With everyone else in the cable/Internet/wireless business gone merger-mad, the only thing that telecom titan Verizon has purchased recently is AOL for a few billion bucks. The company has long been suggested as a prime buyer for satellite TV service Dish, but a top Verizon executive says that’s just not happening. [More]
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RadioShack, AT&T, And Verizon Come To Agreement Over Customer Data
By 6.10.15
When quasi-relevant electronics retailer RadioShack declared bankruptcy earlier this year, one worry for consumer advocates was that the company would sell the bushels of consumer data that it has collected on people while selling them batteries. The new owners of the RadioShack brand, General Wireless, agreed to strict terms for consumer data, which now includes segregating data from purchases of AT&T and Verizon Wireless merchandise. [More]
Telecom Union Says Verizon Is Neglecting Landlines
By 6.9.15
Though more than 40% of U.S. homes are now cellphone-only, many millions of Americans still have landline service. But a union representing 35,000 Verizon employees says the company is refusing to repair broken copper-line networks. [More]
Verizon Knows More About What You Watch On FiOS Than You Do
By 5.29.15
Verizon isn’t a cable company. Its FiOS product doesn’t spring from decades of guaranteed local monopolies, which means most FiOS customers can, if they get annoyed enough, jump ship to a competitor. But you leaving is bad news for Verizon. They want to keep their subscribers. And they have an enormous mountain of highly personalized data on hand to try to do it with. [More]
AT&T Will Try To Make First Amendment Case Against Net Neutrality
By 5.22.15
When you think of the Internet and First Amendment issues, your mind probably conjures up images of people being able to freely express themselves online through websites, videos, and social media. But if you’re AT&T, the First Amendment was created to give Internet service providers the authority to have some sort of editorial control over the data they carry. [More]
Cablevision Sues Verizon Over FiOS Ads, Claims Verizon’s Touted All-Fiber Network Actually Isn’t
By 5.20.15
Most of the country doesn’t have much competition for broadband services. But in some of New York City’s boroughs, particularly Brooklyn and the Bronx, Cablevision and Verizon FiOS fight head to head for residential customers. The battle between the two is often ugly, and with a new lawsuit filed yesterday, it just got uglier. [More]
Verizon/AOL Merger: Good For Their Business, Bad For Your Privacy
By 5.13.15
Every day, the great amorphous mass of consumers creates millions upon millions of trackable, quantifiable pieces of data. Every purchase at every store. Every click on every website, every bit of geotagged data, every installed or opened app and every interaction on social media. All of it adds up together into one giant Mount Everest of data to be sliced, diced, bought, sold, and traded. [More]
Verizon, Sprint To Pay $158 Million To Settle Wireless Bill-Cramming Allegations
By 5.12.15
Several months after AT&T and T-Mobile reached multimillion-dollar settlements with federal regulators to close the books on allegations of bill-cramming — illegal, unauthorized third-party charges for services like premium text message subscriptions — both Sprint and Verizon have also decided to pay the regulatory piper. Combined, the two wireless companies will pay $158 million to settle cramming claims with the FCC and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. [More]
T-Mobile To Dangle “Risk-Free” 14-Day Trial For Verizon Customers
By 5.5.15
T-Mobile already offers to pay off early termination fees for new subscribers who want to leave their current wireless provider before their contract expires, and in a new, direct attack on Verizon’s huge customer base, the magenta-loving “un-carrier” is offering to pay for folks to return to Verizon if they’re unhappy with T-Mobile after a couple of weeks. [More]
Net Neutrality Is Already Improving Internet Connections And It Hasn’t Even Gone Into Effect
By 5.1.15
Though the FCC narrowly voted to approve the new Open Internet Order (AKA net neutrality) several months ago, the rules don’t actually kick in until June 12. Yet with those new guidelines looming, some Internet service providers are already beginning to play nice with the companies that do most of the heavy lifting for the web. [More]
Verizon FiOS Sued Over No-ESPN-Included “Custom TV” Cable Packages
By 4.27.15
Just about every basic cable package in the U.S. includes ESPN whether you want it or not. This is because the popular sports network’s contract generally forbids pay-TV providers from putting ESPN on a separate sports tier. But Verizon FiOS recently introduced “Custom TV,” a programming package that doesn’t necessarily include ESPN, and now the telecom giant is being sued by the sports network for breach of contract. [More]
Disney Pulls Ads For Verizon’s ESPN-Less Cable Package
By 4.23.15
Earlier this week, Verizon FiOS began offering customers a new way to choose which cable channels they pay for, by allowing them to pay for a small base package of core channels and then pay to add on niche-targeted bundles of 10-17 channels each. This didn’t sit well with ESPN, the most expensive channel on just about everyone’s pay-TV lineup, and ESPN’s corporate overlords at Disney are reportedly refusing to air ads for FiOS’s new offering. [More]
AT&T, Verizon Responses To Campaign To End Robocalls Unsurprisingly Empty And Noncommittal
By 4.21.15
If there’s one thing consumers can agree on… well, it’s probably that they don’t like Comcast. But if there are two things that consumers can agree on, it’s that and also that robocalls suck. The tech to block robocalls is out there, but phone companies don’t use it. And their excuses for not doing so aren’t getting any better. [More]
Verizon’s ESPN-Not-Included FiOS Base Package Violates Contract, Says Sports Network
By 4.20.15
Last week, Verizon announced a new way to purchase its FiOS pay-TV service: Pay as little as $55/month for a core package of basic channels and then add on niche-targeted bundles of 10-17 channels each for an additional charge. One of the biggest differences between this model and the standard basic/premiumc cable offerings is that ESPN — the most expensive basic cable channel — was not included in the core package. The folks at the Disney-owned sports network say Verizon may be not be allowed. [More]
Verizon FiOS To Offer More Flexible Channel Bundles
By 4.17.15
While some still hold out hope for the pipe dream of a true a la carte pay-TV option where the customer only pays for the channels they want (but at a price that isn’t outrageous), pressure from new streaming services appears to be nudging at least one major cable provider to offer a more flexible plan to subscribers. [More]
Verizon Promises Live Sports On New Mobile Streaming TV Service — But Not The Ones You Actually Watch
By 4.16.15
TV, as in programming we all like to watch, is a great bet for the future. TV, as in rabbit ears or a cable box, maybe less so. Everyone and their grandmother is leaping to get content available over the internet. From Sony to CBS to HBO to Netflix, streaming services, both for your home and for your mobile device, are the hot new thing. And Verizon wants to play that game too. [More]
Verizon: You Should Love Your Mobile Data Cap Because It’s Good For You
By 4.14.15
Nobody likes data caps. They’re an aspect of the mobile era that we all grudgingly accept, but everyone basically hates them. Enter Verizon Wireless! The mobile behemoth has hired an analyst to rescue us — but not, alas, by removing data caps. No, no: Verizon’s analyst is here to tell us why we should actually love them. [More]
FCC Looking Into Verizon “Supercookies” That Track Wireless Users’ Behavior
By 4.10.15
For years, the Internet behavior of all Verizon Wireless smartphone customers was being tracked by “supercookies” on their devices that they could not opt out of. After the tracking became public knowledge, the company recently gave its customers a way to shake off the invasive snooping, but that isn’t stopping the FCC from looking into whether the program violated federal guidelines. [More]
