The Telecom Digest
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
|
The Telecom Digest |
|
|---|---|---|
| Copyright © 2022 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved. | ||
|
Message-ID: <20221024180628.GA625537@telecomdigest.us>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:06:28 +0000
From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>
Subject: AT&T slapped with $23M fine, former exec charged for
playing politics in Illinois
By Diana Goovaerts
AT&T struck a deal with federal officials to resolve allegations it
indirectly paid a state lawmaker in Illinois to secure support for
legislation which freed it of an obligation to provide all residents
in the state with landline phone services. An operator executive and
two politicians involved in the scheme were separately charged in
connection with the case.
The operator agreed to pay a $23 million fine and entered into a
two-year deferred prosecution agreement. The latter will allow it to
avoid going to court so long as it implements a new compliance and
ethics program and provides annual reports to the government about its
progress.
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/att-slapped-23m-fine-former-exec-charged-playing-politics-illinois
--
(Please remove QRM to write to Bill Horne directly)
Message-ID: <20221024181511.GA625706@telecomdigest.us> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:15:11 +0000 From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com> Subject: Verizon notifies prepaid customers their accounts were breached Verizon warned an undisclosed number of prepaid customers that attackers gained access to Verizon accounts and used exposed credit card info in SIM swapping attacks. “We determined that between October 6 and October 10, 2022, a third party actor accessed the last four digits of the credit card used to make automatic payments on your account,” Verizon said in an alert published this week. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/verizon-notifies-prepaid-customers-their-accounts-were-breached/ Message-ID: <20221024181108.GA625579@telecomdigest.us> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:11:08 +0000 From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com> Subject: AT&T quietly cuts another 2,500 jobs By Iain Morris America's oldest provider of telecom services continued its zero-touch mission with the quiet elimination of another 2,500 jobs between July and September. AT&T typically ejects tens of thousands of employees annually, and so the latest figure is easy to miss, accounting for just 1.5% of AT&T's 172,400-strong workforce at the end of June. It represents the continuation of a long-running trend, nevertheless. At some point in the not-too-dim-and-distant future, the human element of AT&T will be its shareholders, its customers and CEO John Stankey or his successor, leaving artificial intelligence to run the network, fix the boxes, sell the phones and fetch the sole remaining employee a morning latte. https://www.lightreading.com/aiautomation/atandt-quietly-cuts-another-2500-jobs/a/d-id/781273 Message-ID: <1f9b6246-38b6-3e77-e851-e31a5685e90d@att.net> Date: 24 Oct 2022 08:51:14 -0700 From: John David Galt <jdgalt@att.net> Subject: The IRS strikes back against robocallers Very few issues would touch a red button like talking to a tax practitioner or a taxpayer trying to reach the IRS by phone. In recent years it has felt like Mission Impossible. Last week the IRS began to take action to fight back against one of the problems facing the phone issue - robocalls by companies allowing their clients to reach the IRS via a pay for service contract. Summary: A company named EnQ (callenq.com) set up a “cutting in line” service that purported to do tax practitioners a favor by connecting you, for a large monthly fee, to IRS's Practitioner Priority Hotline without the long wait time. What the “service” actually did was to hog the hotline, so that you pretty much had to pay them their $300/month or you couldn't get through at all. So now the IRS is using AI technology to weed out the calls from EnQ. I expect this racket to spread to many other government hotlines. Maybe it already has and I just don't know about them. Full article here: https://procedurallytaxing.com/the-irs-strikes-back-against-robocalls/ Message-ID: <20221024182355.GA626006@telecomdigest.us> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:23:55 +0000 From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com> Subject: NJ: Bills target Verizons push to stop paying taxes on poles, wires By: Nikita Biryukov For years, municipal tax officials have received letters from Verizon with a simple message: The company would no longer pay property taxes on telephone poles, lines, and other infrastructure. In its letters, the telecom giant says because it no longer provides landline phone service to more than 51% of a municipality - a threshold set by state law in 1997, before cellphones became ubiquitous - it is no longer subject to taxation on its infrastructure, known as business personal property. https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/10/21/bills-target-verizons-push-to-stop-paying-taxes-on-poles-wires/ |
| Helpful Links | |
|---|---|
| Telecom Digest Archives | The Telecom Digest FAQ |