Jeanne Whalen

While the bipartisan infrastructure package may help the nation’s most remote communities get connected to the Internet through fiber-optic cables, rural telecommunications companies say even fiber links won’t fix another big communications problem in their communities — a lack of cellphone towers that leaves many residents and first-responders with extremely poor mobile service. Their concerns underscore the complexity of modern communications networks, which require steep spending to dig the ditches, lay the cable and build the cellular towers to connect far-flung communiti

US officials with the Department of Energy and scientists unveiled a plan to pursue what they called one of the most important technological frontiers of the 21st century: building a quantum Internet. They set goals for forging what they called a second Internet — one that would function alongside the globe’s existing networks, using the laws of quantum mechanics to share information more securely and to connect a new generation of computers and sensors.

About a dozen small rural carriers have purchased gear over the years from Huawei or ZTE, Chinese companies that have raised security concerns, according to their trade group, the Rural Wireless Association. The carriers often bought the equipment with US government subsidies intended to help bring Internet service to sparsely populated areas that larger telecom companies deemed unprofitable. Replacing the gear would cost roughly $1 billion, the association says, and Pine Telephone Company in Oklahoma and other small companies are calling for federal funding to help.