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  2. February 2020

February 2020

The Justice Department is giving up on an encryption truce with Big Tech

The Justice Department has essentially given up hope that tech companies will voluntarily build into their products a special way for law enforcement to access encrypted communications to help track terrorists and criminals. Instead, the department is focusing on getting legislation that forces companies to cooperate –  and is hoping encryption-limiting laws in Australia and the United Kingdom will ease the path for a similar law in the US, said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. “If there were a proposal from tech companies or a desire to talk about this issue t

It’s time to regulate internet service like any other utility

Less competition almost always means diminished service and higher prices. Telecom companies, seeing how the wind is blowing, are responding to the rise in streaming services by jacking up prices for broadband internet access. I get that pay-TV companies are sticking it to customers in part because their programming costs keep soaring. I also see how, from a purely business standpoint, if one part of your business is growing and another is declining, you increasingly rely on the growing part for profit.

How National 5G Policy Became Chaotic

President Donald Trump says he wants America to win the race to the fast new wireless future. He took it seriously enough to sign a presidential memorandum setting a deadline of July 2019 for a new national strategy on allocating the airwaves. That deadline came and went with no strategy in sight. In September, a Commerce Department undersecretary promised that the strategy was still on the way, telling a gathering of government officials that it would be released in the fall. A Commerce official said that the department did indeed deliver a draft to the White House.

Questions for Robert Blair, Trump’s Point Man on 5G

A Q&A with Robert Blair, senior advisor to the White House Chief of Staff. His new challenge: help further Trump’s global aims on 5G, including an ongoing campaign to prevent America’s allies from relying on Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. “One of the messages that I want to bring to people is: Take a breath,” Blair says. “The Chinese are not winning this race.”

So You Wanna Get 5G?

Can Americans actually get 5G? The rollout of high-speed 5G hinges on a mix of domestic and global telecommunications policies, many of which still need to be resolved. US carriers need larger swaths of airwaves to transmit all that data, and new technology to make the most of their existing bandwidth. The highest 5G speeds will also require far more transmitters—think small antennas on every city block, not occasional towers. And on the global stage, 5G standards are still being hashed out by the world’s economic powers. Not all 5G is created equal.

The 5G World: What People Care About

It’ll be years before most people have 5G phones and a super-fast network to connect them, but the future of mobile technology is shaping up right now. Behind the promises lie some big government decisions about what to prioritize, how to compete, and how fast to move. As citizens and consumers, whether they know it or not, people are being asked to weigh convenience against privacy, national competitiveness against national security, and speed against price.

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