Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile’s 5G launches are blazing fast, when you can find a signal, but your phone will also get blazing hot while using it.

The Wall Street Journal embarked on testing current 5G launches in several American cities and found speeds on 5G nearing 1,800 Mbps in some places, but the millimeter-wave frequencies most carriers are using for mobile 5G don’t travel far and are subject to disappear just by walking down the street, around the corner, or indoors.

Some devices with 5G support are also suffering from heat issues, sometimes causing phones to heat up to over 105° and drop 5G service in favor of less battery-intense 4G LTE. Network engineers admit they bring coolers filled with ice to cool down overheating 5G phones.

Only Sprint’s mid-band 5G network in Chicago offered a much larger coverage area that still worked after walking indoors, and devices remained cool to the touch while using it. But Sprint’s 5G service sacrifices performance for coverage, often topping out at around 200-300 Mbps.

The Wall Street Journal found a reporter, a tent, and some new 5G devices and sent them out to test some of America’s new 5G services. (5:39)

Verizon Wireless customers with older devices still reliant on 3G CDMA technology will be able to continue using them on Verizon’s network until the end of 2020.

The wireless giant confirmed this week it is postponing its retirement of 3G service for a year. The company had planned to switch off support for 3G at the end of 2019.

Verizon spokesperson Howie Waterman told Light Reading the action is intended to give impacted customers “an extra year to decide what they want to do.”

Verizon had given priority to discontinuing 3G service so it can repurpose that spectrum for its 4G LTE network, which is approaching capacity in some areas. The company originally warned customers and its reseller MVNO partners back in 2016 that it would end 3G service on Dec. 31, 2019. It also stopped activating 3G-only phones on its network in July 2018.

Starting in early 2020, Verizon will no longer permit customers to transfer 3G phone service from one account to another, activate 3G service on a pre-existing line, swap a malfunctioning or lost 3G device for another 3G device, or use a 3G phone to roam outside of the U.S. Verizon hopes customers will see the restrictions as a motivation to upgrade to a new 4G LTE phone.

Frontier Communications customers across Rhinelander, Wis. were left without phone and internet service for a day after a construction crew cut fiber optic and copper cables that Frontier earlier promised to move, but never did.

In early July, service across parts of the city of 8,000 was knocked out as construction crews worked on a new roundabout, severing communications cables thought to be inactive. As a result, area businesses could not process credit card transactions, the local airport was disrupted, and medical clinics had to resort to cell phones to manage information about their patients.

Frontier later aggravated state officials by putting the blame for the outage on the construction crew.

“Frontier notified the contractor the cable was still in place and that its location was properly marked. It appears, the backhoe operator did not verify the depth of the cable, resulting in the cut,” said Frontier spokesman Javier Mendoza in an email at the time.

But a local TV station unearthed documents with an open records request that now point the finger of responsibility solely at Frontier.

Rhinelander, Wis.

On July 3, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation notified Frontier it was in violation of the Wisconsin Administrative Code because the company had promised to move the communications cables prior to the roundabout construction, but apparently never did.

“Unfortunately, Frontier did not relocate its facilities into this new conduit and never shared that fact with anyone. This caused the existing facility to be cut,” according to DoT utility engineer Chris Peplinski. The project manager, Dan Erva, wrote a frustrated internal email about the debacle that same day.

“At no point did anyone from Frontier or their contractors let us know that they did not relocate and [abandon] the lines as indicated in the work plan and contract special provisions,” Erva wrote.

Frontier could be held financially liable for the contractor delays.

This has not been the first frustrating experience customers and Wisconsin officials have had dealing with Frontier. In April, one outage left more than three dozen Rhinelander customers without service for weeks, and customers accused the company of being unable to give any straight answers about how and when service would be restored. Among those affected, one customer relying on medical monitoring equipment. She reportedly was given the runaround and even hung up on by Frontier customer service.

Frontier blamed April’s outage on a difficult-to-diagnose problem with a damaged high-capacity telecommunications cable. Frontier officials suggested construction crews were responsible for that damage as well.

“The assessment process for isolating damage to such cables generally takes significant time,” a Frontier spokesperson told WJFW-TV.

Some customers told the TV station they now understand what “significant time” means when dealing with Frontier.

“About 10 days [into the outage] a Frontier truck came around and I asked him, and he says ‘Oh about two days,'” said Sonny Paszak, who relies entirely on his landline. “Well, that was 10 days ago and I still haven’t got it.”

WJFW in Rhinelander, Wis. spoke earlier this year with frustrated Frontier landline customers that lost service for weeks. (2:45)

DirecTV Now customers will soon be introduced to AT&T TV Now as the streaming service rebrands with new apps and prepares for the launch of WarnerMedia’s HBO Max streaming service early next year.

The streaming service, originally branded as part of the DirecTV platform, has suffered major subscriber losses (168,000 in the last three months alone) after reducing the size of its TV packages and raising prices twice in the last year. To date, more than 26% of DirecTV Now’s subscriber base has defected to other streaming services, with no end to those losses in sight. AT&T’s DirecTV satellite and U-verse TV have also turned in stunning reductions in the number of subscribers, losing at least two million customers in the last year, with 778,000 departing during the second quarter of 2019.

AT&T has stopped offering deep promotional discounts to most customers threatening to cancel over rate hikes, and subscribers are making good on their threats to leave. The company is also embroiled in two major retransmission consent disputes that have left customers in several cities facing a blackout of as many as three network affiliated local TV stations. With higher prices for fewer channels, and plenty of alternatives, customers are turning to other providers.

AT&T’s 2015 purchase of DirecTV, in retrospect, appears to have been a major business mistake, according to some Wall Street analysts. Originally intended to help AT&T manage the spiraling costs of video for its U-verse TV service by winning more generous volume discounts from programmers, the DirecTV acquisition came just before the phenomenon of cord-cutting took off, leaving all of AT&T’s video services vulnerable to customer losses. DirecTV Now initially benefited from cord-cutters attracted to its generous package of channels at a low price, but an executive decision to reduce the channel lineup while raising prices drove off what executives characterized as ‘undesirable customers only looking for deals.’

AT&T has also been experimenting with a separate streaming service that will likely eventually replace the satellite-based DirecTV. Beta testers have been providing feedback to AT&T about a new set top streaming box intended to work with this service, now to be called AT&T TV. AT&T is also reducing the number of apps required to access its myriad of video services. AT&T TV and AT&T TV Now customers will download the same app, only the channel lineups will be different. The company is targeting AT&T TV Now on cord-cutters looking for a cheaper and smaller video package, while AT&T TV will include a range of packages likely identical or very similar to DirecTV’s current satellite lineup.

If AT&T TV is successful, AT&T can cut costs incurred installing and maintaining satellite dishes and also eventually decommission DirecTV’s satellite fleet. Rural satellite TV customers without access to broadband may be in a difficult position if that happens, and the country has still not resolved the rural broadband challenge.

Even with these changes, AT&T customers are faced with a large menu of potentially confusing video options. AT&T sells traditional live cable TV services through AT&T TV, AT&T TV Now, DirecTV, and U-verse. It also offers a stripped down WatchTV package offering 35 channels for $15 a month or less. Premium customers still trying to tell the difference between HBO Go and HBO Now will soon also contend with HBO Max. Cinemax has its own similar offerings for cable TV customers and direct to consumer subscribers.

Charter Communications is not obligated to upgrade New York internet customers to a minimum internet speed of 300 Mbps, according to a letter of clarification directed to Stop the Cap! and received today from the New York State Department of Public Service.

DPS:

In the Commission’s 2016 order, Charter was required to offer broadband internet service with speeds up to 100 Mbps to all customers served by its New York networks (including its Columbia County systems) by the end of 2018; and offer broadband internet service with speeds up to 300 Mbps to all customers served by its New York networks by the end of 2019. At the time of the Commission’s decision, although Time Warner operated some systems in New York that were already capable of offering customer speeds up to 300 Mbps, the majority of Time Warner customers in Upstate New York were limited to broadband speeds of 50 Mbps.

Charter was therefore required to upgrade its network to be able to offer broadband service at speeds up to 300 Mbps by the end of 2019 but was not required to increase its minimum service offering to 300 Mbps. Charter has reported that it has complied with this condition ahead of schedule and Department of Public Service Staff has begun the process of independently field-testing Charter’s network to verify compliance with the condition.

Stop the Cap! raised this issue with the Commission as part of the recent settlement agreement between New York State and Charter Communications, and sought an official clarification. Approximately 40% of Charter’s national footprint now receives 200 Mbps download speeds while most New Yorkers receive just 100 Mbps for the same price, putting the state at a disadvantage.

Dampier

“The Commission’s language in the original merger agreement was unclear, because Time Warner Cable had already embarked on a statewide upgrade to its so-called ‘Maxx’ service tiers, which included free speed increases, negating most of the benefits of the state’s condition requiring Charter to upgrade broadband speeds as part of its terms to approve the merger,” said Phillip Dampier, founder and president of Stop the Cap! “In fact, this merger made things worse for New Yorkers because customers would have been getting Time Warner Cable Maxx speeds as much as a year earlier than what Spectrum finally delivered across the state, and customers would have been offered a number of options for less costly internet service that Spectrum dropped.”

Shortly after the merger was approved, Charter placed a moratorium on Time Warner Cable Maxx upgrades and spent months attempting to knit Charter’s existing systems with the much larger Time Warner Cable.

Time Warner Cable Maxx speeds were well on the way throughout Upstate New York before Charter acquired the company and issued an upgrade moratorium.

“Consumers already know from their cable bills that this merger was just another bad deal for New York, and now nearly half of Spectrum’s national service area gets twice the speed Upstate New York gets for the same price, and there is no pressure on the company to deliver any additional upgrades,” Dampier added.

Stop the Cap! also urged the Commission to do all it could to make life easier for customers in the New York City area, where Charter has been trying to rid itself of union technicians that have been on strike for over two years.

“For all the talk by state officials, including the governor, it appears there is no end in sight for this strike and customers are caught in the middle,” Dampier said. “We hear frequently from New York City consumers about substandard repair work and unacceptable installations that suggest the company is not using the best available workforce to take care of customer needs. Charter is making loads of money in profits and can afford to offer a square deal to workers to end this strike and get these technicians back to work.”