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AT&T Iphone Apple Technology

Apple Just Endorsed AT&T's Fake 5G E Network (theverge.com) 116

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
There are no 5G iPhones, and there probably won't be 5G iPhones for a while. But that isn't stopping Apple and AT&T: they are reportedly rolling out AT&T's fake "5G E" branding with its upcoming iOS 12.2 update. From a report: Much like when the two companies pulled this scam with 4G and LTE back in 2012, if you can't beat them, you roll out a software update to make it look like you did even though the phones and network are still exactly the same. Multiple users on Twitter are now reporting that they're seeing the new 5G E icon on devices running the latest iOS 12.2 beta 2, which was released earlier today. The new icon isn't there for everyone, presumably because it will only appear in cities where AT&T's 5G Evolution network -- the company's intentionally misleading name for its LTE network that it seems to hope customers will confuse for actual, next-generation 5G networks -- is active.
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Apple Just Endorsed AT&T's Fake 5G E Network More

Apple Just Endorsed AT&T's Fake 5G E Network

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  • Mine was upgraded (Score:5, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @09:07AM (#58072944) Homepage Journal
    My phone was upgraded today with the new beta and I am enjoying the new speeds. And it was free!

  • People will notice. I mean, yes, they'll be suckered in for the "new", but soon they'll find out that the new is just a new coat of paint on the old. And then? You think they'll get "6G" (or whatever the next gen thing will be) once they have been burned now?

    Fuck those quarter-report idiots.

    • You are kidding right? iPhone 6,7,8,X,Xs. What is the difference between all those models? Nothing. People are dumb, consumers doubly so.

    • Re:They're poisoning their own system (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @09:30AM (#58073056)

      People will notice. I mean, yes, they'll be suckered in for the "new", but soon they'll find out that the new is just a new coat of paint on the old. And then? You think they'll get "6G" (or whatever the next gen thing will be) once they have been burned now?

      Fuck those quarter-report idiots.

      Like they noticed AT&T passing off 3G as 4G... Right, guys, right? They all noticed that.

      Back when G had a definition, few people knew it. Now it doesn't have a definition, so phone companies can call whatever they like 5G. Its not like the US has an advertising standards agency or anything to punish companies who deliberately advertise misleading information. Hell, AT&T would get away with it by simply saying that 5G stands for G-G-G-G-Good.

      They system was poisoned a long time ago but it never harmed the people doing the poisoning.

      • No, we all know that 5G stands for G-G-G-G-Grrrreat! Their new mascot's named Tony and is on loan from a cereal company.

    • but soon they'll find out that the new is just a new coat of paint on the old.

      Business as usual at apple then.

  • I don't understand how they are getting away with this. This is outright lying.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      It is 100% Beef(TM) of cellular connections.

    • "Outright lying" may be true, but it's a little harsh. The preferred term is "reality distortion field".

      Gonna beat them all, switching to 6G and IP7!

      (Places sticker on back of phone) There. That'll show 'em. It also blocks harmful radiation.

    • The "E" is how they escape FTC scrutiny... if anyone gets pissy about it, they'll both point to that "E", calling it a differentiator that denotes that it's not "true" 5G, just that they're "preparing for the arrival of 5G before anyone else", because they're so "forward-looking" and stuff.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

      They've lobbied the legal definitions into a complete mess that doesn't actually resemble the original technical definition. This is most of marketing for companies like them, cheat now, get caught and feign ignorance later.

    • Only a fool expects a corporation to police the other corporations they have to do business with. Government is supposed to police things; that was it's job before you all abdicated your responsibility and let corporations merge with it (see definition of fascism... then ask yourself what is the threshold where that term applies?)

      How is it not YOUR fault that ATnT is doing this?? You are still a paying customer of theirs... Aren't you supposed to police them with your purchases? Aren't you supposed to m

      • One thing to remember about most mobile service in the US, is that people get locked into contracts. I'm waiting for mine to expire in March, and then AT&T is fired.

        There is literally nothing they can do to retain my service at this point, short of making it 100% free for the rest of my life.

  • Don't y'all have truth in advertising [ftc.gov] laws over there?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

      Until someone that actually understands what they are doing has something to gain in their position of power it pretty much goes unnoticed/unaddressed. It is kind of like trying to bail the water out of a sinking battleship with a solo cup...

  • This misleading advertising damages their business because they aren't doing it, and the confusion it will cause will slow adoption of actual 5G once anyone makes it.

  • This is a surprise? They did the same thing YEARS ago when AT&T decided their 3G+ network was really 4G. Same ol' same ol' from two companies known for misleading their customers.

  • AT&T always does this .... (Score:5, Informative)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @10:01AM (#58073188) Journal

    Look at AT&T U-Verse service. It was marketed as broadband that goes head-to-head with cable internet services or something like Verizon FiOS. Their marketing made a big deal about it using fiber, even. Yet it's *really* just a fancy way to squeeze about 18mbit/sec download speeds, maximum, out of copper wire intended for voice land line phone use. (Sure, they run fiber as far as the nearest phone box at the end of a neighborhood street. But all the gear in the box converts the fiber to a form of DSL service they can run over the copper from there to a customer's site.)

    • U-Verse's VDSL seems to cap out at 54 mbit/sec, and even then you'll only get those speeds if you're close to the central office. The best I could get from them where I used to live was 25 mbps, which is pretty bad considering that Comcast offers 250 mbps speeds in the same area.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

        The comcast service and many others are actually using direct fiber connections (or I think in some cases very short CAT 5e/6 runs instead of the old CAT3 telephone runs). AT&T UVerse runs a fiber backbone to a local NID which then converts over to use the existing copper lines for most telephone service. One of my friends used to do installation for them years ago and even moved over to the fiber teams for a while. AT&T Fiber is what actually runs at the competing speeds with comcast, but AT

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Same thing happened in the UK, "fibre" internet is really just fibre to the cabinet and then the same crappy copper as before. Now we need to invent a new name for real fibre.

      Also we need to think of a new name for actual hoverboards when we finally invent them in 2015.

      • It's already differentiated as FTTN (fibre to the node) and FTTD (fibre to the door).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          They don't use that terminology for consumers though. They need a simpler, catchy name.

          Everyone was moaning for years that other countries had fibre, it became the holy grail of not-shit broadband, so they gave people "fibre".

    • Re:AT&T always does this .... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Drethon ( 1445051 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @01:31PM (#58074342)

      Look at AT&T U-Verse service. It was marketed as broadband that goes head-to-head with cable internet services or something like Verizon FiOS. Their marketing made a big deal about it using fiber, even. Yet it's *really* just a fancy way to squeeze about 18mbit/sec download speeds, maximum, out of copper wire intended for voice land line phone use. (Sure, they run fiber as far as the nearest phone box at the end of a neighborhood street. But all the gear in the box converts the fiber to a form of DSL service they can run over the copper from there to a customer's site.)

      When they first came out with U-Verse it was faster than any available DSL and as around the speed of cable while having much lower ping times (I could not play online games in our area with cable but U-Verse was fine). However that approach has a much lower ceiling than cable so it is no longer that great, and since then cable (or maybe just the provider I moved to) seems to have improved the issue with ping times.

      • (I could not play online games in our area with cable but U-Verse was fine)

        Holy crap man, that was a local problem with your cable and not something magic about U-Verse.

        • (I could not play online games in our area with cable but U-Verse was fine)

          Holy crap man, that was a local problem with your cable and not something magic about U-Verse.

          Could be, but at the time when U-Verse arrived (2005 or 8ish?), at a few different houses in the area I tested cable and ping times were regularly 40-80ms and sometimes higher, U-Verse or DSL was pretty steady around 20ms, sometimes a little higher. Been a while since I last did such a test though.

    • Re:AT&T always does this .... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @01:41PM (#58074402)
      If they're running fiber to the end of your street, then it's stupid to run ADSL from there to your home. ADSL tops out at 24 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up [wikipedia.org]. VDSL provides much more bandwidth at distances under 1 km [slashdot.org]. It's capable of hitting 300 Mbps down, 100 Mbps up over Cat 3 for extremely short distances. That's why some ISPs are using it for fiber in the street, with VDSL2 from the street to the home over existing Cat 3 wires.

      What's more likely is that AT&T's marketing is trying to obfuscate the limited availability of their fiber network, by intentionally labeling everything (FTTH, fiber + VDSL, and ADSL) as "U-Verse". And you just happened to be in one of the ADSL areas.
  • My carrier offered me a discounted package with 3G speeds, but LTE latency (my phone shows an LTE connection and I don't really notice much a difference from when I had their 4g "full speed" package). Is this something similar, or is it just a straight up scam? If so, how do they call this an upgrade?

    • This is them offering "5G speeds" using LTE and calling it 5G. They could have accomplished the same thing without the deceit by just increasing the throughput and saying "Hey our network just got faster for everyone. You're welcome!"

      Instead they are muddying the waters on the whole 5G thing, because they probably know their rollout of 5G is going to be behind competitors, and they don't want to be selling "less G's" than the other guys. So they do this bullshit, as there really isn't an accepted definit

  • Back when AT&T was called Cingular, they and apple were in bed.

    So, why are you all acting so surprised?

    • Also in the summary, it links to other articles where Samsung and LG phones will also have the "5G" icon. So it's not like this is breaking news.

    • Back when Cingular was Cingular and not absorbed by AT&T, they weren't the smarmiest assholes in the telecom industry.

      Corporate mergers tend to change things like that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

      Except they already rolled this out to a number of Android handsets in production. Its just a scam on AT&Ts part and the handset makers will go along because they don't want to piss off a big partner over some pesky ethical concerns.

  • It's a developer beta, for crying out loud. There's nothing to say it will be in the next developer beta, nor the public beta, nor the release. There could be any of a number of reasons why it's there in beta 2. Unless it's carried forward, how about toning down the sensationalism?

    • [sarcasm] I demand that no testing of minor things like icons ever take place in a beta. Only things that are absolutely vital to your life must be tested. Why won't you think of the children? [/sarcasm]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

      Except it will because it is already live on a bunch of Android phones. Apple's hands are tied anyway now because your average consumer would say, "Why can't Apple have 5G speeds, this sucks I'm going to Android for a faster phone!" Its a forgone conclusion now and unless someone actually takes them to court over it, the FTC gets off their ass and enforces some deceptive trade practice laws, or a number of other unlikely scenarios occur this will go live soon.

  • Call it 4.5G. Tell Marketing it has 5G in it if they complain.

  • Now with 5G!

  • The strings you see for the network are delivered by the carrier, not Apple. That's why it's also been showing up on some Android phones too. [macrumors.com]

    (Thanks to AC for the link).

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Or is it XG? Am I doing this right?

  • No click for you, Verge. (Score:4, Informative)

    by zarmanto ( 884704 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @12:48PM (#58074092) Journal

    Much like when the two companies pulled this scam...

    Nope, nope, nope! That's just stereotypical Apple-hater clickbait; nothing new to see here, folks. The geeks who actually care about this stuff have already read at least one of the previous articles on the topic, such as last month's article which pointed out that AT&T had then already enlisted Samsung and LG [slashdot.org] to label their phones in this manner. Also, it's worth noting that the two previous articles were both from The Verge, like this one... so I guess Verge is just really pumped about recycling. (Not the "good" kind of recycling... but still.) And as far as I can tell from the summary, this newer version of the story has utterly no purpose other than to enrage Android uses into hating on Apple some more... so that Verge can put a few more ads in front of hapless eyeballs.

    So yeah, screw that crap; you'll have to do a hell of a lot better than that to get your ad revenue out of me, Verge.

  • I hope I get this update on my Huawei phone!

  • Gas (Score:4)

    by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @02:07PM (#58074558) Journal

    I just bought an AT&T Electric LTE car! It is 100% gas but is forward-looking.

  • God I Hate AT&T (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I fucking hate AT&T. They are pure evil. The government broke it up and yet it reassembled itself from the "Baby Bells" after the divestiture, like Terminator 2.

  • It is not likely that they would get away with this fraud anywhere except the USA. The rest of us tend to have laws that should protect the customer from deceptive practices like this!

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