C|Net

In 1937, when only about 10 percent of Central Virginians in rural areas had electric service, a small group of citizens banded together to form the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative. With some help from a new federal loan program, they brought electricity to the mountainous, rural terrain, which encompasses areas such as the Blue Ridge Parkway and Appalachian Trail. Some 80 years later, that same co-op is working to connect its territory again, this time by bringing high-speed internet access to its 38,000 electricity members across parts of 14 counties. It's not an easy job.

Google's Chrome team, advancing its web privacy effort, later in 2020 will begin testing the "privacy sandbox" proposals it unveiled in 2019. The Chrome tests are part of an effort to make it harder for publishers, advertisers and data brokers to harvest your personal data without your permission and to track you online. Other browsers, including Apple's Safari, Brave Software's Brave, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's new Chromium-based Edge, have pushed steadily to cut tracking for the last few years.

Months after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai reiterated his support for plans to allocate more than 1,200 megahertz of unlicensed spectrum on the 6GHz band for Wi-Fi usage, the Wi-Fi industry is moving to hit the ground running with the additional real estate in 2020.

As the 2020 presidential election heats up next year, big tech will be front and center as candidates and members of Congress grapple with questions touching online privacy, antitrust, access to broadband and more. While impeachment hearings have divided the country, when it comes to the big tech issues of the day, Republicans and