We're a bit mad out here, we turned off CDMA in favour of 3G. The 3G system our main telco implemented was built for England and didn't have amps built into the specifications.
Every site that was rolled out in regional areas needed to be attended to and upgraded with amplifiers (I know as I was one of such techs) doing heaps more work during the changeover period.
I believe the main reason is to reduce the volume of channels being broadcast on, to free up for other services (our analogue TV is turned off too).
I've seen it in Steam off the top of my head but not much else.
Happens on both my NVIDIA machines, my Intel machines see no such behaviour.