Vox

There is a plan to almost eliminate latency. It’s a new internet standard called L4S that was finalized and published in January, and it could put a serious dent in the amount of time we spend waiting around for webpages or streams to load and cut down on glitches in video calls.

It turns out that the “smart homes of the future” cannot run on Wi-Fi alone thanks to the materials we’ve been using to construct our homes cheaply and quickly for decades. Over the last several years, more engineering and architecture firms have started including ethernet wiring in their building plans, but that’s as far as the digital infrastructure of a home usually goes. What’s forgotten is not only where the pre-built internet hub is placed inside the building but also what materials are used for construction.

The Consumer Electronics Show 2024 is just around the corner, and while telecommunications executives were eager to shout about 5G to the rafters just a few years ago, you’ll probably be lucky to hear so much as a whisper about it this time around. While it’s true that 5G has actually arrived, the fantastic use cases we heard about years ago haven’t materialized. But deploying 5G at the breakneck speeds required to win an imaginary race resulted in one fewer major wireless carrier to choose from and lots of debt to repay.

For the better part of a generation, low-income and minority US communities have struggled to gain access to affordable broadband.