It's still active as in, they maintain the hotspots. But I just had a look at the map, and it looks like there's spotty service mostly clustered around tiny villages, rather than providing coverage to areas that actual get significant tourism or other visitors.
In Europe that's mostly biological progress as the old timers are jumping into the box. Not sure why it's still significantly more in the US. Lack of education and religious influence probably?
I read those news in a way that she's now in a low risk facility with plenty of other people around who might casually remove a witness, rather than stuck in isolation in a max security prison where every 'suicide' would be met with public outrage.
Really good so far, else I'd never made it to book 3. I tend to drop books nowadays if I don't really get into them right away.