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Verizon announced the termination of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in a Thursday letter sent to FCC Chairman Brandon Carr. The telecommunications company said it recognized that some of its DEI policies were "discriminatory" and vowed to terminate all company roles focused on DEI effective immediately. This comes after the Trump administration launched a probe into the company over such policies in February. Verizon cited Supreme Court rulings, President Donald Trump's executive orders, and federal mandates for its decision to eliminate DEI from the company. The company will no longer maintain workforce diversity goals and said it would...

A watchdog group has filed a conflict-of-interest complaint over concerns that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has “blatantly” pressured the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to use Starlink. The Washington, DC-based Campaign Legal Center also filed a lawsuit to stop Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from making “unlawful” cuts to the federal budget. On Thursday, the group sent the 12-page conflict-of-interest complaint about Musk to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA. The center argues that the billionaire is using his position in the Trump administration to push the FAA into buying...

Verizon, the biggest carrier in the United States, is also the fastest when it comes to 5G upload speeds, at least in theory. The Big Red claims it successfully completed a trial in collaboration with Ericsson and Qualcomm, achieving North American uplink speeds of 480 Mbps.During the test, Verizon made use of Advanced 5G technologies, which combines two TDD carrier component aggregation with C-band spectrum and uplink MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output). The combination of these technologies enabled the companies to achieve a US record-breaking 480 Mbps uplink speed using sub-6 GHz spectrum...Verizon expects to attract numerous businesses with its...

U.S. officials have added a ninth telecommunications company to the list of entities compromised by a sweeping Chinese-linked cyberespionage operation known as Salt Typhoon, a top White House official said Friday. Anne Neuberger, the U.S. deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, told reporters on a call that the unnamed telecom was added to the list after the U.S. government shared guidance on how to detect and defend against the operation. Officials have previously alleged that the attackers targeted Verizon, AT&T, Lumen and others. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Dec. 18 urged senior government and political...

China has emerged as the most prolific intelligence threat to U.S. having engaged in corporate espionage, intellectual-property theft, and personnel information breaches going back decades. A naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from China has been sentenced to four years in prison after conspiring to act as a agent of the Chinese government, highlighting the broad reach of Beijing’s security service and strategy of co-opting immigrants for intelligence gathering, according to the Justice Department. The plea agreement and court filings announced Monday show China’s Ministry of State Security – the Communist-run country's intelligence service – used operative Peng Li as a...

Multiple U.S. broadband providers, including Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies, have been breached by a Chinese hacking group tracked as Salt Typhoon, the Wall Street Journal reports. The purpose of the attack appears to be intelligence collection as the hackers might have had access to systems used by the U.S. federal government for court-authorized network wiretapping requests. It is unclear when the intrusion occurred, but WSJ cites people familiar with the matter, saying that "for months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful U.S. requests for communications data." Salt Typhoon is...

Verizon Fios internet outages have impacted millions of customers on the East Coast, causing significant disruptions in the early hours of Tuesday. A map of user-reported issues shows the affected area spans about 300 miles from Philadelphia to Richmond, Virginia, according to the third-party website Downdetector, which tracks real-time service disruptions. Outage.Report also said it found significant outrages for Verizon Fios. “During the incident we received reports from Washington, Lewes, Miami, LaGrange, Baltimore, Silver Spring, Raleigh, Cherry Hill, Maple Shade, Sewell, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Alexandria, Annandale, Arlington, Ashburn, Fairfax, Falls Church, Henrico County, Norfolk and 16 other cities,” Outage.Report noted.

Do any FReepers have experience with cell phone extenders such as the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Network Extender ASK-SFE116? This is not a repeater, instead, it works through and existing Ethernet Connection to your computer / the Web, and functions like a little "mini-tower" in your home. I did find this useful vid: https://www.verizon.com/support/verizon-lte-network-extender-setup-video/ However, I've not found much info. regarding range. My guess is that it is similar to a typical Wi-Fi router. Unfortunately these "extenders" do not connect via a Wi-Fi router.) It also appears activation can be a problem if buying a used unit, as evidently the...

As of 110724, Verizon is shutting down messages+. They recommend Google messages. Does anyone have a better recommendation? I do not use google for mail, or anything else. Thanks in advance

Please help me, as I am not tech-savvy. I have been using Messages+ for quite a while for texting with my Android phone. Verizon is now informing me that this app will be discontinued, and I am being nudged toward replacing it with a Google app. Tried researching other choices, but I don't know how to judge what is a good replacement. My phone is a Galaxy S21. Suggestions?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Communications Commission said on Monday that it was investigating a Verizon network outage across the United States after thousands of users reported outages. Chicago and Indianapolis were among the hardest-hit cities and some iPhone users were stuck in "SOS" mode. According to tracking website Downdetector.com, the outage began at around 9:30 a.m. ET and there were 66,761 reports as of 12:28 p.m. ET, with regions including Minneapolis, Phoenix, Omaha and Denver among the most reported areas being affected.

I use a third party Email program (Thunderbird) to get my Email (via a POP setup) from Verizon (now hosted by AOL). I noticed some months ago that spam filters it was using were not always reliable. I began going on line to AOL mail to see what had been placed in the "Trash" folder (Emails I got via Thunderbird) and what it had in a "SPAM" folder. I found Emails assigned as Spam were not and some Emails they sent ot me should have been sent to the Spam folder instead. I made corrections on their Email web page....

Is anyone else getting phone calls to other countries on your bills? Is this the latest scam to use someone else's number to call wherever? I know they've been able to use other numbers that show up on Caller ID but didn't know they could bill to your number.

Is anyone else having outages, due to bad weather, on Verizon Wireless? I wonder if anyone knows a good way to contact these idiots. Idont fully trust their robocall that tells us 18 hours later the area is still having Verizon outage. I’d like to get real people to talk to.

The future of One America News, which established itself as a powerful voice in conservative media by promoting some of the most outlandish falsehoods about the 2020 election, is in serious doubt as major carriers drop it from their lineups and defamation lawsuits threaten to drain its finances. By the end of this week, the cable network will have lost its presence in some 20 million homes this year. The most recent blow came from Verizon, which will stop carrying OAN on its Fios television service starting Saturday. That will starve the network of a major stream of revenue: the...

Verizon will drop One America News from its channel lineup, leaving the right-wing network without any major television carriers. After failing to reach a contractual agreement, Verizon announced it would no longer contain the rights to OAN after July. “Our negotiation with OAN has been a typical, business-as-usual carriage negotiation like those that routinely happen between content distributors and content providers. These negotiations were focused on economics, as they always are, but OAN failed to agree to fair terms,” Verizon said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Our company has long advocated for providing customers with the ability to...

The Rumble app on my Android phone is downloading slow and won't play video. Same thing when I go to their website through the Opera browser. But it works fine through Roku. Anyone else having this issue?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Verizon and AT&T have rejected a request by the U.S. government to delay the rollout of next-generation wireless technology. A joint letter Sunday from the telecommunications giants to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Steve Dickson, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, sought to dismiss concerns brought by U.S. airlines that a new 5G wireless service could harm aviation. But Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon Communications, and John Stankey, CEO of AT&T, also wrote that they were willing to accept some temporary measures over the next six months to limit the service around certain airport runways....

The CEOs of the two largest commercial jet manufacturers in the United States warned against the deployment of expanded 5G internet in a letter to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. On Monday, Dave Calhoun of Boeing and Jeffrey Knittel of Airbus Americas expressed concern about a plan by Verizon and AT&T to roll out the new technology on January 5th of next year, urging the Biden administration to intervene to postpone the adoption of the new 5G network. “5G interference could adversely affect the ability of aircraft to safely operate,” reads the letter. The letter echoed concerns from a report...

Yahoo has shut down its services in mainland China, becoming the second Western tech giant to pull the plug on China over the past month.The company stopped providing content for mainland Chinese users as of Nov. 1, according to a statement from its official website. “Products and services remain unaffected in all other global locations,” it said.Yahoo made the decision “[i]n recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China,” a company spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on Tuesday, adding that “Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open...