The Verge reports that WarnerMedia is getting rid of the HBO Go app in an attempt to reduce some of the confusion about which app is for which purpose. From the report: HBO Max is AT&T's new streaming service that lets you access the entire HBO library plus additional content like Cartoon Network shows and the Studio Ghibli movies. You can subscribe to HBO Max directly for a $14.99 monthly fee, but it's also offered for free from many cable providers if you subscribe to HBO, and it's free as part of some AT&T wireless, internet, or TV plans. A key thing to know is that HBO Max is really an expanded and rebranded version of HBO Now, the company's previous streaming-only service. On most platforms, like Apple TV, the HBO Now app was directly updated to become HBO Max.

Before HBO Max existed, cable subscribers could stream HBO shows using an app called HBO Go. WarnerMedia will be getting rid of that app (or "sunsetting" it, in WarnerMedia's language) from "primary platforms" as of July 31st. If you previously relied on HBO Go, many cable providers will already let you log in to HBO Max. You can see that full list here. That "primary platforms" language is important, because WarnerMedia still hasn't struck deals to bring HBO Max to Roku or Amazon streaming devices. On those platforms, WarnerMedia is not upgrading the HBO Now app to become HBO Max. Instead, it's rebranding to simply be "HBO," where it will still cost $14.99, even though you'll only be able to watch HBO content on it and not the expanded HBO Max catalog. This branding switch will be happening over the coming months, according to WarnerMedia.

HBO Max, AT&T's big bet on the future of streaming, will be excused from AT&T's mobile data caps, while competing services like Netflix and Disney Plus will use up your data. From a report: That's the follow-up from a Vergecast conversation with Tony Goncalves, the AT&T executive in charge of HBO Max. Asked whether HBO Max would hit the cap, Goncalves said his team "had the conversation" but didn't have the answer. AT&T later confirmed to The Verge that HBO Max will be excused from the company's traditional data caps and the soft data caps on unlimited plans. According to an AT&T executive familiar with the matter, HBO Max is using AT&T's "sponsored data" system, which technically allows any company to pay to excuse its services from data caps. But since AT&T owns HBO Max, it's just paying itself: the data fee shows up on the HBO Max books as an expense and on the AT&T Mobility books as revenue. For AT&T as a whole, it zeroes out. Compare that to a competitor like Netflix, which could theoretically pay AT&T for sponsored data, but it would be a pure cost.

Cryptocurrency investor Michael Terpin sued AT&T over a SIM card attack in 2018 that lost him control over $23 million.

Now Bloomberg reports that he's suing the "15-year-old hacker and his crew of 'evil computer geniuses'" behind the attack. (Alternate source) Terpin, the founder and chief executive officer of blockchain advisory firm Transform Group, is suing Ellis Pinsky, now 18, for $71 million under a federal racketeering law that allows for triple damages. "Pinsky and his other cohorts are in fact evil computer geniuses with sociopathic traits who heartlessly ruin their innocent victims' lives and gleefully boast of their multi-million-dollar heists," Terpin said in his complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.

Pinsky, of Irvington, New York, couldn't be reached for comment....

According to Terpin. Pinsky's ring identifies people with large cryptocurrency holdings and gains control of their phones by bribing or fooling employees of their wireless carriers. The hackers are then able to intercept authentication messages, gain information and drain the victims' cryptocurrency accounts.

Pinsky has boasted to friends that, starting at age 13, he stole more than $100 million worth of cryptocurrency, hundreds of thousands of dollars of which has been converted into cash stored in his bedroom, the lawsuit alleges. Terpin also claims that, after confronting Pinsky about his alleged role in the theft, the teenager sent him cryptocurrency, cash and a watch with a combined value of $2 million. He claims this was an admission by Pinsky that he had stolen from Terpin.

AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said he will retire at the end of June (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), handing leadership of one of the world's largest media and telecommunications companies to longtime deputy John Stankey. The Wall Street Journal reports: Mr. Stephenson, who turned 60 this week, has spent most of his 13 years as chairman and CEO piecing together a modern media business by scooping up DirecTV and then Time Warner, remaking the staid telephone company he inherited. He had been preparing to retire at some point in 2020 until an activist investor surfaced late last year challenging his strategy, according to people familiar with the matter.

"John will be an outstanding CEO for this company, and I couldn't be more confident or pleased in passing him the baton," Mr. Stephenson said of his successor in a video to AT&T's staff. Mr. Stankey, like the man he is succeeding, earned his stripes in the telephone business but has been a leading proponent AT&T's hard turn toward entertainment. "The entire industry is in transformation right now and that transformation extends beyond just the business model," Mr. Stankey said in a recent interview. "It's how markets and how corporations operate." Mr. Stephenson said he will remain chairman until January, when the Dallas-based company is expected to elect an independent chairman. The change was announced at AT&T's annual meeting Friday, which was held online because of the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this morning, President Trump commented on the move. He tweeted: "Great News! Randall Stephenson, the CEO of heavily indebted AT&T, which owns and presides over Fake News @CNN, is leaving, or was forced out. Anyone who lets a garbage 'network' do and say the things that CNN does, should leave ASAP. Hopefully replacement will be much better!"

Ars Technica notes that AT&T's mobile business revenue in Q1 2020 was $42.8 billion, "down from $44.8 billion in last year's first quarter." It adds: "AT&T's WarnerMedia division, a result of Stephenson's Time Warner acquisition, reported a 12.2-percent year-over-year revenue decline and expects tough times ahead as the pandemic forced the cancellation of big sporting events and TV and film production." The company also just yesterday announced that it lost another 897,000 premium TV subscribers in Q1 2020. It looks like the new CEO will have his work cut out for him.

AT&T lost another 897,000 premium TV subscribers in Q1 2020, as the DirecTV owner's string of massive customer losses continued. An AT&T executive today said the company is moving ahead with a company-wide cost-cutting program. From a report: AT&T's earnings announcement today said the 897,000-customer net loss reduced the total number of premium TV subscribers to 18.6 million. AT&T said the latest customer loss was "due to competition and customers rolling off promotional discounts as well as lower gross adds from the continued focus on adding higher-value customers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T falsely reported to the Federal Communications Commission that it offers broadband in nearly 3,600 census blocks spread across parts of 20 states. AT&T disclosed the error to the FCC in a filing a week ago. The filing provides "a list of census blocks AT&T previously reported as having broadband deployment at speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream/3 Mbps upstream that AT&T has removed from its Form 477 reports." The 78-page list includes nearly 3,600 blocks.

With Form 477 reports, ISPs are required to tell the FCC which census blocks they offer service in. The FCC uses the data to track broadband-deployment progress and, crucially, to decide which census blocks get government funding for deploying Internet service. AT&T falsely reporting broadband-data coverage could prevent other ISPs from getting that funding and leave Americans without broadband access. When contacted by Ars, AT&T said the mistake was caused by a software problem. "The updates to the census blocks address an issue with a third party's geocoding software. There has been no change to our service area and this doesn't affect the service we provide our customers," AT&T told Ars.

In a video interview over Google Hangouts this week, 76-year-old Vint Cerf explained to the Washington Post why the internet's 50-year-old architecture is still holding up, "with a mix of triumph and wonder in his voice." "Resiliency and redundancy are very much a part of the Internet design," explained Cerf, whose passion for touting the wonders of computer networking prompted Google in 2005 to name him its "Chief Internet Evangelist," a title he still holds...

Cerf, along with fellow computer scientist Robert E. Kahn, was a driving force in developing key Internet protocols in the 1970s for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which provided early research funding but ultimately relinquished control of the network it spawned. Cerf also was among a gang of self-described "Netheads" who led an insurgency against the dominant forces in telecommunications at the time, dubbed the "Bellheads" for their loyalty to the Bell Telephone Company and its legacy technologies.

Bell, which dominated U.S. telephone service until it was broken up in the 1980s, and similar monopolies in other countries wanted to connect computers through a system much like their lucrative telephone systems, with fixed networks of connections run by central entities that could make all of the major technological decisions, control access and charge whatever the market -- or government regulators -- would allow. The vision of the Netheads was comparatively anarchic, relying on technological insights and a lot of faith in collaboration. The result was a network -- or really, a network of networks -- with no chief executive, no police, no taxman and no laws. In their place were technical protocols, arrived at through a process for developing expert consensus, that offered anyone access to the digital world from any properly configured device. Their numbers, once measured in the dozens, now rank in the tens of billions, including phones, televisions, cars, dams, drones, satellites, thermometers, garbage cans, refrigerators, watches and so much more...

Such a system carries a notable cost in terms of security and privacy, a fact the world rediscovers every time there's a major data breach, ransomware attack or controversy over the amount of information governments and private companies collect about anyone who's online -- a category that includes more than half of the world's almost 8 billion people. But the lack of a central authority is key to why the Internet works as well as it does, especially at times of unforeseen demands. Some of the early Internet architects -- Cerf among them, from his position at the Pentagon -- were determined to design a system that could continue operating through almost anything, including a nuclear attack from the Soviets...

Several [Netheads] acknowledged they celebrated just a bit when the telephone companies gradually abandoned old-fashioned circuit-switching for what was called "Voice Over IP" or VoIP. It was essentially transmitting voice calls over the Internet -- using the same technical protocols that Cerf and others had developed decades earlier.
"They're deservedly taking a bit of a moment for a high five right now," added one Comcast vice president (who "has briefed some members of the Internet's founding generation about how the company has been handling increased demands.")

And last week Vint Cerf reported good news about his own recent COVID-19 infection -- that he is no longer contagious -- and briefly summed up the experience for the Washington Post.

"I don't recommend it... It's very debilitating."

Slashdot reader Willy English quotes CNBC: AT&T is asking all of its employees who have the ability to work remotely to do so until further notice, as the coronavirus spreads across the globe.

The company will be announcing new procedures and safeguards for employees who can't work from home, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in a note sent to employees Friday. AT&T is one of the largest employers in the United States, and has 245,000 global employees.
Meanwhile, a local U.S. news station reports: IBM is encouraging all employees in the United States to work from home through the end of March, if possible.

In an email sent to employees and provided to KIMT, the technology company says the recommendation is in response to the global coronavirus pandemic.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The coronavirus threat and official policies of "social distancing" are leading millions to stay home, doing meetings via video chat and probably watching Netflix and YouTube the rest of the time. That means a big uptick in bytes going through the tubes, both simultaneously and cumulatively. ISPs, leery of repeating Verizon's memorable gaffe of cutting off service during an emergency, are proposing a variety of user-friendly changes to their policies. Comcast is boosting the bandwidth of its low-income Internet Essentials customers to levels that actually qualify as broadband under FCC rules. AT&T is suspending data caps for all its customers until further notice. Verizon has added $500 million to its 5G rollout plans. Wait, how does that help? Unclear, but the company "stands ready" for increases in traffic. Elsewhere in the world ISPs are taking similar actions, either voluntarily or at the request of the state. In India, for instance, ACT Fibernet has bumped everyone up to 300 Mbps for no cost.

There are two simple truths at play here. The first is that any company that sends its subscriber a $150 overage fee because they had to work from home for a month and ran over their data cap is going to be radioactive. The optics on that are so bad that my guess is most companies are quietly setting forgiveness policies in place to prevent it from happening -- though of course it probably will anyway. The second is that these caps are completely unnecessary, existing only as a way to squeeze more money from subscribers. Data caps just don't matter any more. As I pointed out during the whole zero-rating debacle, the very fact that the limits can be lifted at will or certain high-traffic categories (such as a broadband company's own streaming TV channels) can be exempted fundamentally beggars the concept of these caps.

Think about it: If the internet provider can even temporarily lift the data caps, then there is definitively enough capacity for the network to be used without those caps. If there's enough capacity, then why did the caps exist in the first place? Answer: Because they make money.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said Friday that major internet providers -- including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon Communications -- have agreed to not terminate service for the next 60 days if they are unable to pay their bills due to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus. From a report: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said after calls with companies and associations the firms have also agreed to waive any late fees that any residential or small business customers incur because of their economic circumstances related to the coronavirus pandemic and open Wi-Fi hotspots to any American who needs them.

AT&T is the first major ISP to confirm that it will be suspending all broadband usage caps as millions of Americans bunker down in a bid to slow the rate of COVID-19 expansion. Consumer groups and a coalition of Senators are now pressuring other ISPs to follow suit. From a report: Telecom experts told Motherboard this morning that broadband caps and overage fees don't serve any real technical purpose, and are little more than a glorified price hike on uncompetitive markets. We in turn reached out to ten of the nation's biggest ISPs, only one of which (Mediacom) was willing to go on the record. In the wake of that report, AT&T has confirmed to Motherboard that the company will be suspending all usage caps until further notice. "Many of our AT&T Internet customers already have unlimited home internet access, and we are waiving internet data overage for the remaining customers," a company spokesperson said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is planning tens of billions of dollars worth of cost cuts, AT&T President and COO John Stankey told investors yesterday. Stankey also discussed the future of DirecTV satellite service, saying it won't be the primary TV option AT&T pitches to most customers going forward. For the company-wide cuts, AT&T management "has looked at effectively 10 broad initiatives that we believe can generate double digits of billions over a 3-year planning cycle," Stankey said at a Morgan Stanley conference, according to a transcript posted by AT&T. One of the first of those 10 initiatives will include job cuts, which Stankey called "headcount rationalization." Stankey noted that AT&T has already been cutting jobs but said the company plans "additional work" in that area.

Longer-term cost cutting would start paying off after about two years, Stankey said. That will include "IT rationalization and architecture rationalization, turning down applications, movement to the cloud, getting cost efficiencies in our very, very broad infrastructure, some of that facilitated by portfolio rationalization." AT&T is also looking at ways to reduce electricity costs and a "billing and credit collections rationalization," Stankey said. [...] As AT&T shifts toward online-only services like AT&T TV, it is de-emphasizing the satellite service despite spending $48.5 billion to buy DirecTV in 2015. Stankey said yesterday that the future of TV is in software, not satellites, and that DirecTV will primarily be relevant in places without fast broadband: AT&T purchased DirecTV because "we like the DirecTV customer base, thought it was attractive," Stankey said. But "shortly after that [acquisition], we made it clear that we would be developing a software platform that would ultimately not only take our satellite base and offer them a more updated product, but be the replacement for the U-verse [wireline TV service]," he said.

AT&T has launched its newest video service brand, called AT&T TV, and it could be the beginning of the end for AT&T's DirecTV offering. From a report: That's because AT&T TV is like DirectTV in many ways: It allows you to watch more than 100 live TV channels, but whereas DirecTV requires you to have a satellite dish, AT&T TV only requires that you have an internet connection. AT&T TV also goes further than DirectTV. Not only can you watch hundreds of live TV channels, the service, which is housed in a set-top box much like the Roku or Apple TV, allows you to also access third-party streaming services such as Netflix and Disney Plus. AT&T TV's remote also comes with Google Assistant built in, Chromecast support, and can even allow you to control smart home devices. But with the introduction of AT&T TV on a nationwide scale (the service has been in testing for months), AT&T's offerings get even more confusing. The Wall Street Journal has a rundown of all the video brands the company offers now, including U-verse, DirectTV, AT&T TV Now, AT&T WatchTV, the new AT&T TV, HBO Go, HBO Now, and the upcoming HBO Max streaming service.

The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday that it has proposed fining the nation's four largest wireless carriers $200 million for selling access to their customers' location information without taking reasonable measures to protect customers' real-time location information. From a report: The agency is proposing T-Mobile face a fine of more than $91 million. AT&T will be fined more than $57 million. It's fining Verizon more than $48 million. And Sprint's fine will be more than $12 million. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the proposed fines have put wireless carriers on notice that they need to do a better job protecting consumers' privacy. "This FCC will not tolerate phone companies putting Americans' privacy at risk," he said in a statement. Still, the amount of the fines is a drop in the bucket for the nation's carriers. For instance, Verizon reported fourth quarter revenue of $34.78 billion; AT&T reported revenue of $46.82 billion; and T-Mobile reported revenue of $11.88 billion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T's mandatory-arbitration clause is unenforceable in a class-action case over AT&T's throttling of unlimited data, a panel of U.S. appeals court judges ruled this week. The nearly five-year-old case has gone through twists and turns, with AT&T's forced-arbitration clause initially being upheld in March 2016. If that decision had stood, the customers would have been forced to have any complaints heard individually in arbitration. But an April 2017 decision by the California Supreme Court in a different case effectively changed the state's arbitration law, causing a U.S. District Court judge to revive the class action in March 2018.

AT&T appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but a three-judge panel at that court rejected AT&T's appeal in a ruling issued Tuesday. Judges said they must follow the California Supreme Court decision -- known as the McGill rule -- which held that an agreement, like AT&T's, that waives public injunctive relief in any forum is contrary to California public policy and unenforceable." AT&T claimed that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts the California law, but the appeals court had already ruled in Blair [another case involving the McGill rule] that this federal law doesn't preempt the McGill rule. The judges were also not persuaded by AT&T's argument that the court "abused its discretion in reconsidering its initial order compelling arbitration."

schwit1 quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T's decision to prevent Time Warner-owned shows from streaming on Netflix and other non-AT&T services reduced the company's quarterly revenue by $1.2 billion, a sacrifice that AT&T is making to give its planned HBO Max service more exclusive content. AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content, claiming that would be "irrational business behavior." AT&T's actual Q4 2019 revenue was $46.8 billion, but the company said it would have been $48 billion if not for "HBO Max investments in the form of foregone WarnerMedia content licensing revenues."

An AT&T spokesperson told Ars that the $1.2 billion in lost revenue was primarily caused by the decision "not to sell existing content -- mainly Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince -- to third parties such as Netflix." As we've previously reported, AT&T took Time Warner shows off Netflix in order to give the exclusive streaming rights to AT&T's HBO Max, which is scheduled to debut in May 2020 for $14.99 a month. The amount of forgone revenue could grow in future quarters, as Friends just left Netflix on January 1. The Big Bang Theory and Fresh Prince were not on Netflix in the United States, so in those cases the forgone revenue is apparently from not entering into licensing deals instead of ending them. AT&T also pulled Pretty Little Liars off Netflix in mid-2019 in order to give HBO Max the exclusive streaming rights.

Clayton Christensen, the business scholar who coined the term "disruptive innovation," died of cancer treatment complications on Thursday at age 67. The Verge reports: You may not immediately recognize his name, but the tech industry -- and every resulting industry -- is built on the framework of technology disruption and innovation that Christensen devised. The crux of Christensen's theory is that big, successful companies that neglect potential customers at the lower end of their markets (mainframe computers, in his famous example) are ripe for disruption from smaller, more efficient, more nimble competitors that can do almost as good a job more cheaply (like personal computers). One need look no further than the biggest names in Silicon Valley to find evidence of successful disrupters, from Napster to Amazon to Uber to Airbnb and so on.

And scores of notable tech leaders have for years cited Christensen's 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma as a major influence. It's the only business book on the late Steve Jobs' must-read list; Netflix CEO Reed Hastings read it with his executive team when he was developing the idea for his company; and the late Andy Grove, CEO of Intel, said the book and Christensen's theory were responsible for that company's turnaround. [...] He later refined his thinking on disruption, introducing the concept of "jobs to be done," which stressed the need to focus on customers' needs, and acknowledged that disruption was a great way to start a company, but not a good way to grow a company. "It's not a manual for how to grow or how to predict what customers want. [Jobs to be done] is the second side of the same coin: How can I be sure that competitors won't kill me and how can I be sure customers will want to buy the product? So it's actually a very important compliment to disruption."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Hackers are now getting telecom employees to run software that lets the hackers directly reach into the internal systems of U.S. telecom companies to take over customer cell phone numbers, Motherboard has learned. Multiple sources in and familiar with the SIM swapping community as well as screenshots shared with Motherboard suggest at least AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have been impacted. The technique uses Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) software. RDP lets a user control a computer over the internet rather than being physically in front of it. It's commonly used for legitimate purposes such as customer support. But scammers also make heavy use of RDP. In an age-old scam, a fraudster will phone an ordinary consumer and tell them their computer is infected with malware. To fix the issue, the victim needs to enable RDP and let the fake customer support representative into their machine. From here, the scammer could do all sorts of things, such as logging into online bank accounts and stealing funds.

This use of RDP is essentially what SIM swappers are now doing. But instead of targeting consumers, they're tricking telecom employees to install or activate RDP software, and then remotely reaching into the company's systems to SIM swap individuals. The process starts with convincing an employee in a telecom company's customer support center to run or install RDP software. The active SIM swapper said they provide an employee with something akin to an employee ID, "and they believe it." Hackers may also convince employees to provide credentials to a RDP service if they already use it. Once RDP is enabled, "They RDP into the store or call center [computer] [...] and mess around on the employees' computers including using tools," said Nicholas Ceraolo, an independent security researcher who first flagged the issue to Motherboard. Motherboard then verified Ceraolo's findings with the active SIM swapper.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T doesn't want its home Internet speeds to be measured by the Federal Communications Commission anymore, and it already convinced the FCC to exclude its worst speed-test results from an annual government report. "AT&T this year told the commission it will no longer cooperate with the FCC's SamKnows speed test," The Wall Street Journal wrote in an investigative report titled "Your Internet provider likely juiced its official speed scores." AT&T already convinced the FCC to exclude certain DSL test results from last year's Measuring Broadband America report. The reports are based on the SamKnows testing equipment installed in thousands of homes across the U.S.

"AT&T was dismayed at its report card from a government test measuring Internet speeds" and thus "pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL Internet service from the report," the Journal wrote. "In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials," the Journal wrote. "AT&T's remaining speed tiers notched high marks." "AT&T developed a best-in-class tool to measure its consumer broadband services," the company said in a statement provided to Ars. "This tool measures performance on all AT&T IP broadband technologies and is more accurate, versatile, and transparent. For these and other reasons, our tool provides better and more useful information to our customers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: After more than two years since it's been used the last time, the Chinese government deployed an infamous DDoS tool named the "Great Cannon" to launch attacks against LIHKG, an online forum where Hong Kong residents are organizing anti-Beijing protests. [...] DDoS attacks with the Great Cannon have been rare, mainly because they tend to generate a lot of bad press for the Chinese government. But in a report published today, AT&T Cybersecurity says the tool has been deployed once again. This time, the Great Cannon's victim was LIHKG.com, an online platform where the organizers of the Hong Kong 2019 protests have been sharing information about the locations of daily demonstrations. The site is also a place where Hong Kong residents congregate to recant stories of Chinese police abuse and upload video evidence.

AT&T Cybersecurity says the first Great Cannon DDoS attacks targeted LIHKG on August 31, while the last one being recorded on November 27. AT&T Cybersecurity researcher Chris Doman said the August attacks used JavaScript code that was very similar to the one spotted in the 2017 attacks on Mingjingnews.com. According to LIHKG, the site received more than 1.5 billion requests per hour during the August attack, compared to the site's previous traffic record that was only a meager 6.5 million requests per hour.