Category: Link Roundups

• Glen Weyl argues that the FCC’s 2017 spectrum incentive auction may not have been the efficiency miracle economists treat it as. I’m not sure what to think.
• A handful of Huawei employees were reportedly arrested in China for discussing Huawei’s business in Iran.
• The FCC may have to turn over data logs with information about the source of fraudulent comments on net neutrality.
• “At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI.” WIRED’s Andy Greenberg covers the story of Marcus Hutchins in a phenomenal, long-form piece.
• AT&T subscribers won’t have to burn through data to stream HBO Max. AT&T’s Sponsored Data Program is developing thanks to the dropping of net neutrality.

• MWC 2020, the largest wireless industry conference, was canceled due to coronavirus concerns.
• Dan Warren, one of the people behind the creation of VoLTE, wrote about the ongoing importance of the GSMA (the organization that hosts MWC).
• A Reddit user suggests Mint Mobile’s policies may leave subscribers vulnerable to SIM-swap attacks. I haven’t dug into it, but it looks like a real issue. Mint Mobile appears to be looking into the problem.
• Nilay Patel from The Verge shares excellent (perhaps over-the-top) criticism of Judge Marrero’s decision in the recently-concluded T-Mobile/Sprint merger case.
• Attorney General Barr floated the idea of having the U.S. government purchase a controlling stake in Ericsson or Nokia.
• AT&T plans to cover most people in the U.S. with low-band 5G later this year.

• AT&T plans to cover 200 million people will lowband 5G coverage by mid-2020.
• LG Electronics pulled out of MWC 2020 (a giant wireless industry conference) due to coronavirus concerns.
• Web scraping received a significant legal victory in the U.S.
• An artist created fake traffic jams on Google Maps by pulling along a wagon full of phones.
• Ars Technica gave a good overview of OneWeb’s satellite constellation plans.

This post is the first of hopefully many link roundup posts.

• Masnick of TechDirt explains how Apple dropped plans to encrypt its customers’ backups after the FBI pushed back on the company’s plans. It seems like there’s a lot of misinformation going on in this situation.
• Physicist Casey Handmer is extremely optimistic about SpaceX’s Starlink. If you’re not already familiar, Starlink is a satellite constellation SpaceX is working on to provide global internet connectivity. At the moment, the company plans to have over 10,000 satellites deployed in the constellation.
• Tim Farrar is very critical of Handmer’s post. In my opinion, Farrar is way too negative on Starlink, but many of his criticisms seem correct.
• The U.K. government may place some limitations on Huawei, but it looks like the company may have an easier time in the U.K. than in the U.S.
• There seems to be ongoing confusion about how TracFone’s SmartSIM product will work.