Eric Johnson

Federal and state funds will be used to expand access to high speed Internet in underserved areas of Mower County (MN). While it's getting better, there is still work to do in getting high-speed Internet to all corners of the county.

Apparently, SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk flew to the Seattle (WA) area in June for meetings with engineers leading a satellite launch project crucial to his space company’s growth. Within hours of landing, Musk had fired at least seven members of the program’s senior management team, the culmination of disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites. Musk quickly brought in new managers from SpaceX headquarters in CA to replace a number of the managers he fired.

Since 2016, everything that social media companies have done has been “either a bizarre idea or not really doing much of anything that’s actually gonna help people,” said Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR). As one of the more tech-savvy members of Congress, he’s a proponent of new legislation that will regulate voting machine companies and data firms such as Cambridge Analytica, but also believes existing laws have given platforms like Twitter more power than they have deigned to use. “I think what the Alex Jones case shows, we’re gonna really be looking at what the consequences are for just leaving comm

A Q&A with federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on network neutrality.

“We don’t want to impose monopoly-style regulation developed for Ma Bell in the 1930s, to apply to every single company in the United States that is building out a broadband network,” Chairman Pai said. “We would much rather have the free-market ‘light touch’ approach that the Clinton administration adopted. We’re not saying the choice is either Title II or the Wild West, it’s light-touch regulation, the middle ground, that we’re looking to return to.” He continued, “We have to remember that not all four million were in support of the [net neutrality] rules. Some 1.6 to 1.7 million were opposed. But this is not a numerical threshold. What we have to do at the agency is figure out the right regulatory framework to preserve a free and open internet and the incentive to invest in networks.”

Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA), a congressman in his first term representing California’s 17th district, is quick to denounce President Donald Trump. But he also doesn’t mince words about President Trump’s FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai. “I think he’s one of the worst picks possible in government,” Rep Khanna said of Chairman Pai. “Did you see the Charter decision? It’s appalling.” The “Charter decision” refers to a recent unanimous FCC vote ruling that Charter Communications would not have to expand high-speed internet access into areas already covered by competitors like Comcast.

“I don’t know as much about technology as some of the people I represent, but I know this: We invented the internet, we invented a lot of broadband,” Rep Khanna said. “Why are we paying five times more than people in Europe? The reason is, it’s basically a monopoly here.” “[Pai] is carving up the map, no competition,” he added. “And the people who suffer the most are — actually — Trump voters, in rural America! They’re the ones whose prices go up. They’re the ones who have to think, ‘Do I subscribe to the internet or not? Do I get fast service?’ He has been a mouthpiece for telecom companies in one of the most economically concentrated industries in the country.”

“The internet is not controlled by one entity,” Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said. “ICANN will continue to manage the domain name system, as they have for a long time. It’s been always the intention that the U.S. government would withdraw from this role.”

She argued that letting America’s direct involvement in the domain name system expire made the web less at risk of being politicized, not more, because it minimized the role of all governments. “In 2012, Russia, China and 89 countries came together and said, ‘The United States plays a role in the internet, and if a government’s going to do that, we should move the management and oversight of the internet to the UN,’” Sec Pritzker said. “That would be bad. Our position, as a country and our administration, is that we should have a free and open internet that’s managed by a multi-stakeholder community.”

A Q&A with European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager.

Previously a minister of education and a member of Denmark’s parliament, Margrethe Vestager is viewed by some in the tech world as a new type of enforcer. Earlier in 2016, she demanded that Ireland collect nearly $15 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple, alleging that Apple was dodging what it owed by doing its booking for the whole continent from Ireland. "I think any company should compete on the quality of their products, their prices, the novelty they can produce, their services, because that would be fair competition," she said. "If you’re in a situation where your effective tax rate is so much lower than any other company, then obviously you have a much better position when it comes to compete on prices and everything else."

Vestager also discussed her three-pronged antitrust case against Google, launched last year after several years of inaction by her predecessors. She said the case asserts that Google used its dominance in search to crowd out rivals in online shopping, is unfairly restricting advertising intermediaries, and is using the mobile Android OS to preserve the dominance of its own search engine and services. "When you open the box [of an Android phone], the first experience is the Google experience," Vestager said. "Why look for something else?"

After years of talks, Apple struck a deal in 2013 with the world’s largest mobile carrier, China Mobile, and began selling the iPhone 5s and 5c on its network on Jan 17.

Now it looks like that team-up was a boon for App Store revenue. According to an App Annie report released this morning, iOS revenue from China grew 70 percent between Q4 2013 and Q1 2014. The report also cited strong app download numbers led by the games, travel and social networking categories.