if the FCC pushes forward. Carriers are also of mixed opinions. AT&T, which owns DirecTV, has called C-band an "opportunity" but also wanted compensation and a "reasonable transition plan" to avoid disruptions. Verizon (Engadget's parent company and Pai's former employer) likewise wanted "appropriate incentives and protections" to ensure a quick process.

The share of cryptocurrency jobs per million has risen 1,457% over the past four years, according to a study by job site Indeed.com. VentureBeat reports: Indeed analyzed millions of job postings on Indeed.com to unpack how Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain trends have affected the job market. Searches for Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency roles are going down -- yet employer demand has skyrocketed. According to Indeed, in the four-year period between September 2015 and September 2019, the share of these jobs per million grew by 1,457%. In that same time period, the share of searches per million increased by 469%.

In the past year, the share of cryptocurrency job postings per million on Indeed.com has increased by 26%, while the share of searches per million for jobs has decreased by 53%. Bitcoin's volatility seems to correlate with job seeker interest, and the change in Bitcoin price this year might be why job searches have declined. Employers, however, are doubling down on the technology, which uses decentralized ledgers to produce secure and transparent transactions. The report says that if you want a better chance at getting a job in this field you should be a programmer familiar with basic cryptography, P2P networks, and a language like C++, Java, Python, or JavaScript (along with certain soft crypto skills). To stand out, you should learn new blockchain development languages, like Hyperledger, Bitcoin Script, Ethereum's Solidity, the Ripple protocol, or even languages currently in development -- like Rholang.

The top hirers are as follows: Deloitte, IBM, Accenture, Cisco, Collins Aerospace, Ernst & Young, Coinbase, Overstock, Ripple, Verizon, Circle, Kraken, ConsenSys, JP Morgan Chase, and Signature Bank.

Something strange is happening with text messages in the US right now. Overnight, a multitude of people received text messages that appear to have originally been sent on or around Valentine's Day 2019. From a report: These people never received the text messages in the first place; the people who sent the messages had no idea that they had never been received, and they did nothing to attempt to resend them overnight. Delayed messages were sent from and received by both iPhones and Android phones, and the messages seem to have been sent and received across all major carriers in the US. Many of the complaints involve T-Mobile or Sprint, although AT&T and Verizon have been mentioned as well. People using regional US carriers, carriers in Canada, and even Google Voice also seem to have experienced delays. At fault seems to be a system that multiple cell carriers use for messaging. A Sprint spokesperson said a "maintenance update" last night caused the error.

All four major U.S. carriers -- AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint -- have each issued the same press release announcing that they are forming "a joint venture" called the "Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative" (CCMI). It is designed to ensure that they move forward together to replace SMS with a next-generation messaging standard -- including a promise to launch a new texting app for Android phones that supports it in 2020. Dieter Bohn writes via The Verge: First and foremost, CCMI intends to ship a new Android app next year that will likely be the new default messaging app for Android phones sold by those carriers. It will support all the usual RCS features like typing indicators, higher-resolution attachments, and better group chat. It should also be compatible with the global "Universal Profile" standard for RCS that has been adopted by other carriers around the world. Doug Garland, general manager for the CCMI, says that the CCMI will also work with other companies interested in RCS to make sure their clients are interoperable as well -- notably Samsung and Google. That should mean that people who prefer Android Messages will be able to use that instead, but it sounds like there may be technical details to work out to make that happen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechSpot: 5G wireless technology is the next big thing in the mobile industry, and ISPs are pushing it quite heavily. Unfortunately for Verizon, the company's efforts to promote its implementation of 5G have not been perfect lately. The ISP announced that its 5G network would be available in three NBA arenas (with seven more planned to receive it) in the coming months -- however, even in that relatively small area, the 5G coverage is not strong enough to support the entire arena. According to Ars Technica, the network will only cover "certain seating areas." NFL stadiums are in a similar boat -- Verizon is bringing 5G to those arenas, too, but only select seats will have access. Of course, the average football stadium is considerably bigger than most basketball stadiums, so that's a bit more understandable. Verizon's 5G coverage will first extend to three NBA arenas -- Chase Center in San Francisco, Phoenix's Talking Stick Resort Arena, and the Pepsi Center In Denver -- and then to seven more by the end of the 2019-2020 basketball season.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and other mobile carriers are trying to hide detailed 5G maps from the public despite constantly touting the supposed pace and breadth of their 5G rollouts. With the Federal Communications Commission planning to require carriers to submit more accurate data about broadband deployment, AT&T and the mobile industry's top lobby group are urging the FCC to exclude 5G from the upgraded data collection. "There is broad agreement that it is not yet time to require reporting on 5G coverage," AT&T told the FCC in a filing this week.

As evidence of that "broad agreement," AT&T cited comments by CTIA -- the mobile industry lobby group that represents AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. "[A]s CTIA points out, service standards for 5G are still emerging, precluding reporting of service-level coverage for 5G networks (other than the 5G-NR submissions already required)," AT&T wrote. That's a reference to 5G New Radio, the global standard for 5G. CTIA told the FCC in September that it doesn't object to the 5G-NR requirement because "the 5G-NR standards are technical ones; they do not establish what service level consumers should be able to expect when using 5G." But CTIA said requiring more than that would be "premature" because "industry consensus is still emerging around how best to measure the deployment of this still-nascent technology." Verizon also told the FCC in September that "adoption of standardized parameters is premature" for 5G. "Calling 5G a 'still-nascent technology' that can't properly be measured yet raises the question of why carriers have been telling the FCC and public that 5G is guaranteed to revolutionize modern life and that carriers need regulatory favors to speed its rollout," adds Ars Technica. "The mobile industry didn't think it was 'premature' for the U.S. government to preempt local regulation of 5G deployments, an action FCC Chairman Ajit Pai took more than a year ago."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Consumer Reports analysis of cable bills found that companies add $37.11 per month in fees to the average bill, raising consumers' actual costs way above the advertised prices. The $37.11 "in fees created by the cable industry" add 24% to the average base price of $156.71 a month, Consumer Reports said. That doesn't include another $13.28 in government-related taxes and fees, which raise prices even higher. "With the proliferation of add-on fees, it's nearly impossible for consumers to find out the full cost of a cable package before they get locked into a contract -- and cable companies count on this," Consumer Reports Senior Policy Counsel Jonathan Schwantes said.

Consumer Reports analyzed 787 cable bills from 13 companies for a report released today. Nearly all 787 bills included TV service, while at least 426 of them included Internet service, and at least 282 included phone service, Consumer Reports told Ars. Some of the bills listed the services only as "double-play" or "triple-play," so it wasn't always clear which services were included. The bills were collected from 787 volunteers between June and August 2018. The average base price was $156.71 a month, but the actual price consumers paid was $217.42. The data includes bills from Comcast, Charter, Cox, Altice USA (Optimum), Frontier, RCN, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse, SuddenLink, WOW, Service Electric, Grande Communications, and ImOn.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday affirmed that the Federal Communications Commission acted lawfully when it scrapped the U.S. government's net neutrality rules in 2017, but it opened the door for state and local governments to introduce their own regulations designed to treat all web traffic equally. From a report: In a nearly 200-page opinion, judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals largely sided with the FCC and its Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, who was appointed to his position by President Trump. While the agency must return to the drawing board on some elements of its repeal, the court upheld the legal underpinnings of the FCC's work, finding that net neutrality supporters had made "unconvincing" arguments in their efforts to override the FCC's deregulation of companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. But the ruling still appeared to offer a lifeline to net neutrality supporters: It overruled an effort by the FCC to block states from adopting open-internet protections of their own. The FCC preempted those regulations as part of its prior repeal, but the court determined the telecom agency had overstepped its authority. In unwinding the agency's blockade on such protections, the judges opened the door for states such as California to forge ahead with their plans for regulation. More: Court rules the FCC can't block state net neutrality laws.

The new OnePlus 7T was officially announced earlier today, bringing a speedier Snapdragon 855+ processor, 90Hz display, and more camera sensors for $599 -- nearly $100 less than the base model OnePlus 7 Pro. From a report: There are more upgrades found in the OnePlus 7T's display. The OP7T's 6.55-inch 2400x1080 AMOLED screen includes a 90Hz refresh rate, helping to make the screen feel smoother, and OnePlus has also upgraded the in-display fingerprint sensor on its new device. OnePlus claims that the OP7T has the "fastest, smoothest fingerprint unlock anywhere." Another major upgrade of the OnePlus 7T is on its backside. OnePlus has given the 7T a triple rear camera setup, up from the dual cameras found on the OnePlus 7. The triple rear cam system on the OnePlus 7T includes a 48MP main sensor with f/1.6 aperture and OIS, a 16MP ultra-wide camera with a 117-degree field of view, and a 12MP telephoto camera with a 2x optical zoom.

OnePlus has included ultra-wide Nightscape support for low-light shooting and Super Stable Video to better stabilize your video captures, and 4K video capture at 60fps. Slow-mo video recording is available at 1080p at 240fps or 720p at 480fps, and soon OnePlus will be slowing things down even more, adding 720p video recording at 960fps through a future software update. Around front there's a 16MP selfie camera in a waterdrop notch that OnePlus says is smaller than the notch found on last year's OnePlus 6T. OnePlus has packed the OP7T with 128GB of built-in UFS 3.0 storage, 8GB of RAM, USB-C, stereo speakers, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and Android 10 running out of the box. The OnePlus 7T launches on October 18 at a price of $599. The device will be sold exclusively by T-Mobile, though Verizon and AT&T users can buy an unlocked version from OnePlus' website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Silicon Valley is terrified. In a little over three months, California will see the widest-sweeping state-wide changes to its privacy law in years. California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) kicks in on January 1 and rolls out sweeping new privacy benefits to the state's 40 million residents -- and every tech company in Silicon Valley. California's law is similar to Europe's GDPR. It grants state consumers a right to know what information companies have on them, a right to have that information deleted and the right to opt-out of the sale of that information.

Since the law passed, tech giants have pulled out their last card: pushing for an overarching federal bill. In doing so, the companies would be able to control their messaging through their extensive lobbying efforts, allowing them to push for a weaker statute that would nullify some of the provisions in California's new privacy law. In doing so, companies wouldn't have to spend a ton on more resources to ensure their compliance with a variety of statutes in multiple states. Just this month, a group of 51 chief executives -- including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, IBM's Ginni Rometty and SAP's Bill McDermott -- signed an open letter to senior lawmakers asking for a federal privacy bill, arguing that consumers aren't clever enough to "understand rules that may change depending upon the state in which they reside." Then, the Internet Association, which counts Dropbox, Facebook, Reddit, Snap, Uber (and just today ZipRecruiter) as members, also pushed for a federal privacy law. "The time to act is now," said the industry group. If the group gets its wish before the end of the year, the California privacy law could be sunk before it kicks in. TechNet, a "national, bipartisan network of technology CEOs and senior executives," also demanded a federal privacy law, claiming -- and without providing evidence -- that any privacy law should ensure "businesses can comply with the law while continuing to innovate." Its members include major venture capital firms, including Kleiner Perkins and JC2 Ventures, as well as other big tech giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Verizon

"It's no accident that the tech industry launched this campaign right after the California legislature rejected their attempts to undermine the California Consumer Privacy Act," Jacob Snow, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, told TechCrunch. "Instead of pushing for federal legislation that wipes away state privacy law, technology companies should ensure that Californians can fully exercise their privacy rights under the CCPA on January 1, 2020, as the law requires."