Christopher Mims

Fiber-optic cable, which carries 95 percent of the world’s international internet traffic, links up pretty much all of the world’s data centers, those vast server warehouses where the computing happens that transforms all those 1s and 0s into our experience of the internet. Where those fiber-optic connections link up countries across the oceans, they consist almost entirely of cables running underwater—some 1.3 million kilometers (or more than 800,000 miles) of bundled glass threads that make up the actual, physical international internet.

What to do if you’re a globe-spanning tech titan that wants to connect millions or even billions of devices, but you don’t want the hassle or cost of dealing with telecommunication companies, satellite operators, or cable companies for connectivity? You use the devices your customers have already purchased—and brought into homes, businesses and public spaces—to make an end-run around traditional wireless networks.

Players large and small are now building specially designed private 5G networks. In contrast with the 5G networks celebrated during the launch of the latest iPhone, these are intended as much for machines as people. Private networks are geographically constrained areas of coverage, intended to keep a local set of sensors, machines and computers in sync, and allow communications with the rest of the world as needed.

Cities and towns throughout Northern California are issuing ordinances that would exclude new 5G cell sites from residential areas, citing supposed health concerns. Whatever the basis for residents’ objections to new cell towers, countless mayors, governors, and council members across the country—have little or no power under current rules to act on their constituents’ wishes. Nor do they have the leeway they once did to set pricing for cell sites, a lucrative source of funding for civic initiatives.

This is the paradox of 5G, the collection of technologies behind next-generation wireless networks: They require a gargantuan quantity of wires. This is because 5G requires many more small towers, all of which must be wired to the internet. The consequences of this unavoidable reality are myriad.

In 2016, Google changed its terms of service, allowing it to merge its trove of tracking and advertising data with the personally identifiable information from our Google accounts. Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we’ve installed, demographics such as age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we’ve shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn’t use information from “sensitive categories” such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health.

[Commentary]  One of the internet’s most important qualities is that it slashes transaction costs to a bare minimum. What has followed is a remarkable development: It is becoming cost-effective, even profitable, to serve the world’s poorest two billion people—whether they are online or not. Entrepreneurs are devising new services to provide neighborhood-scale renewable energy and clean water, gas cooking-stoves, microloans for consumer goods and insurance against natural disasters.

[Commentary] The number of internet users world-wide has roughly doubled in the past eight years to around 3.5 billion. The people who have come aboard in the past few years are spending their time in something that was overshadowed long ago in developed countries by apps: the mobile web browser.

Single-purpose apps like Facebook and Snapchat are the product of markets where monthly data plans and home Wi-Fi are abundant. App stores require email addresses and credit cards, two things many new phone owners just don’t have. In places like India, Indonesia and Brazil, it’s easy to buy an Android phone for as little as $25—even less for older second-hand (or third-hand) refurbished phones. But there’s likely to be little onboard storage, and the pay-as-you-go data plan is too precious to waste on apps, especially those that send and receive data even when you aren’t using them.

[Commentary] In the near term it looks like advocates of network neutrality will be dealt a major blow. That’s because consumers are going to love the Trump administration’s potential first steps at dismantling net neutrality. It starts with an ever-widening array of services that are “zero-rated.” Zero-rating involves internet service providers giving customers free data services, such as unlimited video streaming.

The real risk isn’t that deep-pocketed internet giants would be unable to pay for telecom play. Rather, it’s that any would-be next big thing will instead be smothered in the cradle. Even most opponents of net neutrality don’t believe we should do away with it completely. The consumer impact is difficult to predict. We’ve never really lived in a world without net neutrality. Doing away with the FCC’s current power to enforce net neutrality is like lawmakers tossing away an umbrella just because it’s not raining outside, forgetting that big carriers have every incentive to make it rain—for themselves.

[Commentary] Citigroup projects that spending on political ads on Facebook could surpass spending on Google in 2016, reversing the historical pattern. This is no small accomplishment, considering how powerful search advertising remains, as a conduit for motivated donors and volunteers. This reflects both Facebook’s vast reach and the tools it offers advertisers to target ever-narrower segments of its users. For campaigns striving to get supporters to the polls, as well as change minds, this ability to “micro-target” is manna from heaven. As with conventional advertising, it is now happening with unprecedented scale and precision in politics.