Caroline Haskins

There's some evidence that Facebook formed a subsidiary satellite company called “PointView” on the down low (the companies seem to share a number of assets, including staff and land).

Companies like OneWeb and Elon Musk’s Starlink have been moving forward on ambitious plans to make internet available to every person on earth, which is a noble goal considering an estimated 4.3 billion people don’t have internet access. The problem is that there’s a natural incentive for a private satellite company to engage in “spectrum warehousing,” or highballing the amount of satellites it asks the government to allow it to shoot up. The company’s request may get approved on paper, but the companies may drag their feet sending up those satellites, or never send them up at all.

Microsoft is targeting public school buses as a part of its initiative to provide rural broadband in 12 states between now and 2022. But as of right now, it’s unclear how the data of these children would be protected. Microsoft declined to comment on the record. The big question is what Microsoft will get in return for providing this broadband access, especially considering the precedent for private companies grabbing, tracking, and storing user data in exchange for public Wi-Fi.