Network management

Lumen Technologies landed a massive $1.2 billion contract with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), setting it up to give one of the biggest government agency networks a major makeover. Zain Ahmed, Senior Vice President of Lumen public sector, said the 11-year task order represents entirely new business for the company. Under the contract, Ahmed said Lumen will “completely transform” the USDA’s network covering 9,500 locations across the country.

According to a speed test analysis released by WhistleOut, the average US internet speed increased 40 percent during the pandemic to 118.4 Mbps, versus an average of 84.5 Mbps pre-pandemic. The report, which is based on more than 717,000 internet speed tests, doesn’t explain exactly why the fixed internet became so much swifter, but it cites the fact that many US households upgraded their plans with their internet service providers, presumably to accommodate all that video streaming, those Zoom meetings, and other lifestyle changes necessitated by working and living at home 24/7.

It is time to update our understanding of the primary factors directly affecting end-user Internet performance. What we have learned is that high throughput alone is not sufficient. Latency is also a critical factor in providing a high-performance Internet connection. But that is not latency as we have traditionally understood it; rather, it is what we now define as 'working latency.' Over thirty years, industry has collectively missed a key factor that drives end users' Internet quality of experience (QoE). The industry has historically been focused on increasing bandwidth.

Internet2 has finished the transition of its research and education network traffic to the fifth-generation backbone that interconnects with 37 state and regional networks, serving every state in the country. It’s an important development because the network serves a critical niche in the national broadband infrastructure and underpins high-capacity and advanced services. In 2021, Internet2 moved over 2.75 exabytes of data, equivalent to a video call that is 594,557 years long, or 27.5 million high-definition films.

Ookla's Speedtest released its mobile and fixed broadband speed rankings in the United States for December 2021. Speedtest Intelligence revealed T-Mobile was the fastest mobile operator in the United States during Q4 2021 with a median download speed of 90.65 Mbps on modern chipsets. AT&T was second and Verizon third. This represents a strong increase in download speed for T-Mobile from 62.35 Mbps in Q3 2021.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the Federal Communications Commission in its decision to designate a large swath of the 6 GHz band to unlicensed users, including Wi-Fi. AT&T had challenged the FCC’s decision, saying it posed potential interference with existing fixed microwave users. “Petitioners have failed to provide a basis for questioning the Commission’s conclusion that the Order will protect against a significant risk of harmful interference,” the court wrote in its December 28 decision.

Leading telecommunications and aviation trade groups have agreed to share data in an effort to resolve a tense standoff over a new 5G service that threatens to disrupt flights. The groups said in a joint statement that they would exchange “available data from all parties to identify the specific areas of concern for aviation.” The statement was issued by CTIA, which represents the cellular industry, Aerospace Industries Association and Airlines for America.

General Services Administration (GSA) head Robin Carnahan is shepherding one of President Joe Biden’s most expansive government modernization efforts: fixing up its creaky, fragmented computer systems. She envisions a future in which people can access programs like food stamps and rental assistance as easily as they can order a pair of shoes. “We know that good policy gets sunk regularly if tech doesn’t work,” Carnahan said.

Cellular networks can sometimes play an outsized role in disasters because they can often function on backup power sources like generators. Meaning, when nothing else is working, cell phones can connect calls. But the nation's biggest wireless providers – as well as a variety of other entities – are pushing against suggestions that the federal government mandate the use of backup power generators at all cell sites. In general, the US wireless industry has rejected increased federal oversight over providers' operations.

Being on social media can feel a bit like living in a new kind of city. My job used to be to protect the city. I was a member of the Facebook Civic Integrity team. My coworkers and I researched and fixed integrity problems—abuses of the platform to spread hoaxes, hate speech, harassment, calls to violence, and so on. Over time, we became experts, thanks to all the people, hours, and data thrown at the problem. As in any community of experts, we all had at least slightly different ways of looking at the problem. For my part, I started to think like an urban planner.