Fast Company

OneWeb wants to blanket the planet in high-speed satellite broadband

OneWeb is talking a big game in satellite-delivered internet access—almost the size of this planet, to be more precise. OneWeb plans to surpass existing satellite-broadband firms by flying below them and in vastly larger numbers. Instead of rocketing a few large satellites all the way to geostationary Earth orbit (GEO)—22,236 miles up, at which point the satellite’s orbital period keeps it locked above one point on the equator—the company will launch hundreds of satellites in much lower orbits.

Vint Cerf, a ‘father of the internet’, still isn’t completely sold on 5G

A Q&A with Vint Cerf. 

First question, 5G as a broadband alternative for homes and businesses. You sounded a little down on that.

It’s only because I’m worried about 6 gigahertz versus 28 gigahertz. The studies that have been done from the DoD show the 28 gigahertz is very costly, still requires a great deal of fiber interconnect, and might put us in a poor competitive position with regard to serving the rest of the world.

The first online message was sent 50 years ago. How has the internet evolved since then?

Fifty years ago, two letters were transmitted online, forever altering the way that knowledge, information and communication would be exchanged. On Oct. 29, 1969, Leonard Kleinrock, a professor of computer science at UCLA, and his graduate student Charley Kline wanted to send a transmission from UCLA's computer to another computer at Stanford Research Institute through ARPANET, the precursor to what we now know as the internet.  ARPANET connected universities working for the Department of Defense under its ARPA (now DARPA) program for new military technologies.

The city with the best fiber-optic network in America might surprise you

The American city with the most sophisticated fiber network is Ammon, Idaho, population 16,500. The city offers residents performance, pricing, and options that inhabitants of a metropolis dominated by one or two internet service providers can only dream of. Ammon is a true local network, where residents own the fiber and providers compete to serve them. “If you were to ask me what the key component of Ammon is, I would say it’s a broadband infrastructure as a utility,” says Bruce Patterson, Ammon’s technology director and one of the key drivers behind the network.

Domino’s Pizza was just dealt a Supreme Court blow that could reshape the ADA in the digital era

The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Domino’s Pizza after a federal appellate court ruled that a blind customer can sue the chain under the Americans with Disabilities Act after he couldn’t fully use its website through screen-reading software. Domino’s had asked the Supreme Court to rule that the ADA didn’t apply to websites and apps, arguing the 1990 law predated the modern internet and that there were no firm rules businesses could comply with to make their online assets accessible.