Jacob Kastrenakes

Newly-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has already chipped away at network neutrality, slowed a program that assists low-income households with broadband access, and hurt efforts to reform exorbitant calling fees for inmates — and that’s just his first two weeks on the job. The chairman of the FCC has exceptional power over what the commission does and how it functions. And that means Chairman Pai, more than anyone else right now, has control over the fate of not just hot-button issues like net neutrality, but the competitive landscape of the cable and wireless industries. Pai’s oft-repeated mission statement has been to “[eliminate] unnecessary and burdensome rules” at the commission. But so far, that’s meant scaling back vital protections for the internet that advocates and millions of consumers loudly fought for and won. As Chairman Pai continues to tweak regulations, he has the ability to undermine core tenets of net neutrality and broadly reshape the FCC in the process.

Some Republicans have long hoped to turn the FCC into a toothless management office, and these early actions demonstrate Pai’s power to help them do it. There are two ways Republicans can go about curtailing the power of the FCC. The more transformative method is to overhaul telecom law in order to strip out its strength as a regulator and its mandate to look out for the public good. The easier, if less transformative method — since core functions of the FCC are ultimately dictated by law — would be to have the FCC reorganize itself, which it can do in small ways on its own and in larger ways with a nod from Congress.

T-Mobile says that from January 2017 forward, all of the postpaid plans it sells will offer an unlimited amount of data. John Legere, the company’s CEO, says the change reflects the way that people have begun using mobile data, where it’s in frequently the primary way they access the internet. “The internet was meant to be unlimited,” Legere said. “Why the hell are carriers still selling the mobile internet this way?” T-Mobile will stop offering plans with data limits as of January 22nd, only offering its “unlimited” T-Mobile One plans. The carrier telegraphed this move several months back, when it first unveiled the new plan’s branding, but it’s only now fully removing other options. While T-Mobile won’t be selling postpaid plans with data caps, it will still offer prepaid plans with specific data limits.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son made a surprise appearance at Trump Tower where he appears to have worked out a deal with the President-elect to invest $50 billion in the US over the next four years and create 50,000 new jobs. Details of the planned investment are basically nonexistent, but it’s more than likely that it involves Sprint, which represents SoftBank’s main presence in the US. Sprint has been struggling since its acquisition by SoftBank in 2012, falling into fourth place among wireless carriers, behind T-Mobile, and cutting jobs in the face of rocky financials. "I just came to celebrate his new job. We were talking about it. Then I said I would like to celebrate his presidential job and commit, because he would do a lot of deregulation,” Son said. “I said this is great. The United States would become great again.” It wasn’t stated what Trump offered, aside from a lighter regulatory environment, to entice SoftBank.

Google and Facebook are working together to lay a nearly 8,000-mile cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

The fiber-optic cable will have a bandwidth of 120 terabits per second, which Google says makes it the highest-capacity route between the US and Asia. It’ll double the current record, which is held by a cable that Google is also a partner on. The new cable should allow Google and Facebook to offer faster and more reliable service to visitors on the other side of the Pacific. The companies will likely each get a certain chunk of the cable’s total capacity and lease out the remaining space to others; but so far, they haven’t announced the specifics.

For the next presidential debate, you'll be able to vote online for questions that could be asked of the candidates. The debate's organizers announced that they're working with the Open Debate Coalition to source questions online through the new site presidentialopenquestions.com. At the site, people can submit and vote on questions for the candidates. The top 30 questions will be eligible for consideration — although there's no guarantee that even a single question from the website will make it on air. This is the first time the Commission on Presidential Debates has considered questions submitted by online voting, and it seems to be viewing it more as an experiment than a true part of the second debate. The next presidential debate, on October 9th, will use a town hall format, with half its questions coming from "citizen participants" and half from the moderators.

A US Appellate Court has ruled that police must obtain a warrant before collecting cellphone location data, finding that acquiring records of what cell towers a phone connected to and when it was connected to them constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.

This ruling, from the 11th Circuit, is in opposition to a ruling made nearly a year ago by a separate appellate court. While this ruling won't overturn that one because of their separate jurisdictions, it adds critical precedent to a privacy question that's still far from decided across the country.

In its reasoning, the court notes that while the Fourth Amendment has traditionally been applied to property rights, it's gradually expanded to protect much more, including communications. "In the 20th century, a second view gradually developed," the court writes, "that is, that the Fourth Amendment guarantee protects the privacy rights of the people without respect to whether the alleged 'search' constituted a trespass against property rights."

In particular, the court cites a Supreme Court ruling that found that tracking a person using a GPS unit installed in their car requires a warrant. Even though the location data of a cell site can only place the person holding the phone within a certain range, the court feels that that range is still quite detailed. In the case at hand, cell site data was used to place the defendant near the location of several robberies.

TV shows -- now routinely even good ones -- have been debuting on the web, and advertisers and producers all want to understand how they can be a part of it before they miss the boat.

Advertisers don't always mind less exciting series, so long as the demographics and numbers all add up. Many say they're just happy to see that companies like AOL and Yahoo are willing to put big money on shows and attract big talent. But the general consensus is that there's still a bundle of potential for connected platforms that few are trying to tap into yet.