Quartz

Most of us think of the internet as existing “virtually,” yet cyberspace requires a physical infrastructure that is mostly hidden from view. And it requires workers to go under city streets to tie things together. They run fiber-optic cables—incredibly thin strands of glass that carry the super-fast data signals providing high-speed internet, or “broadband,” service—and connect them underground to commercial buildings. There are many things that wouldn’t be the same without broadband. Here’s a look at 10 things broadband has brought to, or changed about, the world:

The net neutrality victory for the telecommunications industry may have just actually delivered them into a hell they’ve tried to avoid for decades: a balkanized regulatory landscape even more restrictive than the one they just escaped. In its repeal, the Federal Communications Commission preempted states from imposing their own net neutrality laws. “No dice,” the majority opinion responded. If the US government chooses to abdicate regulatory authority, the judges argued, it can’t simultaneously take that authority from states.

Google has been treating Beto O'Rourke's campaign ads as if they weren’t political content, raising questions over whether Google is capable of keeping its already anemic promise of transparency for political ads. Google has promised to put ads it receives from candidates for US federal political offices in its political ad archive, for transparency’s sake. But the Beto ads were missing from the archive. Google’s own rules don’t allow any political content in Gmail ads, but Beto’s campaign ads kept showing up there.

For people in prisons and jails, voicemail can still be very useful. Corrio is a Washington state-based company co-founded by Alex Peder, a former inmate himself, that offers a service that lets inmates call a special number assigned to them and then record a voice message that gets texted as a link to any person the prison or jail has allowed them to contact. It connects the facility’s network to Corrio’s private switch network, and a person on the outside can send a regular text to the inmate, as well as record voicemails.