Politico

Why suspected Chinese spy gear remains in America’s telecom networks

The US is still struggling to complete the break up with Chinese telecom companies that Donald Trump started four years ago. The problem: Small communications networks, largely in rural areas, are saddled with old Chinese equipment they can’t afford to remove and which they can’t repair if it breaks. The companies say they want to ditch the Chinese tech, but promised funds from Congress aren’t coming quickly enough and aren’t enough to cover the cost.

How many satellites are too many?

Broadband internet satellites are set to sweep the skies over the next decade at a scale never before seen. Just don’t ask policymakers today how exactly we’re going to manage the fallout. The story is a familiar one to longtime watchers of technology. Companies hooked up homes with electricity, with phone lines, TV signals and the internet — miracles of modern connectivity — but not without communities inheriting a cityscape loaded with hanging wires and accompanying fire hazards.

The telecom executive focused on climate impacts

Shannon Thomas Carroll, head of global environmental sustainability for AT&T, knows how difficult it is to find reliable climate data. When sustainability officials at the telecommunications giant began searching for local-level data on climate impacts as part of the company’s efforts to shore up its infrastructure in response to climate change, they had a lot of trouble finding usable information.

UkraineX: How Elon Musk’s space satellites changed the war on the ground

The United States, European Union and other NATO countries have donated billions of dollars in military equipment to Ukraine since the war began in late February. But Elon Musk’s Starlink—based on a cluster of table-sized satellites flying as low as 130 miles above Ukraine and beaming down high-speed internet access—has become an unexpected lifeline to the country: both on the battlefield and in the war for public opinion. Ukrainian drones have relied on Starlink to drop bombs on Russian forward positions.

5G is so passé

The race to build 6G is on—or, at least, the race to start selling the idea to Washington.

Midterm politics endanger Biden’s tech agenda

Midterm politics are endangering a key Biden nominee who would give Democrats a majority at the Federal Communications Commission — jeopardizing the administration’s push to restore net neutrality and other tech regulations rolled back in the Trump era. A coalition of Republicans, moderate Democrats and telecom industry allies are ratcheting up pressure on potential swing Democrats to oppose FCC nominee Gigi Sohn, including by calling the progressive consumer advocate an “anti-police radical” and accusing her of being biased against rural America.

Crimefighting in the metaverse

Crime might seem like a fake issue to the promoters of the metaverse — the kind of thing waved around by skeptics who “don’t get it.” But consumers are already thinking about it, and so is the industry.

FCC Commissioner Carr Calls for FTC Probe of Crisis Text Line

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr called publicly for the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into the nonprofit Crisis Text Line (CTL) over the suicide hotline’s former data-sharing practices with for-profit spinoff Loris.ai.