Items tagged with Federal Trade Commission
SpaceX's Starlink opened preorders for satellite internet services earlier this year, largely covering the northern hemisphere's higher latitudes. Since then, Elon Musk's company has continued to expand its services to more people around the world. Now, it is believed that the satellites will be able to provide continuous global coverage come September, provided regulatory approvals are granted. On Tuesday, Starlink's president Gwynne Shotwel spoke at a Macquarie Group virtual technology conference, explaining that the company has deployed roughly 1,800 satellites so far. She then stated that "once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, we will have continuous global coverage, so...
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Dish Network is in hot water with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for outright violating the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), including the "Do Not Call" registry, by placing tens of millions of unsolicited calls to numbers that appear on the list. In all, Dish Network and its retail partners made some 57 million unauthorized outbound calls. The FTC is holding Dish Network responsible for illegal calls made by its vendors to numbers on the DNC registry since Dish retained the retailers, authorized the retailers to market Dish products and services, and because the retailers violated the TSR by initiating the Dish telemarketing calls to numbers on the registry.Image Source:...
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is bringing the legal hammer down on tech support scammers who trick people into thinking there's something wrong with their computer that they're able to fix, or otherwise offering to speed up your PC. What they're really doing is charging for services that aren't necessary, though sometimes their motives are even more nefarious. Depending on where your web travels take you, the FTC says the newest trick involves scammers luring victims to their websites with pop-ads or web searches. Once there, a bogus program appears to detect several errors with your PC. The people running the scam will ask the victim to call on the phone or grant remote access to their...
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Today, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed suit against AT&T stating that the wireless carrier misled and deceived millions of its customers through data throttling for those with its unlimited data plan. On top of that, customers who cancelled their accounts because of throttling we then charged early termination fees. "AT&T promised its customers 'unlimited' data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in a press release. "The issue here is simple: 'unlimited' means unlimited." Image Credit: Flickr (Bill Bradford) According to the FTC, AT&T’s promotional materials for its unlimited plan emphasized the word “unlimited”...
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When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled their investigation of Intel, one of the stipulations of the agreement was that Intel would continue to support the PCI Express standard for the next six years. Intel agreed to all the FTC's demands (without actually admitting that it did anything wrong), but Intel's upcoming Oak Trail Atom platform presented something of a conundrum. Oak Trail was finalized long before the FTC and Intel began negotiating, which means Santa Clara could have been banned from shipping the platform. The FTC and Intel have jointly announced an agreement covering Oak Trail that allows Intel to sell the platform without adding PCIe support—for now. Come 2013, all...
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The Federal Trade Commission can close the books on its case against Intel, the world's largest chip maker, after the two sides were able to hammer out a settlement. Intel stood accused of anticompetitive practices, which is legal speak for being a bully in the marketplace, and under terms of the agreement, the Santa Clara chip maker must refrain from offering "conditioning benefits" to manufacturers who agree to roll with Intel exclusively, or "retaliating against" manufacturers who don't. "This case demonstrates that the FTC is willing to challenge anticompetitive conduct by even the most powerful companies in the fastest-moving industries," said Chairman Jon Leibowitz. "By accepting this settlement,...
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At the time of this writing, the FTC's investigation into Intel's alleged monopolistic abuses is on hold as the government attempts to negotiate a settlement with the CPU and chipset manufacturer. If these negotiations don't result in a deal by July 22, the case returns to court, with arguments currently scheduled to begin on September 15. Intel is no stranger to these sorts of lawsuits; between AMD and the EU, the CPU giant has been battling such allegations for years. The lawsuit between NV and Intel, however, rests on different points than the AMD/Intel allegations. Here, the battle is over whether or not Intel's already-negotiated agreements with NVIDIA give the latter permission to produce...
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