U.S. Said to Investigate AT&T and Verizon Over Wireless Collusion Claim

Yep. My guess is Apple and T-Mobile.

‘The investigation was opened about five months ago after at least one device maker and one wireless carrier filed formal complaints with the Justice Department, two of the people said. The device maker was Apple, one of them said.’

It’s collusion in the sense that agreeing to use an industry standard is collusion (which is to say, it isn’t collusion).

I seem to remember it’s also dramatically lowered phone theft rates.

Something very wrong is going on with IMEI blacklist.

We had a brand new phone stop connecting to T-mobile's network (in the US). When we went in to the store, they told us the IMEI was reported as a stolen phone. I brought back my receipt showing it was a new phone when I got it. They said they could not unblock because they didn't put the block in place, a carrier in Mexico did. The phone has never been used outside of the country, to the best of my knowledge. When I called the carrier in Mexico, they told me it was not possible for them to blacklist the IMEI of a device that's never been on their network, and that they had no record of my IMEI.

I ended up returning my phone, at the expense of the manufacturer.

Also, frequently when I sell my old phones on eBay, people love to ask for the IMEI to check the blacklist, but I believe they can also be programmitically swapped (the potential buyer has a blacklisted/stolen phone, and simply asks for a valid one), so I never provide it.

Verizon has an army of lawyers. That is the best line they can come up with because they are not creative, or reasonable, or as enthusiastic about their jobs, just enough to get by with whatever mentality they have adopted in their careers. And lawyers have no ability to self reflect with conscience. If they did, how could they do their jobs.

I hope they cast Al Pacino in a good role when they make this period piece in a couple of decades.

He's got pretty good experience from his previous role as Michael Corleone. Corleone goes to Cuba just before the Castro Regime takes over, and meets with the heads of United fruit company, At&t, and other companies that were too big too fail in 1959. In his characteristic savvy, he sees the entire trip for what it is, and predicts his own assassination, figures out who's been the mole in his family, and attempts his own capitalist venture, if you will.

It's a good thing we snuffed out all that organized crime.

https://youtu.be/OM9sIbddq24

Apple’s Kill switch actually has dramatically reduced fraud rates.

https://www.igeeksblog.com/apple-kill-switch-reduced-iphone-...

Short of Google building something like this, with all the concerns and disputes that would lead to, it seems like the carriers almost certainly need to build something like this for Android phones?

eSIM devices don't necessarily have a slot.