Reporting

Here's how Verizon plans to revive its ailing wholesale business—hint, fiber is key

When it comes to Verizon’s wholesale business, growth is the name of the game. That might seem like an uphill battle, considering the wholesale industry has been shrinking for years. But newly appointed SVP of Verizon Partner Solutions Jeffrey Hulse said the company’s investments in fiber and 5G could help it beat the odds. Verizon's wholesale business provides telecommunications services (voice, data and internet connectivity, etc.) to other companies who then resell those services to end customers under their own brand.

How Wi-Fi sensing became usable tech

Over a decade ago, Neal Patwari lay in a hospital bed, carefully timing his breathing. Around him, 20 wireless transceivers stood sentry. As Patwari’s chest rose and fell, their electromagnetic waves rippled around him. Patwari, now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, had just demonstrated that those ripples could reveal his breathing patterns. A few years later, researchers from MIT were building a startup around the idea of using Wi-Fi signals to detect falls.

Will telephone companies be the railroad tycoons of the AI age?

During America's Gilded Age, a handful of scrappy entrepreneurs built the nation's railway system and in the process created huge piles of money by controlling shipping and travel lanes across the country. Today, as AI hype begins consuming everything in sight, some are hinting that mobile network operators—and their equipment vendors—may be sitting in a similar position thanks to the data they own. After all, AI models are only as good as the data they're trained on.

Missouri households in danger of losing affordable internet access

The future of affordable broadband internet access is uncertain for 1 in 6 households across Missouri as the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) runs out of funding. Launched in December 2021, the ACP allows households that qualify to save up to $30 a month on their internet bill. The program also helps households obtain technology, such as laptops and other computers. 394,043 Missouri households are currently enrolled in the program. But that number could soon drop to zero as funding for the program is running out.

How Antarctica’s history of isolation is ending—thanks to Starlink

“This is one of the least visited places on planet Earth and I got to open the door,” Matty Jordan, a construction specialist at New Zealand’s Scott Base in Antarctica, wrote in the caption to the video he posted to Instagram and TikTok in October 2023. In the video, he guides viewers through an empty, echoing hut, pointing out where the men of Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 expedition lived and worked—the socks still hung up to dry and the provisions still stacked neatly in place, preserved by the cold. Jordan, who started making TikToks to keep family and friends up to date with his life in Ant

AT&T's big network fail was a remote work triumph

The big AT&T network outage was a productivity catastrophe for commuters across the country, but remote workers were totally fine. Without

Gigapower fiber joint venture sets expansion into Minneapolis-St. Paul

Gigapower, the AT&T-BlackRock joint venture, has identified several towns in the southern Minneapolis-St. Paul area as expansion targets for a multi-gigabit fiber network that will be underpinned by an "open access" framework. Gigapower's expansion there will include Bloomington, Eden Prairie, Eagan, Savage, Apple Valley, Burnsville, Farmington, Lakeville, Rosemont and Shakopee.

Mayor Cherelle Parker is all in on Philadelphia’s digital inclusion efforts

Amid a slew of executive appointments and policy changes, local government workers will feel assured that Mayor Cherelle Parker (D-PA) plans to continue the City of Philadelphia’s digital equity work.

Yes, remote learning can work for preschoolers

The other day some preschoolers were pretending to be one of their favorite Sesame Street characters, a baby goat named Ma’zooza who likes round things. They played with tomatoes—counting up to five, hiding one, and putting it back. A totally ordinary moment exploring shapes, numbers, and imagination.

The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

Social media companies have long made their own rules about the content they allow on their sites. But a pair of cases set to be argued before the Supreme Court on Monday will test the limits of that freedom, examining whether they can be legally required to host users’ speech. The cases, Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, deal with the constitutionality of laws created in Florida and Texas, respectively.