Wednesday, July 29, 2026
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Telecom Tweets of the Week: Takedowns of AT&T’s fake 5G

by Kelly Hill
written by Kelly Hill Share
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Twitter might be the one platform that moves as fast as the telecom industry. RCR Wireless News surveys the Twitterverse and snags the telecom tweets of the week. 

If there’s one thing the telecom industry loves, it’s marketing hype. If there’s one thing Twitter loves, it’s punching holes in marketing hype. So it was no surprise this week that AT&T’s “5G Evolution” drew some boos for being … not actually 5G. Predictable eye-rolls came from T-Mobile US and Sprint, but they weren’t the only ones calling AT&T out for being the first to attempt to market pre-5G technology as 5G.

Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure and T-Mobile US CTO Neville Ray had some fun with this.

Meanwhile, T-Mo CEO John Legere was busy trolling AT&T over postpaid customer losses by asking his followers to guess the number of #ATTLostMarbles, which corresponded to postpaid phone-line losses over the past 10 quarters.

Guesses from Twitter users ranged from less than half a million to 15 million, but ultimately …

Beyond debating real vs. fake 5G, Twitter would really, really like to know what’s going on with the new iPhone 8. Wireless charging? Vertical dual cameras?

https://twitter.com/iPhone8News/status/857960628366880768

As usual, we wait with bated breath for the release and the inevitable Galaxy S8 versus iPhone 8 battle. But the loss of device subsidies appears to be having a substantial impact on device upgrade cycles — in its results this week, AT&T said that it saw its lowest-ever rate of device upgrades and actually sold a million devices less than it did at the same time last year. Customers are hanging onto their devices longer, although early adopters and Apple fans will surely provide some momentum for the new iPhone.

Hey, you can follow me on Twitter, too! @khillrcr

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Kelly Hill reports on network test and measurement, AI infrastructure and regulatory issues, including spectrum, for RCR Wireless News. She began covering the wireless industry in 2005, focusing on carriers and MVNOs, then took a few years’ hiatus and returned to RCR Wireless News to write about heterogeneous networks (remember those?) and network infrastructure. Kelly is an Ohio native with a masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she focused on science writing and multimedia. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian and The Canton Repository. She lives in northern Virginia, not far from Data Center Alley.

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