In 2022, Jake Brown, a telecommunications professional living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, bought a used 2017 Volkswagen Passat from a local dealership. Brown describes himself as a techy guy, and was excited about the car’s newer, internet-enabled features, including the ability to start it up remotely from his phone.
Brown had heard that some Volkswagens were having trouble with connected features for a reason that, because of Brown’s telecommunications background, felt familiar to him: AT&T, which Volkswagen worked with to provide connectivity to the automaker’s vehicles, had “sunsetted” its 3G service that year. (Telecommunications firms “sunset,” or discontinue, old networks and infrastructure to make way for faster and more reliable ones.)
The
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