Wall Street Journal

Fiber-optic cable, which carries 95 percent of the world’s international internet traffic, links up pretty much all of the world’s data centers, those vast server warehouses where the computing happens that transforms all those 1s and 0s into our experience of the internet. Where those fiber-optic connections link up countries across the oceans, they consist almost entirely of cables running underwater—some 1.3 million kilometers (or more than 800,000 miles) of bundled glass threads that make up the actual, physical international internet.

The chief executives of major passenger and cargo airlines said there could be significant flight disruptions when new 5G service goes live in the US, unless implementation of the wireless service within 2 miles of major airport runways is delayed. The outlook had worsened for flight disruptions from the planned rollout of new high-speed wireless services, the airline executives said in a letter to US officials.

All three major US cellular carriers will shut down their older 3G networks this year to free up more wireless spectrum for 5G. AT&T will be first, on February 22. By July, T-Mobile’s could be gone. Finally, Verizon, before the clock strikes 2023. The carriers’ 4G networks will remain. How will this impact you? It likely won’t; Only 1 percent of AT&T consumers have devices that depend on 3G according to the company. Think about it this way: Apple hasn’t released a 3G-driven phone since the iPhone 4S, a decade ago.