AT&T

The FCC today announced that it has agreed to a settlement with AT&T for the carrier allowing unauthorized third-party charges on customers’ monthly bill. AT&T will pay a total fine of $7.75 million, $6.8 million of which will be refunds to affect customers. The other $950,000 will be a federal fine paid to the U.S. Treasury.

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iPhone-controlled drones have become popular lately for capturing stunning video like Apple’s Campus 2 in addition to offering pure recreational fun, and AT&T has a vision for how drones could go further and actually improve the LTE connection to your iPhone.

While detailing how the network is already using drones in the field, AT&T imagines a future where drones could be used as cellular repeaters to provide boosted LTE signals in temporarily packed venues and other hard-to-reach locations where towers may not be enough:

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Changes are coming to AT&T’s Next program starting in June. AT&T Next, the company’s monthly payment program for buying smartphones and tablets, is shifting from four options to two options and adding ways to lower the monthly payment.

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If you’ve ever been disappointed with the quality of Netflix videos when streaming them on AT&T or Verizon, and cursed the network for its poor connectivity, it appears that your wrath should instead have been directed towards Netflix.

The WSJ reports that Netflix has been deliberately throttling video on mobile devices for more than five years, but only admitting it now …

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Verizon today has announced the return of its popular promo that offers users an extra 24GB of data per year for free. The deal is available to users who activate or upgrade to a new phone with a device payment plan on XL or larger Verizon agreements. Verizon’s XL plan starts at $80 per month with 12GB of data (14GB if you include the promo), while the XXL plan runs $100 per month for 18GB of data (20GB with the promo).

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AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is the latest to weigh in on the issue of data encryption policy with the executive telling The Wall Street Journal that Apple CEO Tim Cook and other tech execs should leave the decision making on encryption policy up to Congress:

“I don’t think it is Silicon Valley’s decision to make about whether encryption is the right thing to do. I understand Tim Cook’s decision, but I don’t think it’s his decision to make”… I personally think that this is an issue that should be decided by the American people and Congress, not by companies,”

…The AT&T chief said his own company has been unfairly singled out in the debate over access to data. “It is silliness to say there’s some kind of conspiracy between the U.S. government and AT&T,” he said, adding that the company turns over information only when accompanied by a warrant or court order.

That statement follows a meeting among Cook, other Silicon Valley executives and White House officials last week to discuss topics related to encryption policies and government access to data.

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If you’re feeling jealous of any friends grandfathered into an existing AT&T unlimited data plan (especially since ‘unlimited’ was redefined from ‘5GB before throttling kicks in’ to ’22GB before throttling if congested’), the company has good news: it is  launching a brand new version of unlimited data tomorrow.

Pricing starts at $100/month for a single line, plus $40 for each individual line. Unfortunately, there’s bad news too. As The Verge notes, there are some pretty big catches – the biggest of which is that you need to be a DirecTV or U-Verse subscriber to even  be eligible, which of course adds to the cost if you don’t already have a subscription …

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Apple is already facing one class action lawsuit alleging that customers were unknowingly using up substantial amounts of mobile data, and it now faces a second.

The issue at stake in this new suit is that the iPhone 5/5s could silently switch from Wi-Fi to LTE under some circumstances, resulting in mobile data usage even when the phone was on Wi-Fi. This was fixed for Verizon users back in September 2012, but law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP claims that Apple didn’t fix it for AT&T users until more than two years later.

According to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, Apple knew about the defect “almost immediately,” yet failed to fix it for AT&T wireless subscribers for years, and did not even disclose the defect. The defect affected all versions of iOS 6 and 7 and was only resolved with the release of iOS 8.1 in October 2014.

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AT&T is offering a buy one, get one free deal currently on many of its popular smartphones, and while it’s not listed likely due to Apple, we’ve learned that iPhone 6s is actually eligible.

You won’t find any mention of iPhones in AT&T’s advertising for the deal— in fact, it’s promoting the Samsung Galaxy S6 as the standout device for the deal— but we’ve confirmed with AT&T reps that iPhone 6s is also included and eligible for customers to include in the offer.
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Apple today released iOS 9.2 for iPhones and iPads after several versions of testing. The point update so far has included improvements to Safari including an improved Safari View Controller for viewing websites within apps and easily dismissing them afterwards, the addition of Arabic language support with the Siri voice assistant for the first time, and more.

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The carrier wars in the US are heating up as we head further into the winter, and that’s generally good news for consumers. Verizon is currently adding 2GB of data for new and current subscribers that upgrade to certain plans over the next few weeks. T-Mobile is targeting switchers by offering AT&T subscribers that jump carriers the chance to buy the 128GB iPhone 6s at the price of the 16GB model and save as much as $125 on financed accessories including Beats headphones and the Apple Watch. Read on for details…
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AT&T subscribers who previously had unlimited data plans back in the iPhone 3G era and have managed to hang onto that plan are in for their first price increase in seven years, a source with knowledge of the matter has informed 9to5Mac.

Update: AT&T has now publicly announced the change. Additional information has been added below.

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T-Mobile has announced its latest “un-carrier” initiative, dubbed “Un-carrier Unwrapped.” Rather than a permanent addition to the company’s offerings, Un-carrier Unwrapped is a month-long event during which the carrier will gift its subscribers and new customers with special deals and benefits.

The first of those was announced today: unlimited LTE data for all subscribers on Simple Choice post-paid plans for the next three months.

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Apple’s massive new iPad Pro is only available with built-in cellular connectivity in the pricey 128GB configuration, but all four of the major carriers in the US are offering the $1,079 tablet at discounts on contract or through installment plans. Here’s where you can find the iPad Pro 128GB + Cellular and how much you should expect to pay:
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When the iPad Pro goes on sale later this week, Apple won’t be the only retailer carrying the massive new tablet. Ordering from Apple.com may be the most convenient way to ensure your new iPad is delivered on day one, but Apple Stores and authorized resellers including select carriers will be selling the iPad Pro as well. Here’s what we know so far:
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Apple has released the second beta version of iOS 9.2 to users running the iOS public beta. The pre-release software was pushed out to developers yesterday alongside new versions of OS X, Xcode, and tvOS.

In this new beta, users will find the ability to take advantage of AT&T’s NumberSync offering, which allows other devices such as a Mac or iPad to make and receive phone calls using a customer’s iPhone number without actually being connected to the phone.

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Apple has built support for AT&T’s NumberSync technology into iOS 9.2 beta 2, which was released to developers earlier today. Currently Apple’s Continuity feature allows users to use their Mac, iPad, or iPod touch to make phone calls as long as the computer (or other iOS device) is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as their iPhone.

The software upgrade will allow users to enable Wi-Fi calling on all of those devices and make and receive calls without the need to be on the same network, or even in the same area.

Below you’ll find steps to setup and start using the feature now.

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Wi-Fi calling – the iPhone feature Apple introduced in iOS 8 – is a really handy feature, routing phone calls over Wi-Fi when the mobile signal is poor or non-existent. There’s just one problem: it’s illegal for U.S. carriers to support the feature because it breaks the TTY text-chat protocol used by some hearing-impaired users. AT&T asked the FCC to grant it a waiver to switch on the service, and now Verizon has done the same.

The two companies have, however, adopted different positions on the service … 
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