There was no "Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you" moment; instead, 50 years ago in 1969, there was an attempt to login on ARPANET that ended after "lo" because of a system crash. That inauspicious moment led to our connected world of 2019, a time when more than 4 billion people have internet access, and the number of devices connected to internet networks is more than double the global population. But for all the internet's impact, for all those devices, and even though so many have access, too many people remain unconnected. The phrase “digital divide” was first introduced some 25 years ago. Clearly, it is not a temporary condition, but a persistent problem. As we close the year, we review efforts to better understand and close the digital divide. Fifty years since the launch of ARPANET, the precursor to today’s internet, many of us rely on being logged in—all the time. But too people in the U.S. are still waiting for access to the internet over broadband networks. The chasm between Gig access and no access is too wide and the impact on those left behind grows more profound every day. On the eve of the 2020s, can we finally bridge this divide? The answer is: we must. The strength of broadband is that it will—if fully accessible to all in America—help us solve some of our most critical societal challenges, meet people wherever they live and work, and help them overcome key barriers regardless of their background, community surroundings, or demographic characteristics. Imagine each community enabled to identify and build on its strengths and employ technology accordingly. That is a profoundly democratic vision. 

C Spire, Entergy Mississippi, and the Mississippi Public Service Commission commemorated the completion of a project that will bring advanced broadband services to rural Mississippians. The $11 million project took 18 months to complete. It spans more than 300 miles in 15 counties and is aimed at helping to meet the state’s education and healthcare needs. It also will modernize Energy Mississippi’s grid infrastructure by enabling a modern communications network interconnecting that infrastructure. The project included drilling 40 feet under a lake bottom to connect a 6,585-foot section between Highway 43 on the southeast end of the reservoir and Pipeline Road on the northwest side of the lake. The span is the longest in C Spire’s history.

The collision of corporate opportunism and Republican anti-government orthodoxy has pushed the United States backwards on the allocation of important spectrum for fifth-generation wireless networks (5G). Positioning the US as engaged in no-holds-barred competition with China, President Donald Trump declared in April, “The race to 5G is on and we must win.” With typical bravura, he then promised, “my administration is freeing up as much wireless spectrum as is needed.” Unfortunately, such is not the case when it comes to the most desired piece of 5G spectrum. Thanks to the Trump Federal Communications Commission, the effort to free up a large and important piece of 5G spectrum known as C-Band is farther behind at the end of 2019 than it was at the beginning of the year. Most likely, it will be spring before the FCC makes the necessary decisions for the auction to proceed. The “race to 5G” and the opening of C-Band spectrum will, by then, have spent two years treading water.

[Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow in Brookings' Governance Studies. He was Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission from 2013 to 2017.]

The Times Privacy Project obtained a dataset with more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million people in this country. It was a random sample from 2016 and 2017, but it took only minutes — with assistance from publicly available information — for us to deanonymize location data and track the whereabouts of President Donald Trump. The vulnerability of the person we tracked in Trump’s entourage is one that many if not all of us share: the apps (weather services, maps, perhaps even something as mundane as a coupon saver) collecting and sharing his location on his phone.

1. Social media sites have emerged as a go-to platform for connecting with others, finding news and engaging politically. 
2. Around the world and in the US, social media has become a key tool for activists, as well as those aligned against them.
3. Smartphones have altered the way many Americans go online. 
4. Growth in mobile and social media use has sparked debates about the impact of screen time on America’s youth – and others.
5. Data privacy and surveillance have become major concerns in the post-Snowden era.
6. Tech platforms have given rise to a gig economy. 
7. Online harassment has become a fairly common feature of online life, both for teens and adults.
8. Made-up news and misinformation has sparked growing concern.
9. A majority of Americans see gender discrimination as a problem in the tech industry. 
10. Americans’ views about tech companies have turned far less positive in recent years. 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced his appointment of Dr. Monisha Ghosh to serve as the agency’s Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Ghosh will advise Chairman Pai and the agency on technology and engineering issues, and will work closely with the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology. The FCC’s chief technology officer serves as the senior technology expert in the agency. Dr. Ghosh will be housed in the Office of Engineering and Technology. She replaces Dr. Eric Burger, who has been serving at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy since October. Dr. Ghosh will start work at the FCC on January 13.

Dr. Ghosh has been serving as a rotating Program Director at the National Science Foundation since September 2017, in the Computer and Network System Division within the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, where she manages the core wireless research portfolio as well as special programs such as Machine Learning for Wireless Networking Systems ((MLWiNS). She is also a Research Professor at the University of Chicago, where she conducts research on wireless technologies for the Internet of Things, 5G cellular, next-generation Wi-Fi systems, and spectrum coexistence. Prior to joining the University of Chicago in September 2015, she worked at Interdigital, Philips Research and Bell Laboratories, on various wireless systems, such as the HDTV broadcast standard, cable standardization and cognitive radio for the TV White Spaces. She has been an active contributor to many industry standards. Dr. Ghosh received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1991, and her B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (India) in 1986. She is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Russia will temporarily shut off many of its citizens’ access to the global Internet in a test of its controversial RuNet program, according to an internal government document. RuNet aims to boost the government’s ability to better control internal digital traffic, launch cyber and information attacks against other nations, and track and censor dissidents. The test will evaluate “the possibility of intercepting subscriber traffic and revealing information about the subscriber, blocking communication services,” according to a Dec. 5 document produced by Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media. The document said the test was originally slated to take place on Dec. 19 but had been rescheduled for Dec. 23.