Tag Archives: robocalls

Weekly output: free MLS Season Pass via T-Mobile, Twitter snuffs out transparency reports, MWC preview, spam calls, Android data-safety labels, fake reviews, mobile edge computing

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BARCELONA–Ten years after my first trip here for the telecom trade show then called Mobile World Congress, I’ve learned a lot about the event, the wireless industry and this lovely city. Alas, I cannot say as much about dealing with jet lag.

2/21/2023: Here’s How to Get a Free MLS Season Pass From T-Mobile, PCMag

I wrote up a quick explainer of this process after stepping through it on my own phone.

Story as seen in Safari on an iPad mini; lead art is a color-shifted image of Elon Musk2/22/2023: Twitter’s transparency reporting has tanked under Elon Musk, Fast Company

I can’t take credit for noticing that Twitter had not posted a transparency report since last July–the Washington Post’s Cristiano Lima brought that to my attention a few weeks ago–but I did get some justifiably-angry quotes from digital-rights experts about this latest casualty of Elon Musk’s chaotic reign. A few days later, Rolling Stone picked up on this subject and got some good quotes from former Twitter staffers.

2/22/2023: Episode 8 – Previewing MWC 2023, Liberty On the Line

I joined this Liberty Comms podcast–hosted by Liberty CEO Elena Davidson, with the other guests being telco analyst Charlotte Patrick and Telecoms.com editor Scott Bicheno–to talk about what I’m expecting from the event and share some MWC tips. Of course, my advice started with taking the metro.

2/23/2023: If You Think Phone Spam Is Bad in the US, Try Picking Up in Argentina, PCMag

I wrote up a study of spam calls–which can include both unwanted calls from legitimate businesses and outright fraud–among dozens of countries that found that U.S. callers actually don’t have things too bad.

2/23/2023: Don’t Trust the ‘Data Safety’ Labels on These Android Apps, PCMag

I got an advance on this Mozilla study of how the privacy labels in Google’s Play Store compare to the privacy policies of their developers, then updated the post with a comment from Google. Big surprise, Google was not happy with it. I imagine the company was even less happy with Gizmodo’s more scathing coverage of this study.

2/24/2023: Fake Online Reviews, CQ Researcher

My former Washington Post business-section colleague Kathleen Day quizzed me for this piece and quoted me once in it.

2/26/2023: The Interoperable Mobile Edge: New monetization opportunities for operators and enterprises via the Telco Edge Cloud, MEF Global Forum

I took part in a brief discussion at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum’s afternoon event with Summit Tech chief sales and marketing officer Doug Makishima, STL Partners principal consultant and edge practice lead Tilly Gilbert, and Bridge Alliance senior vice president Ken Wee about mobile edge computing–think cloud computing, except fast 5G connections let telecom firms push the remote processing much closer to the customer or device in question. As a student of digital privacy, I said I was most interested in “MEC” because of how it can allow personal data to be processed and then deleted much closer to its source than traditional cloud architectures often permit.

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Weekly output: Disney CEO swap, streaming devices, adtech deal, Comcast freebies, robocall punishment, T-Mobile updates, World Cup ratings, Black Friday streaming deals, Musk touts Twitter growth

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I had an exceedingly busy three days to start the week–as in, it was a good thing my flight Wednesday wasn’t until 3:15 in the afternoon–then managed to keep my hands off a keyboard for most of the rest of the week.

Patreon readers got a bonus post Wednesday afternoon about my struggles getting Verizon to document where it’s expanded its C-band 5G service this year.

11/21/2022: Disney CEO recycling sees Chapek go and Iger return, Fierce Video

The lede for this story about Disney replacing CEO Bob Chapek with his predecessor Bob Iger–“Meet the new Bob, same as the old Bob”–popped into my head almost immediately, and then I checked Twitter and saw that I was not alone in thinking of that turn of phrase.

11/21/2022: U.S. total of streaming video devices topped 1 billion last year, Fierce Video

Before you react in disbelief to that number, remember that the authors of the report I wrote up are counting not just TVs and streaming-media players but also phones and computers.

11/22/2022: Amagi buys data-aggregation vendor Streamwise, Fierce Video

My work filling in at this video-industry news site continued with this writeup of one infrastructure company buying another.

11/22/2022: Comcast offers a week of streaming freebies to video subscribers, Fierce Video

Subscribers to Comcast’s video services are getting some extra stuff to watch without paying extra.

11/23/2022: Robocall-Enabling Provider Gets the Digital Death Penalty From the FCC, PCMag

If you’re a telecom provider subject to the Federal Communications Commission’s regulations, you should probably not answer an FCC query about your non-compliance by writing back “We are not needing this certification.”

Screenshot of the story as it appeared in Safari for macOS.11/23/2022: T-Mobile execs open a door to mmWave FWA, Light Reading

I wrote up my conversation at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit with two T-Mobile network executives, during which I learned a few things about the carrier’s fixed-wireless-access efforts.

11/23/2022: U.S.-Wales World Cup match draws 11.7 million viewers, Fierce Video

After writing this post, I felt bad for not watching any of that match live–oh, wait, the video services I pay for don’t include Fox Sports.

11/23/2022: Black Friday deals at streaming vendors, retailers and services, Fierce Video

After looking up all of these discounts, I then made it through the weekend without buying any streaming-media gadgets. My only purchase that Friday happened at a grocery store.

11/27/2022: Elon Musk touts Twitter growth, Al Jazeera

I did a quick hit via Skype to talk about Musk’s claims of rising numbers for total users and engagement on Twitter, telling the audience (as translated live into Arabic) that if Musk though Twitter had a bot problem before he bought the company, Twitter almost certainly had a worse bot problem after Musk had fired far more than half of Twitter’s employees.

Weekly output: EU Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts, bringing blockchain technology to land titles, Mark Vena podcast, FCC goes after auto-warranty robocall enablers, Elon Musk tries to back out of buying Twitter

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I much enjoyed not going any farther than a neighborhood friend’s house for the Fourth of July; if you traveled further for the holiday, I hope the trip did not involve any unwanted bonus airport time.

7/5/2022: Sweeping EU Bills May Require Major Changes at US Tech Firms, PCMag

Writing this post took longer than I expected because digesting the text of the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act took longer than I expected.

Screengrab of the story as seen in the Brave browser for Windows7/6/2022: This Virginia county is trying to use blockchain-like tech to store land titles, Fast Company

I started working on this story months ago–after learning about Wise County’s project from a story by Cardinal News, a local non-profit covering southwest Virginia–but didn’t get all the quotes I needed until hearing one expert talk at Collision and meeting another at that conference in Toronto a few weeks ago.

7/7/2022: S02 E28 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

I joined my usual podcast partners for the first time in a few weeks to discuss TikTok privacy concerns, Netflix’s recent headwinds, and more. If you watch the video version of the podcast, you can see me sporting a Washington Apple Pi shirt.

7/8/2022: FCC Goes After Voice Providers Enabling 8 Billion Auto-Warranty Robocalls, PCMag

Just like you, the members of Federal Communications Commission are sick of people trying to reach them concerning their cars’ extended warranties.

7/9/2022: Elon Musk tries to back out of buying Twitter, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me on in overdubbed form to talk about the billionaire’s belated buyer’s remorse.

Weekly output: Streaming freebies, robocalls, Facebook privacy (x2), NAB Show (x2), watching baseball online

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Happy Easter! I spent most of the past week staying with my in-laws in California, thanks to it being a spring-break week at our daughter’s school. I wish I’d had more downtime, but my laptop had other ideas.

3/26/2018: Have a cell phone plan? You could get Netflix or Hulu for free, USA Today

My editor suggested that I write about the various streaming-media freebies that the big four wireless carriers now offer with at least some of their subscriptions. Having spent an unnecessary $20 last year on an MLB At Bat subscription because I didn’t think to cancel its automatic renewal in time to cash in on T-Mobile’s free MLB.tv deal (which then and now includes that app’s premium option), I agreed that we should remind readers of these possibilities.

3/26/2018: Robocalls are worse than ever, but help is on the way, Yahoo Finance

I attended a half-day event at the Federal Communications Commission two Fridays ago about the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission’s attempts to stop illegal robocalls, and I learned a lot. Besides, I had not set foot in the FCC’s offices in a shamefully long time.

3/27/2018: Facebook privacy, WTOP

D.C.’s news station called me up to chat about Facebook’s latest privacy failings, including the way some of its Android apps would sync your SMS and call logs to Facebook if you allowed them to sync your contacts (fortunately, I did not). We would have done this via Skype, but my laptop was still inoperative and the Skype Android app crashed every time I tried to run it on my Pixel.

3/28/2018: ATSC 3.0, IP take center stage at NAB Show 2018, FierceCable

I wrote two short curtain-raiser posts for my occasional client FierceTelecom about the National Association of Broadcasters’ upcoming show in Las Vegas. This one focused on the upcoming ATSC 3.0 standard for broadcast TV that should bring Ultra High Definition to the airwaves–along with some interesting data possibilities.

3/28/2018: From 8K to VR, the future is on display at NAB Show 2018, FierceCable

This one, in turn, covers a group of exhibits meant to spotlight various advances in video technology. After writing it, I kind of regret not being able to cover NAB–but I have a schedule conflict, and ATSC 3.0 shows no sign of being a customer reality this year anyway.

3/29/2018: Facebook privacy, Al Jazeera

By now, I had my laptop back from the dead, so I could do this interview with the Arabic-language news channel via Skype from my in-laws’ living room–which, conveniently enough, had a bookshelf in the right spot to provide me with a reasonably professional background.

3/29/2018: Sorry, baseball fans: These TV networks strike out at online streaming, Yahoo Finance

I had to revise this post on the afternoon of baseball’s opening day when the Mets’ SNY regional sports network finally acknowledged reality and signed distribution deals with three online video services. That leaves seven franchises with sports networks stuck in denial about cord-cutting, D.C.’s among them. So it looks like the first Nats game I watch live will be Thursday’s home opener, which I’ll see from the stands instead of on a screen.

Weekly output: Ajit Pai’s agenda, inflight WiFi, Clinton-era telecom policy, cord cutting, electronics ban

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This week has me headed to the Bay Area to cover Google’s I/O developer conference. If you have questions about Google’s intentions for its Web services, Android, Chromebooks, or any of its other products, now would be a good time to send them my way.

5/8/2017: Trump’s FCC chief looks to expand broadband internet access, Yahoo Finance

I’ve beaten up on FCC chairman Ajit Pai many times already, but this recap of his speech last Friday at the American Enterprise Institute had me in a somewhat forgiving mood. I don’t like scam robocalls any more than he does, and this talk was nothing like the red-baiting denunciation of net-neutrality regulations I’d watched last month.

5/11/2017: How Gogo will transform your Wi-Fi experience in the sky, Yahoo Finance

Here’s my recap of Tuesday’s Gogo flight that showed how inflight WiFi doesn’t have to be terrible–unless airlines screw up anyway. If you’d like more technical details about Gogo’s souped-up “2KU” satellite-linked system, read my fellow passenger Seth Miller’s writeup.

5/12/2017: The Trump administration gets the history of Internet regulations all wrong, The Washington Post

Six years and 25 days after the Post last featured my byline, I wrote another story for the paper. This was originally going to be an item on the PostEverything blog unpacking Ajit Pai’s inaccurate praise for 1990s telecom regulation. But after a John Oliver rant about net neutrality and multiple rounds of editing, it became a broader take on the history of open-Internet policies and found a spot on the front of today’s Outlook section.

If you read this piece in the first few hours it was up Friday, you probably caught it citing an older FCC statistic about the state of competition among Internet providers. Conservative analyst Richard Bennett tweeted out my failure to include the latest, less-depressing stats (they may have been posted after I started writing this), and I only spotted that after seeing this guy had added me to a Twitter list named “open piracy”–a notification Twitter’s “quality filter” showed while hiding the more-relevant tweet calling out my error. Anyway, I e-mailed my editor about the problem, he fixed it, and I left a comment advising readers of the change.

5/12/2017: Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 05-12-2017, Financial Review

I talked with host Sinclair Noe about the ups and downs of cord cutting, the subject of a Yahoo Finance post last week.

5/13/2017: How a wider laptop ban could threaten your safety and data, Yahoo Finance

I take this story somewhat personally, since if the Feds do expand the current laptop ban, my trans-Atlantic travel habits will ensure I’m hurt by it. And since it looks like my next trip to Europe will be this year’s edition of the Viva Technology Paris conference, I may get to experience any such ban in one of the EU’s worst places for passenger queues: Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle airport.