Enlarge / Huawei's logo at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona in November 2019. (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images)

The global chip and smartphone industries are bracing for severe disruption after the US launched tougher sanctions against Huawei that some said could mean “death” for the company.

Washington said on Monday that no company worldwide would be allowed to sell semiconductors made using US software or equipment without a license if Huawei was involved at any stage of the transaction.

The move closed a loophole in a May version of the rule that allowed Huawei to buy off-the-shelf chips if they were not custom-made to its designs.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Viktoryia Vinnikava | EyeEm)

The Federal Communications Commission has defeated dozens of cities in court, with judges ruling that the FCC can preempt local fees and regulations imposed on wireless carriers deploying 5G networks. The ruling is good news for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

The FCC voted to preempt cities and towns in September 2018 , saying the move would prevent local governments from charging wireless carriers about $2 billion worth of fees over five years related to deployment of wireless equipment such as small cells. That's less than 1 percent of the estimated $275 billion that the FCC said carriers would have to spend to deploy 5G small cells throughout the United States.

Cities promptly sued the FCC , but a ruling issued yesterday by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit went mostly in the FCC's favor. It wasn't a complete victory for the FCC, though, as judges overturned a portion of the FCC ruling that limited the kinds of aesthetic requirements cities and towns can impose on carrier deployments.

Enlarge / Screenshot from an AT&T commercial. (credit: AT&T )

AT&T has reluctantly agreed to stop using the phrase "5G Evolution" to describe its 4G service in advertising but will apparently continue to use the misleading "5GE" icon as the network indicator on phone screens even when there's no 5G service.

AT&T's so-called 5G Evolution service is in reality just 4G with advanced LTE features like 256 QAM, 4x4 MIMO, and three-way carrier aggregation. AT&T has faced widespread ridicule since putting the 5GE network icon on 4G phones more than a year ago , but the icons have likely convinced many AT&T customers that they have 5G service when they really don't . The other major carriers also deployed LTE-Advanced features but continued to accurately describe the service as 4G.

T-Mobile last year challenged AT&T's 5GE campaign with the National Advertising Division (NAD), which serves as the advertising industry's self-regulatory body, and the NAD subsequently ruled that AT&T should discontinue the 5G Evolution claims. AT&T appealed that decision, claiming that its ads "served to educate customers about the billions of dollars AT&T has invested to give customers an outstanding experience," but the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) rejected the carrier's appeal.