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More than 70,000 AT&T cellular customers reported being unable to connect to service early Thursday morning. While early reports suggested multiple carriers, including Verizon and T-Mobile, seemed to be affected, that appears to be a knock-on effect of a major network going down.

Service monitoring site Downdetector was showing multiple post-paid and pre-paid carriers as having increased outage reports starting at around 4 am Eastern time. An Ars editor in Texas has seen "SOS" on their iPhone since 4:30 am Eastern time and has been unable to make Wi-Fi calls.

AT&T acknowledged the outage to CNBC , telling the network that it was "working urgently to restore service" to customers and that it recommended Wi-Fi calling until service could be restored. Verizon and T-Mobile told CNBC that they suspected their customers were reporting outages when they could not reach customers on AT&T or resellers that use AT&T networks.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expanding its investigation into potential risks posed by lead-covered cables installed nationwide by major telecommunications companies , The Wall Street Journal revealed in an exclusive report Thursday.

After finding "more than 100 readings with elevated lead near cables," the EPA sent letters to AT&T and Verizon in December, requesting a meeting later this month, the Journal revealed. On the agenda, the EPA expects the companies to share internal data on their own testing of the cables, as well as details from any "technical reports related to the companies’ testing and sampling," the WSJ reported.

The EPA's investigation was prompted by a WSJ report published last July, alleging that AT&T, Verizon, and other companies were aware that thousands of miles of cables could be contaminating soils throughout the US, "where Americans live, work and play," but did nothing to intervene despite the many public health risks associated with lead exposure.

Enlarge / A Verizon logo at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2019 on February 26, 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Getty Images | David Ramos )

Verizon Wireless gave a female victim's address and phone logs to an alleged stalker who pretended to be a police officer, according to an affidavit filed by an FBI special agent. The man, Robert Michael Glauner, was later arrested near the victim's home and found to be carrying a knife at the time, according to the affidavit submitted in court yesterday.

Glauner allegedly traveled from New Mexico to Raleigh, North Carolina, after finding out where she lived and, before arriving, sent a threatening message that said, "if I can't have you no one can." He also allegedly threatened to send nude photos of the victim to her family members.

Glauner was charged yesterday with stalking and fraud "in connection with obtaining confidential phone records" in US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. We aren't posting or linking directly to the court record because it seems to contain the victim's home address. The incident was previously reported by 404 Media .

Enlarge / Michael Keaton in The Flash , which is streaming on Max. (credit: YouTube/Warner Bros.)

Streaming services are on thin ice with many customers. With price hikes becoming a norm for streaming services, subscribers are reconsidering the value of streaming apps and whether subscriptions are worth the cost. In a bid to mollify disgruntled customers and make their packages seem more economical and simple, streaming services are bundling up.

Verizon announced today that its myPlan wireless phone customers will be able to get Netflix and Max, both with ads, for $10 per month total per phone line. Netflix with ads is usually $6.99 per month, while Max's ad tier is $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. That means Verizon customers can save up to $6.98 per month with the new bundle, which Verizon will begin offering on December 7.

The new offer joins two other deals that Verizon already offers that bundle its wireless service with TV streaming. One lets customers add ad-free Disney+ and Hulu and ESPN with ads for $10 per month per line. Another lets customers add Apple One , which includes Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and iCloud+, for $10 per month per line.

Enlarge / "You'll never be bored again" is one of the more fitting slogans attached to Tumblr. (credit: Getty Images)

It's not quite the end of Tumblr, but when management is supposedly sending memos with the Lord Tennyson quote about having "loved and lost," it doesn't look like there's much of a future.

Internet statesman and Waxy.org proprietor Andy Baio posted what is "apparently an internal Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr" to Threads. The memo, written to employees at WordPress.com parent company Automattic, which bought Tumblr from Verizon's media arm in 2019 , is titled or subtitled "You win or you learn." The posted memo states that a majority of the 139 employees working on product and marketing at Tumblr (in a team apparently named "Bumblr" ) will "switch to other divisions." Those working in "Happiness" (Automattic's customer support and service division) and "T&S" (trust and safety) would remain.

"We are at the point where after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr since the acquisition in 2019, we have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have revenue and usage above its previous peaks," the posted memo reads. After quotes and anecdotes about love, loss, mountain climbing, and learning on the journey, the memo notes that nobody will be let go and that team members can make a ranked list of their top three preferred assignments elsewhere inside Automattic .

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Internet service providers and their lobby groups are fighting a US plan to prohibit discrimination in access to broadband services. In particular, ISPs want the Federal Communications Commission to drop the plan's proposal to require that prices charged to consumers be non-discriminatory.

In 2021, Congress required the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules "preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin" within two years. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last month released her draft plan to comply with the congressional mandate and scheduled a November 15 commission vote on adopting final rules.

The plan is likely to pass in a party-line vote as Rosenworcel has a 3-2 Democratic majority, but aspects of the draft could be changed before the vote. Next week's meeting could be a contentious one, judging by a statement issued Monday by Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr.

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Since Google has a right to protect its trade secrets during the US Department of Justice's trial digging into how the tech giant allegedly monopolized Internet searches, some of the trial's most revealing moments will come during sealed testimony closed to the public.

On Monday, that process of keeping Google's secrets began with the court sealing off two hours of testimony from Verizon executive Brian Higgins, Reuters reported . Higgins had been called in to discuss how Verizon "always" pre-installed Google's Chrome browser with Google search on its mobile phones. The public was able to hear 30 minutes of testimony before they were removed from the court.

But it looks like the DOJ doesn’t plan to sit back and let Google seal off all the testimony it wants. Today, the DOJ objected when the court removed the public during discussions of Google's online advertising pricing, Reuters reported, pushing back against what Google considers privileged information.

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T-Mobile yesterday announced a phone plan called "Go5G Next" that costs $100 a month for a single line, more expensive than the highest-tier wireless plans offered by AT&T and Verizon.

In a notable development for a carrier that spent years blasting its rivals' prices, T-Mobile issued a press release with a chart showing that its new plan costs more than the top-tier unlimited plans sold by AT&T and Verizon. AT&T's Unlimited Premium is $85 for a single line while Verizon's Unlimited Plus is $80 unless you add optional perks like the Disney Bundle.

T-Mobile's Go5G Next will be available on August 24 and come with unlimited phone data, 50GB of high-speed mobile hotspot data, and the ability to upgrade to a new phone once a year. It will also come with Apple TV+ and a Netflix subscription. T-Mobile points out that the similar AT&T and Verizon plans don't have streaming services included.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Eugene Mymrin)

AT&T's stock price hit a 29-year low on Friday and continued to sink today as investors fled telecom stocks on reports that cleanups of lead-covered telephone cables could cost the industry tens of billions of dollars.

AT&T stock dropped 4.1 percent to $14.50 on Friday, reportedly the lowest close since 1994. AT&T's stock price fell another 6.7 percent to $13.53 when the market closed today.

Frontier Communications stock dropped 11.9 percent on Friday and was down 15.8 percent today. Verizon stock fell 1.8 percent on Friday and was down 7.5 percent today. Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) fell 10.2 percent Friday and was down 8.6 percent today.