Microsoft Phone Link, previously known as Microsoft Your Phone, lets you control your Android phone from your computer. Now, the company appears to be working on letting you use your Android phone as a webcam with Windows computers, similar to how you can use your iPhone as a webcam on Mac. Android Authority reports: Microsoft's Link to Windows v1.23102.190.0 for Android app includes code that suggests that the company is working on letting your Android phone provide a video stream to your Windows PC. This would effectively allow it to be used as a webcam. [...] These strings indicate that once Microsoft's Phone Link app is working on both connected devices, users would be able to start a camera stream that lets their phone's camera be available to their Windows PC. The strings do not explicitly mention "webcam," but other clues indicate that the feature would be related to video calls in some ways.

Phone Link can already access your camera and video conferencing apps, but this is just mirroring apps running on your phone. What you see on your phone screen is what you see on the computer. If you record a video, it gets saved to your phone as typical video recordings do. With the new functionality spotted above, Phone Link could potentially compete against Apple's Continuity Camera features. With Continuity Camera, users can mount their iPhone to their Mac and then use the iPhone's camera and microphone for FaceTime or other camera apps.

On December 14, 2023, three Grand Theft Auto games will officially become available for Netflix members on the App Store, Google Play, and in the Netflix mobile app. IGN reports: Those who can't wait to jump into Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - The Definitive Edition, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The Definitive Edition can pre-register today to get ready for December 14 and play as soon as they are available. The addition of these three classic Grand Theft Auto games will bring Netflix's gaming library to over 80 titles, and all of these games are available to all Netflix subscribers without any ads, in-app purchases, or extra fees.

OpenAI's "ChatGPT with voice" feature announced in September is now rolling out to all free users on mobile. Engadget reports: When the company first introduced voice chats, it admitted that the capability to create "realistic synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech" presents new risks. It could, for instance, allow bad actors to impersonate public figures or anybody they want. As a result, it decided that ChatGPT's voice feature will focus on conversations. It's powered by a text-to-speech model that can generate "human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech." OpenAI worked with voice actors to create the capability and offers five different voices to choose from.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Miscreants are actively exploiting two new zero-day vulnerabilities to wrangle routers and video recorders into a hostile botnet used in distributed denial-of-service attacks, researchers from networking firm Akamai said Thursday. Both of the vulnerabilities, which were previously unknown to their manufacturers and to the security research community at large, allow for the remote execution of malicious code when the affected devices use default administrative credentials, according to an Akamai post. Unknown attackers have been exploiting the zero-days to compromise the devices so they can be infected with Mirai, a potent piece of open source software that makes routers, cameras, and other types of Internet of Things devices part of a botnet that's capable of waging DDoSes of previously unimaginable sizes.

Akamai researchers said one of the zero-days under attack resides in one or more models of network video recorders. The other zero-day resides in an "outlet-based wireless LAN router built for hotels and residential applications." The router is sold by a Japan-based manufacturer, which "produces multiple switches and routers." The router feature being exploited is "a very common one," and the researchers can't rule out the possibility it's being exploited in multiple router models sold by the manufacturer. Akamai said it has reported the vulnerabilities to both manufacturers, and that one of them has provided assurances security patches will be released next month. Akamai said it wasn't identifying the specific devices or the manufacturers until fixes are in place to prevent the zero-days from being more widely exploited.

The Akamai post provides a host of file hashes and IP and domain addresses being used in the attacks. Owners of network video cameras and routers can use this information to see if devices on their networks have been targeted. [...] In an email, Akamai researcher Larry Cashdollar wrote: "The devices don't typically allow code execution through the management interface. This is why getting RCE through command injection is needed. Because the attacker needs to authenticate first they have to know some login credentials that will work. If the devices are using easy guessable logins like admin:password or admin:password1 those could be at risk too if someone expands the list of credentials to try." He said that both manufacturers have been notified, but only one of them has so far committed to releasing a patch, which is expected next month. The status of a fix from the second manufacturer is currently unknown. Cashdollar said an incomplete Internet scan showed there are at least 7,000 vulnerable devices. The actual number of affected devices may be higher.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Moving to clamp down on the growing scourge of SIM-swapping and port-out fraud, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has unveiled new rules mandating telcos to give consumers greater control of their mobile phone accounts. Under the new rules, wireless carriers are required to notify customers of any SIM transfer requests, a measure designed to thwart fraudulent attempts by cybercriminals. The FCC has also revised its customer proprietary network information and local number portability rules, making it more challenging for scammers to access sensitive subscriber information.

The new protective measures (PDF) are meant to address SIM-swapping and port-out attacks widely documented in cybercriminal attacks against businesses and consumers. The attack technique is used to hijack mobile accounts, change and steal passwords, bypass MFA roadblocks and raid bank accounts. Studies have found that major mobile carriers in the US are vulnerable to SIM-swapping with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) receiving thousands of consumer complaints every year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If you've only ever used standard Qi chargers with devices that don't have their own schemes, the Wireless Power Consortium's announcement today of the first Qi 2.0 devices being ready to launch before the holidays, with more than 100 in the queue behind them, is great. Qi2 sports a "Magnetic Power Profile" (MPP), created with help by Apple's MagSafe team, to help align devices and chargers' coils for faster, more efficient charging. Qi2-certified devices set onto Qi2 chargers can achieve 15 W charging, up from 7.5 W in the standard Qi scheme.

That brings Qi2 devices up to the same speed as iPhones on MagSafe chargers, and it clears up some consumer confusion about how fast a device might charge on Qi, MagSafe, or proprietary chargers. Should a phone and charger be Qi2 certified, you can now expect about 15 W out of it, regardless of whatever Google, Apple, or third party is behind them. Android and iPhone users alike are no longer beholden to their primary hardware vendor if they want 15 W of wireless juice. This announcement does not, however, bring the Qi2 standard close to the far-out speeds that proprietary setups now offer. [...]

A number of accessory makers, including stalwarts Anker and Belkin, had already lined up their Qi2-compatible offerings, waiting for the certification to drop. It will be interesting to see if Qi2 brings a wave of magnet mania to Android phones, akin to the MagSafe-induced blitz a few years back. Magnetic charging packs, wallets, wireless charging for a non-wireless-charging phone -- there's a lot to work with, especially at now somewhat more respectable charging speeds. Regarding speed, the WPC told Android Authority back in January that the Qi2 standards group intends to standardize charging speeds above 15 W by mid-2024. If you need a fast charge, plugging in the right cable to a well-powered source is still the most certain route. But with magnetic alignment and a good deal more universal compatibility, Qi2 drags the broader wireless charging market forward.

MacRumors writes that the second beta of iOS 17.2 "adds a new feature that allows an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max to record Spatial Video" — that is, in the immersive 3D format for the yet-to-be-released Apple Vision Pro (where it can be viewed in the "Photos" app): Spatial Video recording can be enabled by going to the Settings app, tapping into the Camera section, selecting Formats, and toggling on "Spatial Video for Apple Vision Pro..." Spatial Videos taken with an iPhone 15 Pro can be viewed on the iPhone as well, but the video appears to be a normal video and not a Spatial Video.
Tech blogger John Gruber got to test the technology, watching the videos on a (still yet-to-be-released) Vision Pro headset. "I'm blown away once again," he wrote, calling the experience "astonishing."

"Before my demo, I provided Apple with my eyeglasses prescription, and the Vision Pro headset I used had appropriate corrective lenses in place. As with my demo back in June, everything I saw through the headset looked incredibly sharp..." The Vision Pro experience is highly dependent upon foveated rendering, which Wikipedia succinctly describes as "a rendering technique which uses an eye tracker integrated with a virtual reality headset to reduce the rendering workload by greatly reducing the image quality in the peripheral vision (outside of the zone gazed by the fovea)..." It's just incredible, though, how detailed and high resolution the overall effect is...

Plain old still photos look amazing. You can resize the virtual window in which you're viewing photos to as large as you can practically desire. It's not merely like having a 20-foot display — a size far more akin to that of a movie theater screen than a television. It's like having a 20-foot display with retina quality resolution, and the best brightness and clarity of any display you've ever used... And then there are panoramic photos... Panoramic photos viewed using Vision Pro are breathtaking. There is no optical distortion at all, no fish-eye look. It just looks like you're standing at the place where the panoramic photo was taken — and the wider the panoramic view at capture, the more compelling the playback experience is. It's incredible...

As a basic rule, going forward, I plan to capture spatial videos of people, especially my family and dearest friends, and panoramic photos of places I visit. It's like teleportation... When you watch regular (non-spatial) videos using Vision Pro, or view regular still photography, the image appears in a crisply defined window in front of you. Spatial videos don't appear like that at all. I can't describe it any better today than I did in June: it's like watching — and listening to — a dream, through a hazy-bordered portal opened into another world...

Nothing you've ever viewed on a screen, however, can prepare you for the experience of watching these spatial videos, especially the ones you will have shot yourself, of your own family and friends. They truly are more like memories than videos... [T]he ones I shot myself were more compelling, and took my breath away... Prepare to be moved, emotionally, when you experience this.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy reports via The Verge: The Chamberlain Group -- owners of the MyQ smart garage door controller tech -- has announced it's shut off all "unauthorized access" to its APIs. The move breaks the smart home integrations of thousands of users who relied on platforms such as Homebridge and Home Assistant to do things like shut the garage door when they lock their front door or flash a light if they leave their door open for 10 minutes, or whatever other control or automation they wanted to do with the device they bought and paid for.

The move comes a year after Chamberlain discontinued its official Apple HomeKit integration and a few months after it finally killed support for Google Assistant. It's sadly another example of how the company continues to be hostile to the interoperable smart home. Last week, in a blog post, Dan Phillips, chief technology officer of Chamberlain, explained the reasons behind its latest move: "Chamberlain Group recently made the decision to prevent unauthorized usage of our myQ ecosystem through third-party apps. This decision was made so that we can continue to provide the best possible experience for our 10 million+ users, as well as our authorized partners who put their trust in us. We understand that this impacts a small percentage of users, but ultimately this will improve the performance and reliability of myQ, benefiting all of our users." When asked what customers that relied on these now-defunct integrations do, a spokesperson for the company said: "We have a number of authorized partners that we will be happy for people to use," pointing to its partner webpage.

"However, those partners are primarily smart security companies with monthly subscriptions (such as Alarm.com and Vivint) and car manufacturers," notes The Verge. Some alternatives to a MyQ smart garage controller are mentioned in the report, such as Tailwind's $90 iQ3 Pro smart garage controller, Meross' $60 Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener, iSmartgate's $40 iSmartgate Mini, and Ratgdo's $30 Wi-Fi control board.

The moral for smart home users, as summed up by Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen, is: "Buy products that work locally and won't stop functioning when management wants an additional revenue stream."

Long-time Slashdot reader RobHart writes: During the night, the entire Optus mobile network went down and remains down. This is the second largest mobile network in Australia and it is the first time a network has gone down nationwide. It is affecting the trains in Melbourne and any business across Australia that uses the Optus service for phones or data. "Optus is aware of an issue that may be impacting some of our mobile and internet customers," the company wrote in a statement. "We are currently working to identify the cause and apologize for any inconvenience. In case of an emergency customers can still call triple zero."

Authorities are checking whether the outage is the result of a cyberattack, although they don't believe it is.

Emma Roth reports via The Verge: Mint, the budgeting app owned by Intuit, is shutting down. Intuit announced on Tuesday that Mint will get absorbed into Intuit's other service, Credit Karma, when it officially goes away on January 1st, 2024 (via Bloomberg). But it's still not clear whether Credit Karma will get the budgeting features that Mint is known for. [...] Mint had 3.6 million monthly active users as of 2021, Bloomberg reports, but the app's development has slowed down considerably in recent years, with the last major updates being new categorization features and the ability to connect the Apple Card to Mint. [...]

Intuit first acquired Mint in 2009, an app that has offered a free way for users to track their budgets, manage expenses, negotiate bills, and keep tabs on subscriptions. Now, Intuit is inviting users to Credit Karma, a service that the company acquired in 2020. While Credit Karma offers similar features, like the ability to view transactions, track spending, aggregate financial accounts, and credit monitoring, it still doesn't come with the same budget tracking tool that many people specifically use Mint for, and it's not clear whether Credit Karma will ever adopt it. On a support page on Credit Karma's website, Intuit says "the new experience in Credit Karma does not offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets," adding that the app instead "offers a simplified way for you to build awareness of your spending, and track your savings."

According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will start introductory production on the standard iPhone 17 in India, marking the first time the company begins development of a new iPhone outside of China. MacRumors reports: Apple will opt to assemble the standard iPhone 17 in India because it has a "lower difficulty" design that will minimize risk. Apple has been manufacturing older iPhones and other devices in India since for several years now in an effort to move more of its manufacturing out of China. Apple has slowly started giving factories in India more responsibility, and began iPhone 14 production in the country just a few weeks after the device launched in September 2022. iPhone 15 production started even earlier, with factories in the country assembling the base iPhone 15 model prior to launch, but assembly still started in China first.

As of now, Kuo believes that 12 to 14 percent of global iPhone shipments are made in India, with that proportion to increase to 20 to 25 percent by 2024. In addition to allowing Apple to move manufacturing away from China, increasing production in India provides Apple with an opportunity to strengthen its relationship with the Indian government. India is a key market for Apple due to growing demand for Apple products in the country.

Apple on Wednesday lost a bid to block a mass London lawsuit worth up to $2 billion which accuses the tech giant of hiding defective batteries in millions of iPhones. From a report: The lawsuit was brought by British consumer champion Justin Gutmann on behalf of around 24 million iPhone users in the United Kingdom. Gutmann is seeking damages from Apple on their behalf of up to 1.6 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) plus interest, with the claim's midpoint range being 853 million pounds. His lawyers argued Apple concealed issues with batteries in certain phone models by "throttling" them with software updates and installed a power management tool which limited performance.

Apple, however, said the lawsuit was "baseless" and strongly denied batteries in iPhones were defective, apart from in a small number of iPhone 6s models for which it offered free battery replacements. The company sought to get the case thrown out of court, but the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) said Gutmann's case can proceed in a written ruling on Wednesday.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Users have been reporting that their iPhone 15's NFC chips were failing after using BMW's in-car wireless charging, but until now, Apple hasn't addressed the complaints. That seems to have changed as MacRumors reported this week that an Apple internal memo to third-party repair providers says a software update later this year should prevent a "small number" of in-car wireless chargers from "temporarily" disabling iPhone 15 NFC chips.

Apple reportedly says that until the fix comes out, anyone who experiences this should not use the wireless charger in their car. Users have been complaining about BMW wireless chargers breaking Apple Pay and the BMW digital key feature in posts on Reddit, Apple's Support community, and MacRumors' own forums.

The SF Standard reports that a San Francisco man whose car was stolen in the middle of the night "managed to track down the vehicle using his car insurance app and retrieve the stolen vehicle the following morning within half an hour of noticing it was gone." Harris realized he could track his phone using his app from MetroMile, a San Francisco-based digital pay-per-mile car insurance company that tracks a car's location and charges a rate based on how much it's driven. "I opened the app and found it was in Mission Bay," he said, adding that the person who stole it drove it all night before parking. "I rode my bike down there and picked it up...."

Before picking up his car, Harris didn't consult with the San Francisco Police Department and said officers were confused about why he wanted to report a stolen car that was already back in his possession. He said his driver's side window had been smashed, but there wasn't any other damage, just a mess of marijuana paraphernalia and blunt wraps inside... "If a vehicle owner locates their stolen vehicle prior to the police locating it, we highly recommend that they alert us to the vehicle's location and do not move the car prior to reporting it recovered," Sgt. Kathryn Winters wrote in an email. "Additionally, if they locate the vehicle occupied, they should not approach the vehicle or suspects and should call law enforcement immediately."

There were 274 motor vehicle theft reports in the Western Addition neighborhood, which includes Alamo Square, in the 12 months leading up to Oct. 21 compared with 219 during the same period the previous year, according to police data. Citywide, the problem has also gotten worse in recent years. The number of car thefts has risen from 60 incidents per 10,000 residents in 2019 to 101 incidents this year.

Bloomberg thinks they've identified the source of the advanced chips in Huawei's newest smartphone, citing to "people familiar with the matter". In a suggestion that export restrictions on Europe's most valuable tech company may have come too late to stem China's advances in chipmaking, ASML's so-called immersion deep ultraviolet machines were used in combination with tools from other companies to make the Huawei Technologies Co. chip, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing information that's not public. ASML declined to comment.

There is no suggestion that their sales violated export restrictions... ASML has never been able to sell its EUV machines to China because of export restrictions. But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts. The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs.

Chinese companies have been legally stockpiling DUV gear for years — especially after the U.S. introduced its initial export controls last year before getting Japan and the Netherlands on board... According to an investor presentation published by the company last week, ASML experienced a jump in business from China this year as chipmakers there boosted orders ahead of the export controls taking full effect in 2024. China accounted for 46% of ASML's sales in the third quarter, compared with 24% in the previous quarter and 8% in the three months ending in March.
Another article from Bloomberg includes this prediction: The U.S. won't be able to stop Huawei and SMIC from making progress in chip technology, Burn J. Lin, a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. vice president, told Bloomberg News. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp should be able to advance to the next generation at 5 nanometers with machines from ASML Holding NV that it already operates, said Lin, who at TSMC championed the lithography technology that transformed chipmaking.
The end result is that Huawei's profit "more than doubled during the quarter it revealed its biggest achievement in chip technology," the article reports, "adding to signs the Chinese tech leader is steadying a business rocked by US sanctions." The Shenzhen company reported a 118% surge in net profit to 26.4 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) in the September quarter, and a slight rise in sales to 145.7 billion yuan, according to Bloomberg News calculations from nine-month results released Friday. Those numbers included initial sales of the vastly popular Mate 60 Pro, which began shipping in late August... The gadget sold out almost instantly, spurring expectations it could rejuvenate Huawei's fortunes and potentially cut into Apple Inc.'s lead in China, given signs of a disappointing debut for the iPhone 15...

A resurgent Huawei would pose problems not just for Apple but also local brands from Xiaomi Corp. to Oppo and Vivo, all of which are fighting for sales in a shrinking market.

Dan Goodin reports via Ars Technica: Three years ago, Apple introduced a privacy-enhancing feature that hid the Wi-Fi address of iPhones and iPads when they joined a network. On Wednesday, the world learned that the feature has never worked as advertised. Despite promises that this never-changing address would be hidden and replaced with a private one that was unique to each SSID, Apple devices have continued to display the real one, which in turn got broadcast to every other connected device on the network. [...]

In 2020, Apple released iOS 14 with a feature that, by default, hid Wi-Fi MACs when devices connected to a network. Instead, the device displayed what Apple called a "private Wi-Fi address" that was different for each SSID. Over time, Apple has enhanced the feature, for instance, by allowing users to assign a new private Wi-Fi address for a given SSID. On Wednesday, Apple released iOS 17.1. Among the various fixes was a patch for a vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-42846, which prevented the privacy feature from working. Tommy Mysk, one of the two security researchers Apple credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability (Talal Haj Bakry was the other), told Ars that he tested all recent iOS releases and found the flaw dates back to version 14, released in September 2020. "From the get-go, this feature was useless because of this bug," he said. "We couldn't stop the devices from sending these discovery requests, even with a VPN. Even in the Lockdown Mode."

When an iPhone or any other device joins a network, it triggers a multicast message that is sent to all other devices on the network. By necessity, this message must include a MAC. Beginning with iOS 14, this value was, by default, different for each SSID. To the casual observer, the feature appeared to work as advertised. The "source" listed in the request was the private Wi-Fi address. Digging in a little further, however, it became clear that the real, permanent MAC was still broadcast to all other connected devices, just in a different field of the request. Mysk published a short video showing a Mac using the Wireshark packet sniffer to monitor traffic on the local network the Mac is connected to. When an iPhone running iOS prior to version 17.1 joins, it shares its real Wi-Fi MAC on port 5353/UDP.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: T-Mobile caused a bit of a stir earlier this month when a leak revealed it planned to move people from older, cheaper plans to pricier ones starting with their November bill cycle. On Wednesday, the carrier officially walked back the changes with CEO Mike Sievert confirming that they would not happen. "We tend to do tests and pilots of things quite a bit to try to figure out what's the right answer," Sievert said on a company earnings call, in response to a question about industry pricing and how it could raise its average revenues per user, a key industry metric. "In this case, we had a test sell to try to understand customer interest in, and acceptance of, migrating off old legacy rate plans to something that's higher value, for them and for us."

Sievert noted that the company was doing training around this test and said it wasn't planned to be a "broad, national thing." In its statement confirming the leak, the company told CNET earlier this month that the notices it was sending out was going to "a small number" of its users, but the carrier never clarified what a "small number" actually meant and didn't respond to that question when asked. At the time, the carrier said that the switch would generally see customers pay "an increase of approximately $10 per line" per month.

With the "plenty of feedback" the company received following the leak, Sievert said that T-Mobile has learned that this "particular test sell isn't something that our customers are going to love." He mentioned that no migrations of plans have actually rolled out. As for what will happen going forward, the carrier will continue to do tests and pilots for different changes, Mike Katz, T-Mobile's president of marketing, strategy and products, said on the call.

At Lenovo Tech World '23 in Austin, Texas, yesterday, Motorola demoed a bendable, bracelet-like smartphone that can wrap around your wrist. Ars Technica reports: On stage at the event, Lexi Valasek, 312 Labs innovation strategy and product research Lead for Motorola Mobility, proudly held a prototype. The smartphone looked ordinary to start: a slab of OLED with a chassis that's a bold orange on the backside. But Valasek quickly bent the phone into an arch shape, where it stood on her hand before she wrapped it around her wrist like a cuff. The phone seemed to adapt to its new positioning rapidly, quickly showing a large clock, making the device feel like a smartwatch.

Interestingly, Valasek placed the phone around a silver band already wrapped around her wrist. Lenovo hasn't confirmed why, but The Verge suspects this could be critical to the phone being wearable by featuring a magnet for a secure hold. Videos Motorola shared with its press release today also show the user wearing some sort of metal-looking band on their wrist that the smartphone wraps around. And images of the device show a metal-looking strip that might be for connecting to the additional band in question.

According to Motorola's press release, the concept device has "FHD+" resolution across the display, which has a 6.9-inch diagonal size when flat. Also when flat, the device runs the "full Android experience, just like any smartphone," according to Motorola. The concept shown this week differs slightly from the concept demoed at Lenovo Tech World '16 in that it can be arched or bent into an upright position. [...] But beyond that, Motorola doesn't seem any closer to releasing the design.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is the third chief executive of the software giant to admit the company has made some serious mobile mistakes. From a report: Satya Nadella took over from former CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014 and, just over a year later, wrote off $7.6 billion related to Microsoft's acquisition of the Nokia phone business. In an interview with Business Insider, Nadella admitted that Microsoft's "exit" from the mobile phone business could have been handled better. Asked about a strategic mistake or wrong decision that he might regret, Nadella responds: "The decision I think a lot of people talk about -- and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO -- was our exit of what I'll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones."

Paul Kunert reports via The Register: A gaggle of MPs are calling for government to put together a timetable for the replacement of millions upon millions of smart meters that will be defunct when 2G and 3G mobile networks are switched off. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) comprised of cross-party MPs penned a report to update the rollout of the smart meters, with multiple deadlines missed along the way of the $17 billion billion project. The report echoes an earlier one by the National Audit Office (NAO), which found that as of March 2023, energy companies had rolled out the devices to just 57 percent (roughly 32.4 million out of a potential install base of 57.1 million) homes and businesses. Of these devices, around 9 percent were not functioning properly.

The PAC says in its latest report: "A fifth more (an estimated seven million) will lose functionality when the 2G and 3G mobile communications networks are closed if they do not receive costly hardware upgrades (the cost of which will ultimately be borne by the billpayers)." UK comms regulator Ofcom announced last month that UK mobile operators do not intend to provide 2G and 3G mobile networks past 2033. "The switch-off will affect customers using older mobile devices and services." The PAC wants to know what the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), as well as energy regulator Ofgem, are doing to plan the smooth running of a replacement scheme.

It asks both to set out "what they will do to ensure suppliers assign more importance than at present to replacing those smart meters not functioning properly" and "a timetable for replacing the communication hub element of smart meters that will lose functionality when the 2G and 3G mobile networks are switched off." [...] The PAC also want DESNZ and Ofgem to outline "measures to ensure that suppliers use future-proofed technology -- for example, by excluding 2G or 3G connectivity -- in all new smart meter installations." And it wants the department and the energy watchdog to detail program costs to Parliament on an annual basis to inform decisions about the rollout.