Jon Brodkin, writing for ArsTechnica: When 90-year-old Aaron Epstein bought a Wall Street Journal print ad to complain about his slow AT&T Internet service, the impact was immediate. Reporters like me called him and wrote articles, talk of his plight went viral on the Internet, his ad made an appearance on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, TV networks interviewed him for nightly news broadcasts, and AT&T executives sprang into action to minimize the public-relations damage. Now, barely a week later, Epstein's home in North Hollywood, California, has AT&T fiber service with unlimited data and advertised speeds of 300Mbps in both directions. In a speed test yesterday, download speeds were 363Mbps and upload speeds were 376Mbps. It's a gigantic upgrade over the "up to" 3Mbps DSL he and his wife, Anne, struggled with before.

A man who has been an AT&T customer since 1960 has a message for CEO John Stankey about the company's failure to upgrade DSL areas to modern Internet service. Aaron Epstein, 90, is so frustrated by his 3Mbps Internet plan that he took out a Wall Street Journal ad in today's print edition in order to post an open letter to Stankey. From a report: "Dear Mr. Stankey: AT&T prides itself as a leader in electronic communications. Unfortunately, for the people who live in N. Hollywood, CA 91607, AT&T is now a major disappointment," Epstein wrote in the letter. Epstein paid $1,100 to run the ad for one day in the Manhattan and Dallas editions of today's Journal, he told Ars in a phone interview. He chose the Manhattan edition to reach investors who might want to pressure AT&T into upgrading its network and Dallas because that's where AT&T is headquartered, he said. "We need to keep up with current technology and have looked to AT&T to supply us with fast Internet service," Epstein wrote in the open letter to AT&T's CEO. "Yet, although AT&T is advertising speeds up to 100Mbps for other neighborhoods, the fastest now available to us from AT&T is only 3Mbps. Your competitors now have speeds of over 200Mbps. Why is AT&T, a leading communications company, treating us so shabbily in North Hollywood?"

An anonymous reader writes: AT&T lost 617,000 customers from DirecTV and its other TV businesses in the final quarter of 2020, capping a year in which it lost nearly 3 million customers in the category, AT&T reported today. AT&T today also informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has taken "noncash impairment charges of $15.5 billion" related to its ongoing DirecTV debacle. AT&T said the $15.5 billion charges reflect "changes in our management strategy and our evaluation of the domestic video business... including our decision to operate our video business separately from our broadband and legacy telephony operations." This operational decision "required us to identify a separate Video reporting unit and to assess both the recoverability of its long-lived assets and any assigned goodwill for impairment," AT&T said.

AT&T said it also logged "charges of approximately $780 million from the impairment of production and other content inventory at WarnerMedia, with $520 million resulting from the continued shutdown of theaters during the pandemic and the hybrid distribution model for our 2021 film slate." The charges were added to AT&T's Q4 expenses. As a result, AT&T reported a $13.9 billion net loss in the quarter, compared to a net profit of $2.4 billion a year ago. Q4 revenue was $45.7 billion, down from $46.8 billion year over year. The Q4 net loss swung AT&T to a full-year net loss of $5.4 billion.

Apple has prioritized user privacy over targeted advertising, and Google is spelling out today what that means for itself as well as game and app developers. From a report: Apple is advocating its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, which will require developers to ask for permission when they use personal data from other companies' apps and websites for advertising purposes, even if they already have user consent. It will ask users to opt-in if they will allow advertisers to use their data via the Identifier for Advertisers, or IDFA. Many tests show that many users won't allow it, and that means they won't be so easily tracked for advertising purposes. This change could have a huge impact on the mobile advertising ecosystem, as it could make it harder to target users efficiently with advertising.

Eric Seufert, a user acquisition expert, said on Monday that he believes that Facebook could suffer a 7% revenue hit -- a loss of tens of billions of dollars over time -- as a result of the IDFA changes, and it's no secret that Facebook isn't happy about the impact on itself as well as small businesses. At our Driving Game Growth event on Tuesday, Facebook leaders pointed to the IDFA changes as creating uncertainty for mobile games in 2021. Google, which could also be impacted by the policy change, has stayed out of the fray -- until today. "Today we're sharing how Google is helping our community prepare, as we know that developers and advertisers in the iOS ecosystem are still figuring out how to adapt," said Christophe Combette, group product manager for Google Ads in a blog post.

AT&T is killing off the online-video service formerly known as DirecTV Now and introducing a no-contract option for the newer online service that replaced it. Ars Technica reports: AT&T unveiled DirecTV Now late in 2016, the year after AT&T bought the DirecTV satellite company. Prices originally started at $35 a month for the live-TV online service, and it had signed up 1.86 million subscribers by Q3 2018. But customers quickly fled as AT&T repeatedly raised prices and cut down on the use of promotional deals, leaving the service with just 683,000 subscribers at the end of Q3 2020. In 2019, AT&T changed the name from DirecTV Now to AT&T TV Now, creating confusion among customers and its own employees because the company simultaneously unveiled another online streaming service called AT&T TV.

AT&T TV was pitched as a more robust replacement for satellite TV, and it even mimicked cable and satellite by imposing contracts, hidden fees, and a big second-year price hike. Going forward, AT&T TV Now will no longer be offered to new customers, and AT&T TV will be the flagship for AT&T's live-TV streaming business. "AT&T TV Now has merged with AT&T TV," the service's website says in an update flagged in a news article by TV Answer Man yesterday. For existing users, "AT&T TV Now customers' service and plans remain in effect" without any changes, an AT&T spokesperson told Ars. "We have no other price changes to announce at this time."

The Federal Communications Commission's ongoing sale of wireless licenses has fetched more than $66.4 billion after three weeks of bidding, a record sum that could alter cellphone carriers' prospects for the next decade. From a report: The auction proceeds have already topped the $44.9 billion raised in 2015 by an earlier sale of midrange cellular licenses, which U.S. cellphone carriers used at the time to enhance their 4G service. Those companies are now investing billions of dollars in the next wave of fifth-generation coverage. The 5G standard promises to speed the flow of data to phones and other wireless devices like personal computers, cars and industrial machinery. The recent bids have blown past Wall Street's highest forecasts, suggesting that several companies are fighting over the most valuable wireless rights. The 5G auction kicked off Dec. 8 and will pause for the holidays until Jan. 4, when total bids could move even higher. Each bid is swathed in secrecy until the auction process ends. Analysts expect big names like AT&T and Verizon Communications to walk away with a large share of the licenses to match assets that rival T-Mobile captured with its February takeover of Sprint.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T has announced another round of price hikes for DirecTV satellite and U-verse TV services, with monthly prices set to rise up to $9 starting January 17, 2021. "Due to increased programming costs, we're adjusting the price of our video packages," AT&T said in a notice on its website. "Periodically, TV network owners increase the fees they charge DirecTV for the right to broadcast their movies, shows, and sporting events." Of course, AT&T itself determines some of these programming prices because it owns Time Warner.

A $5 monthly increase is coming to DirecTV's 160-channel "Entertainment" package, which currently has a standard rate of $97 a month. A $7 monthly increase is coming to the 185-channel Choice package, currently at $115 a month. A $9 increase is coming to both the 250-channel Ultimate package (currently $142) and the 330-channel Premier package (currently $197). New customers can get those packages for $64.99 to $134.99 under promotional pricing that expires after 12 months. "If you currently have a DirecTV TV promotion, you'll keep that discount until it expires," AT&T said. "Once your promo period ends, you'll pay the new price for your package."

There are also $1 and $3 increases for DirecTV's Basic and Preferred Choice packages for international customers, $6 increases for certain Spanish-language packages, and $8 increases for "Xtra" packages. Only the Minimum service, Family, and ChineseDirect Plus plans are not getting increases. AT&T is raising U-verse TV prices by $5 to $9 a month depending on the package, while keeping the price of the most basic U-verse package the same. U-verse provides TV over AT&T's wired network. As with DirecTV, customers on U-verse promotional pricing won't see the increase until the promotional period ends. DirecTV is also adding a "Federal Cost Recovery Fee of $0.19 per month," similar to a fee that used to be charged once per year. Despite the name, the fee is not mandated by the government. AT&T said the fee covers "expenses that DirecTV pays to the Federal Communications Commission." Ars Technica notes that AT&T did not include any increases for the Regional Sports Network and Broadcast TV fees. It's also decreasing the price of some premium channels. "That includes $3 decreases for Starz, Cinemax, and Showtime," the report says. "There are also decreases of up to $3 for certain add-on bundles that include sports channels. But even with premium channels, there are some price increases, including a $2.96 boost to an add-on bundle that includes HBO Max, Starz, Showtime, Cinemax, and a sports-channel pack."

The full list of price changes can be found here.

TV cord-cutting is picking up steam, and AT&T's CEO predicts there's a long way to go before it stops. From a report: On an earnings call Thursday, AT&T Chief Executive Officer John Stankey said "we're probably going to see a little bit of a plateauing" when the number of homes subscribing to pay TV hits 55 million to 60 million. Most of those homes will include sports fans, he said. It's a stark outlook for an industry that's already suffered a long subscriber exodus. There were about 91 million pay-TV subscribers at the end of 2019, including some 8 million who signed up to online-TV bundles like Hulu and YouTube TV. About 3.5 million people cut the cord in the first half of the year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. While AT&T, Comcast, Charter and other TV providers are focusing their businesses on delivering internet service, owners of cable channels are especially vulnerable. That's because more cord-cutting means lower subscriber fees, a key revenue stream. Stankey added that AT&T is focusing on growing its new online streaming service, HBO Max, to prepare for the future. AT&T said Thursday that it shed another 590,000 TV subscribers last quarter. With customer losses mounting, AT&T has been looking to sell the majority of its satellite-TV business, DirecTV.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is planning thousands of layoffs at HBO, Warner Bros., and other parts of WarnerMedia as part of a plan to cut costs by up to 20 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. WarnerMedia is what used to be called Time Warner Inc. before AT&T purchased the entertainment company in 2018. Layoffs and cost cuts are nothing new at AT&T in general, including at WarnerMedia. But WarnerMedia has taken a particularly big hit since the pandemic began. AT&T laid off about 600 people from WarnerMedia in August, a prelude to the new cuts revealed yesterday. The Journal wrote: "AT&T's WarnerMedia is restructuring its workforce as it seeks to reduce costs by as much as 20 percent as the coronavirus pandemic drains income from movie tickets, cable subscriptions and television ads, according to people familiar with the matter. The overhaul, which is expected to begin in the coming weeks, would result in thousands of layoffs across Warner Bros. studios and TV channels like HBO, TBS and TNT, the people said."

WarnerMedia had nearly 30,000 employees earlier this year. A WarnerMedia spokesperson told Ars that "we are not discussing or confirming any speculative numbers" regarding how many jobs will be cut. The job reductions are part of the restructuring that was announced in August, the spokesperson also said. "Like the rest of the entertainment industry, we have not been immune to the significant impact of the pandemic. That includes an acceleration in shifting consumer behavior, especially in the way content is being viewed," WarnerMedia said. "We shared with our employees recently that the organization will be restructured to respond to those changes and prioritize growth opportunities, with an emphasis on direct-to-consumer. We are in the midst of that process and it will involve increased investments in priority areas and, unfortunately, reductions in others."

IBM announced this morning that the company would be spinning off some of its lower-margin lines of business into a new company and focusing on higher-margin cloud services. Ars Technica reports: During an investor call, CEO Arvind Krishna acknowledged that the move was a "significant shift" in how IBM will work, but he positioned it as the latest in a decades-long series of strategic divestments. "We divested networking back in the '90s, we divested PCs back in the 2000s, we divested semiconductors about five years ago because all of them didn't necessarily play into the integrated value proposition," he said. Krishna became CEO in April 2020, replacing former CEO Ginni Rometty (who is now IBM's executive chairman), but the spin-off is the capstone of a multi-year effort to apply some kind of focus to the company's sprawling business model.

The new spin-off doesn't have a formal name yet and is referred to as "NewCo" in IBM's marketing and investor relations material. Under the spin-off plan, the press release claims IBM "will focus on its open hybrid cloud platform, which represents a $1 trillion market opportunity," while NewCo "will immediately be the world's leading managed infrastructure services provider." (This is because NewCo will start life owning the entirety of IBM Global Technology Services' existing managed infrastructure clients, which means about 4,600 accounts, including about 75 percent of the Fortune 100.)
See also: Cringely Predicts IBM 'Disappears Into Red Hat'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is reportedly moving ahead with its plan to sell DirecTV despite receiving bids that value the satellite division at less than one-third of the price AT&T paid for it. AT&T bought DirecTV for $49 billion in 2015 and has lost seven million TV subscribers in the last two years. In late August, news broke that AT&T is trying to sell DirecTV to private-equity investors and that a deal could come in at less than $20 billion. The New York Post yesterday provided an update on the sale process, writing that AT&T is pressing ahead with an auction even though it is "shaping up to be a fire sale." The sale process is being handled for AT&T by Goldman Sachs.

"Opening bids from a coterie of buyout firms came in at around 3.5 times DirecTV's roughly $4.5 billion of EBITDA, implying a valuation at around $15.75 billion, according to a source close to the process," the Post article said. Despite the low first-round bids, AT&T "last week invited a handful of suitors into the second round of an auction of the struggling satellite-TV broadcaster," the Post wrote. Private-equity firms "are looking to milk the shrinking company for cash as DirecTV's subscribers steadily flee to lower-priced streaming-video services like Netflix," the Post wrote. AT&T could retain a minority stake in DirecTV after a sale.

"One of America's largest internet providers is uploading its oldest broadband technology into the sunset," reports USA Today, complaining that AT&T will be leaving some future customers without any choices for wired broadband. "We're beginning to phase out outdated services like DSL and new orders for the service will no longer be supported after October 1," a corporate statement sent beforehand read. "Current DSL customers will be able to continue their existing service or where possible upgrade to our 100% fiber network."

DSL — a broadband connection delivered over old copper telephone lines — is no prize at AT&T. The company doesn't sell downloads faster than 6 Mbps, less than a fourth of the 25-Mbps minimum definition of the Federal Communications Commission and further cramps their utility with stringent data caps of just 150 gigabytes. But the technology that provided many people (myself included) their first real broadband still works to provide an always-on connection and far more capacity than satellite connectivity.

"I'm really not surprised that AT&T is phasing out DSL, as it's an obsolete technology," emailed one soon-be-stranded DSL subscriber, retiree Jack Mangold of Collettsville, North Carolina. "I am, however, very disappointed that AT&T has no interest in replacing DSL in rural areas with some other technology." AT&T reported 653,000 total DSL connections at the end of its second quarter, compared to 14.48 million on its fiber-optic and hybrid-fiber services. The latter, sold as "AT&T Internet," combines fiber trunk lines with DSL last-mile connections for faster speeds.

The company has seen DSL subscribers steadily dwindle. Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst at the research firm Leichtman Research Group, wrote in an email that two years ago, AT&T had just over a million DSL customers. "AT&T basically gave up on fighting cable over a third of its territory" said Dave Burstein, editor of the trade publication Fast Net News.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert yesterday fired back at AT&T and Verizon, saying the carriers' complaints about T-Mobile obtaining more spectrum licenses show that they are afraid of competition. "The duopolists are scrambling to block this new competition any way they can... Suddenly in the unfamiliar position of not having a dominant stranglehold on the wireless market, and preferring not to meet the competitive challenge in the marketplace, AT&T and Verizon are urging the FCC to slow T-Mobile down and choke off our ability to compete fairly for added radio spectrum," Sievert wrote in a blog post. As we wrote Monday, Verizon and AT&T have urged the Federal Communications Commission to impose limits on T-Mobile's ability to obtain more spectrum licenses. AT&T complained that T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint allowed it to amass "an unprecedented concentration of spectrum."

Verizon has the most spectrum of any US carrier "by far" but "has the anti-competitive instincts and sheer audacity to complain that a much smaller T-Mobile has too much," Sievert wrote. "After holding massive spectrum advantages over T-Mobile and others for decades, Verizon and AT&T just can't stand the idea of anyone else being ahead of them or having a fair shot in an auction where they plan to use their financial might to do what they have always done -- dominate." Sievert also wrote that the 600MHz spectrum T-Mobile is leasing was previously controlled by AT&T. "AT&T had won at auction the spectrum that Columbia Capital is now leasing to T-Mobile and -- guess what -- AT&T decided it didn't want it and sold it to Columbia," Sievert wrote. "Verizon, the ringleader in opposing this lease, never bothered to even show up and bid for any 600MHz spectrum. In short, we have AT&T and Verizon seeking to block T-Mobile from using spectrum that AT&T decided to jettison, and Verizon had no interest in pursuing. Now both companies are seeking to block T-Mobile from putting this spectrum to use for the benefit of American consumers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and Verizon are worried about T-Mobile's vast spectrum holdings and have asked the Federal Communications Commission to impose limits on the carrier's ability to obtain more spectrum licenses. Verizon kicked things off in August when it petitioned the FCC to reconsider its acceptance of a new lease that would give T-Mobile another 10MHz to 30MHz of spectrum in the 600MHz band in 204 counties. AT&T followed that up on Friday with a filing that supports many of the points made in Verizon's petition. T-Mobile was once the smallest of four national carriers and complained that it didn't have enough low-band spectrum to match AT&T and Verizon's superior coverage. But T-Mobile surged past Sprint in recent years and then bought the company, making T-Mobile one of three big nationwide carriers along with AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile also bolstered its low-band spectrum holdings by dominating a 600MHz auction in 2017.

"The combination of Sprint and T-Mobile has resulted in an unprecedented concentration of spectrum in the hands of one carrier," AT&T wrote in its filing to the FCC on Friday. "In fact, the combined company exceeds the Commission's spectrum screen, often by a wide margin, in Cellular Market Areas representing 82 percent of the US population, including all major markets." T-Mobile's large spectrum holdings demand "changes in how the Commission addresses additional acquisitions of spectrum by that carrier," AT&T said in another part of the filing. AT&T also posted a blog on the topic, saying that "Additional spectrum leases with Dish will cause T-Mobile to exceed the 250MHz screen by as much as 136MHz." Officially, AT&T said it "takes no position on whether T-Mobile's lease applications were properly accepted by the FCC," but the company said that the FCC "should provide an explanation of why it permitted T-Mobile to further exceed the spectrum screen." "The Commission's failure to issue a written order in a transaction allowing spectrum aggregation in excess of the screen to this degree is highly unusual... Moreover, without a written order explaining its analysis, there is no evidence that the Commission has carefully attempted to evaluate the potential for competitive harm," AT&T wrote.

AT&T is considering offering wireless phone plans partially subsidized by advertising as soon as a year from now, Chief Executive John Stankey said in an interview on Tuesday. From a report: The consideration, which has not been previously disclosed, underscores AT&T's commitment to the advertising business as the U.S. phone carrier reviews its portfolio to identify assets to sell in order to reduce its debt load. AT&T is considering selling its advertising-technology unit Xandr, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters. "I believe there's a segment of our customer base where given a choice, they would take some load of advertising for a $5 or $10 reduction in their mobile bill," Stankey said. Various companies including Amazon.com, Virgin Mobile USA and Sprint's Boost Mobile have tested advertising supported phone services since the early 2000s but they have not caught on. AT&T is hoping that better advertising targeting could revive the idea.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T smartphone users who see their network indicators switch from "4G" to "5G" shouldn't necessarily expect that they're about to get faster speeds. In PCMag's annual mobile-network testing, released today, 5G phones connected to AT&T got slower speeds than 4G phones in 21 out of 22 cities. PCMag concluded that "AT&T 5G right now appears to be essentially worthless," though AT&T's average download speed of 103.1Mbps was nearly as good as Verizon's thanks to a strong 4G performance. Of course, AT&T 5G should be faster than 4G in the long run -- this isn't another case of AT&T misleadingly labeling its 4G network as a type of 5G. Instead, the disappointing result on PCMag's test has to do with how today's 5G phones work and with how AT&T allocates spectrum.

The counterintuitive result doesn't reveal much about the actual differences between 4G and 5G technology. Instead, it's reflective of how AT&T has used its spectrum to deploy 5G so far. As PCMag explained, "AT&T's 5G slices off a narrow bit of the old 850MHz cellular band and assigns it to 5G, to give phones a valid 5G icon without increasing performance. And because of the way current 5G phones work, it often reduces performance. AT&T's 4G network benefits from the aggregation of channels from different frequencies. "The most recent phones are able to assemble up to seven of them -- that's called seven-carrier aggregation, and it's why AT&T won [the PCMag tests] last year," the article said. 5G phones can't handle that yet, PCMag analyst Sascha Segan wrote: "But 5G phones can't add as many 4G channels to a 5G channel. So if they're in 5G mode, they're giving up 4G channels so they can use that extremely narrow, often 5MHz 5G channel, and the result is slower performance: faux G. For AT&T, using a 5G phone in testing was often a step backward from our 4G-only phone."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: AT&T is once again looking to sell its DirecTV unit, a business that has lost billions of dollars in value since the wireless carrier acquired it in 2015. The sooner it waves goodbye, the better. The question is, who wants it? DirecTV has faded into the background at AT&T, a company now entirely focused on competing in 5G wireless connectivity and online television. Any DirecTV user can attest to how the service has been neglected in recent years, and the business might be forgotten by investors if it weren't for the headline-grabbing subscriber losses it's mounted each quarter.

AT&T, which also owns the U-Verse brand, has lost about 6 million traditional pay-TV customers overall in just the last two years. The Covid-19 pandemic is causing cord-cutting to accelerate as consumers look to save money by switching to streaming-video services such as Netflix and AT&T's own HBO Max. So while AT&T paid $49 billion when it bought DirecTV, it'd be lucky to fetch even half that now. One analyst, John Butler of Bloomberg Intelligence, estimates a potential sale price of just $20 billion. Some may be wondering, what on earth would any buyer want with a satellite-TV business anyway? The answer is cash. DirecTV still throws off quite a bit of it, which explains why private equity firms including Apollo Global Management Inc. and Platinum Equity are said to be taking a look. Financial suitors want businesses that generate lots of cash because they can support dividends and the debt load needed to take them private -- although DirecTV's ability to do so is certainly diminishing.

AT&T's WarnerMedia division is planning to lay off hundreds of employees in AT&T's latest cost-cutting move. Ars Technica reports: "Warner Bros. is expected to commence layoffs of around 650 people starting Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, while HBO is seen shedding between 150 and 175 staffers. A WarnerMedia spokesman declined to comment," Variety reported yesterday. The numbers quoted in Variety may be a bit too high. A source with knowledge of the AT&T layoffs told Ars that the real number is about 600 jobs across all of WarnerMedia, which includes Warner Bros., HBO, and Turner. The layoffs come days after WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar announced a shakeup including the departure of three executives and an increased focus on AT&T's new HBO Max streaming service. Kilar detailed the changes in an internal memo published by CNBC on Friday.

In its Q2 2020 earnings report, AT&T said that HBO revenue was "$1.6 billion, down 5.2 percent year over year, reflecting a decrease in subscription revenues and content and other revenues." HBO operating expenses were "$1.5 billion, up 32.5 percent year over year, primarily due to higher programming costs and expenses related to HBO Max." HBO operating income was $113 million, down 80.3 percent. Warner Bros. revenue in Q2 was $3.3 billion, down 3.9 percent year over year partly because of "the postponement of theatrical releases due to closure of movie theaters," AT&T said. Warner Bros. operating income rose 43.9 percent to $633 million, however, as the unit's operating expenses declined 11.1 percent to $2.6 billion "primarily due to the production hiatus and lower marketing expenses."

In T-Mobile's Q2 2020 earnings call today, the company says that it has surpassed AT&T in total branded customer count to become the second biggest carrier in the U.S., trailing only Verizon. PhoneDog reports: In Q2 2020, [which is the first quarter that includes Sprint following the merger of the two carriers] T-Mobile added 1.245 million customers, giving it a total subscriber count of 98.3 million. To compare, AT&T finished Q2 2020 with 93 million postpaid and prepaid customers.

T-Mo also shared some good news regarding its 5G network today. The magenta carrier's 2.5GHz mid-band 5G is now live in Atlanta, Dallas, and Washington DC. That 2.5GHz 5G coverage is also live in parts of Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia. T-Mo touts that its average download speeds on 2.5GHz 5G is around 300Mbps with peak speeds of 1Gbps.

T-Mobile is preparing to make support for Voice over LTE a requirement for all new devices, according to a report Thursday. The move was reportedly detailed in internal T-Mobile documents obtained by Android Police. From a report: The requirement won't mean much for users at first, but as of January 2021, "T-Mobile will require all devices connecting to our nationwide 4G LTE and 5G networks to be VoLTE compatible." That means that older-gen devices that don't include support for the IP-based voice network won't be able to use T-Mobile at all. Further reading: AT&T Tells Customers To Upgrade Their Phones To Avoid Losing Voice Calls -- Two Years Early.