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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

>Yeah, pretty much all of the carriers cheat

Given that HN has an international audience,

1. Is this US only? I have never seen anything similar in EU or East Asia. I.e The Bar is an actual indication of the receiving signal, while it is no guarantee of speed which depends on contention, you will at least know you are in good signal area.

2. Is this Google Android only?

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To answer #2, no. Apple played into ATT's lies when they were behind on 4G LTE deployments and labeled 3G HSPA+ as 4G. ATT is far more brazen than other US carriers in this scheme and should be held accountable. Apple also displayed this bogus logo on the iPhone at the time. Keep in mind, however, Apple had strong exclusivity with ATT during the early years of the product.

ATT seems to like to confuse the truth more often than other carriers as well. One big, recent, fiasco was supporting wideband audio (HD calling) and WiFi calling on Google Pixel handsets. ATT never said in print they didn't support it and made references to the fact that all feature were supported on their website. When you'd call them ATT support would claim it was fully supported, yet ATT did not. This was true for both OG Pixels and PIxel 2s for both at launch and well into those device lifecycles. I know because I had technical tickets opened for about a year with ATT before leaving them. The point being ATT likes to pretend a lot. Of all the carriers (have been customers of the major 3 for different products over the years) they are, in my opinion, the least trustworthy in that regard.

https://forums.att.com/t5/Device-Features/Pixel-Pixel-2-VoLT...

Call it what it is: fraud. They fraudulently deceive their customers for monetary gain.

Yeah. While European companies are by no means saints, there simply doesn’t seem to be this sort of constant screwing over paying customers around here.

Because there is certain line that shouldn't be cross in the old world. And this is called principle and value.

In the New world they are all for Marketing and Margins.

You want us to go into European, Indian, Chinese and African corporate scandals?

I have my popcorn out, do it! Just don’t start with VW.

To be fair, VW didn't try to screw over their customers per se; indeed the whole point was to increase fuel efficiency (direct benefit to customer) at the expense of increased NO2 emissions (a negative externality). Of course what they did was deplorable in any case.

Depends on whether you value money higher than life and health. Volkswagen is the biggest car brand in Europe - I'm sure they made health of their customers (as well as others) worse.

Not just in Europe, the Volkswagen group had the most sales globally in 2017.

How’s that Renault/Nissan thing going?

Don’t feed the trolls please.

I second bnt's idea. I cannot sleep and would love to see this play out.

US doesn't have many protections for consumers. We are the country of companies and the populace doesn't have a real voice, just a fake one.

Agreed.

For US carriers its just business as usual. Technically the FTC would have to act on this but I think we all agree what side they are on. I really don't get why the US population doesn't demand better phone networks.

We faked it in the phones I was involved in making. Android, EU.

My bars are for the signal, there is 4 bars but the 4G/LTE/3G etc...is right above it.

I'm on Android.

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