Tag Archives: C-Band 5G

Weekly output: AT&T and Verizon C-band progress, Gen Z online habits, lunar LTE, connected TVs vs. streaming media players, NFL Sunday Ticket, warnings of Russian and Chinese hacking, electronics recycling

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Two weeks from today, I’ll be at Dulles Airport to fly to Lisbon for Web Summit. And I still don’t know if I’ll be able to take Metro all the way to IAD or if I will once again have to transfer to a bus for the last few miles.

Screenshot of story as seen in Chrome on an Android phone, including some rather generic stock art of beams of light shining past a 5G logo.10/12/2022: AT&T, Verizon Continue to Gain 5G Ground With C-band Rollouts, Opensignal Finds, PCMag

AT&T’s progress since its small-scale initial deployment of fast, reasonably wide-ranging C-band 5G was the big surprise of this Opensignal report.

10/13/2022: Sorry Parents, Your Kids Think Your Online Habits Are Cringe, PCMag

My kid made an unnamed appearance in this writeup of an interesting survey of attitudes about online privacy and security among Generation Z kids and their parents.

10/14/2022: Why Nokia wants to put an LTE network on the moon, Fast Company

As a native New Jerseyan who grew up in the 1980s with a lot of AT&T kids, it’s still weird for me to write about Bell Labs as the Garden State research operation of anybody but the company once known as American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

10/14/2022: Connected TV or streaming media player? Yes., Fierce Video

Two days of filling in at this trade-pub client started with a report about a survey covering U.S. attitudes towards watching streaming video on connected TVs and streaming media players.

10/14/2022: NFL throws flag on Apple’s request for Sunday Ticket flexibility, Fierce Video

I often feel like I’m speaking a foreign language when I write about NFL TV deals, because the horrendousness of the local franchise led me to check out of pro football a long time ago.

10/14/2022: Cybersecurity Pros Warn of Danger Ahead With Russia, China, and Beyond, PCMag

Heading into downtown D.C. to watch a panel discussion and enjoy a reception afterwards provided me with a delightful return to Before Times professional socializing–and, more importantly, left me with some insights about the state of international information-security politics.

10/14/2022: electronics recycling, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me on for the first time in weeks to talk about obstacles to recycling and repairing electronics, and I made sure that the cracked screen of my phone played a cameo in this overdubbed appearance.

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Weekly output: LinkNYC, Google renews RCS plea, Chris Krebs at Black Hat, 5G explainer, Cyber Safety Review Board, Web3 security

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After a week on the West Coast, including four days in Las Vegas for the Black Hat security conference, I now have two weeks of not going anywhere. Which is good!

8/8/2022: LinkNYC begins deploying 5G kiosks – but not yet with 5G inside, Light Reading

After too many months of not writing for this telecom trade-pub client, I filed this update on New York rebooting its LinkNYC effort to bring free WiFi and digital city services to individual blocks.

8/9/2022: Google Posts Yet Another Plea for Apple to Support RCS Messaging in iMessage, PCMag

Google makes fair points when it calls out Apple for hindering the quality and privacy of cross-platform text messaging by not supporting the RCS messaging standard in iMessage. But Google hurts its cause by not supporting RCS in Google Voice–or even explaining that hangup. Also unhelpful: Google has yet to ship an API that would let the developers of Signal and other third-party messaging apps support RCS.

Screenshot of PCMag post as seen in Chrome on a Pixel 5a, with a VPN service active.8/10/2022: Ex-CISA Chief’s Advice at Black Hat: Make Security Valuable and Attacks Costly, PCMag

I covered the keynote by former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency head Chris Krebs that opened Black Hat. His talk ended on a self-help note, as he advised his audience: “Life’s too short to work for assholes. So don’t.” And yet Krebs worked for President Trump from 2018 through 2020, when Trump fired him for correctly confirming that the 2020 election was run fairly and securely; that could not have been easy for him.

8/11/2022: What Is 5G, and Does It Actually Make a Difference?, Wirecutter

I wrote yet another 5G explainer, this time for the New York Times’ Wirecutter site.

8/11/2022: How a US Govt Board Helped the Open-Source Community Leap to Patch Log4j, PCMag

As the token Washingtonian among PCMag’s crew of writers, I had to write up this very Washington panel about the first test of the Cyber Safety Review Board–an organization set up as an infosec version of the National Transportation Safety Board.

8/12/2022: Why Is Web3 Security Such a Garbage Fire? Let Us Count the Ways, PCMag

This talk about a series of security meltdowns at blockchain-based sites and services had more than a few unintentional-comedy moments.

8/12/2022: The 14 Scariest Things We Saw at Black Hat 2022, PCMag

My contribution to this recap was the “Startups Shirk Security” section.

Updated 8/21/2022 to add the PCMag Black Hat recap.

Weekly output: ISP guidance, Florida social-media law meets court setback, digital-platform antitrust bill updated, WiFi hotspots guide, Mark Vena podcast

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I returned Monday from one work trip and have (ulp) four more coming up before the end of June. But at least they’re all separated by at least two days!

5/23/2022: Internet Service Providers, U.S. News & World Report

My contribution to this update of U.S. News’ guide consisted of three comparisons (Fios vs. Xfinity, Spectrum vs. AT&T, Xfinity vs. AT&T), advice about cheaper ISPs, and a DSL explainer that I hope you don’t need.

Screenshot of PCMag story, illustrated with a photo of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaking in front of an "Awake Not Woke" banner5/24/2022: US Appeals Court Tosses Most Provisions of Florida Social-Media Law, PCMag

The ruling from a three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit overturning a Florida law essentially banning content moderation of posts from or about officially-filed political candidates is uncommonly clear in explaining why those judges found this statute to be unconstitutional garbage.

5/26/2022: Senators Update Antitrust Bill to Focus More Narrowly on Big Tech Firms, PCMag

PCMag had somehow not previously covered this bill from Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), so I used an incremental update to the bill’s text to get readers up to speed.

5/26/2022: The Best Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wirecutter

This is an incremental update to the hotspot guide I’ve been maintaining since early 2015–because while speeds and rates have changed, I haven’t yet had a chance to try a new set of 5G hotspots now available from AT&T and Verizon.

5/27/2022: S02 E22 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

I joined the usual podcast crew to talk about electric cars, the dumb Texas social-media law that somehow survived a different federal circuit court’s scrutiny, and a few other topics; as usual, the podcast is also available on YouTube.

Weekly output: FCC chair at MWC, Rocket Lab in Virginia, Verizon’s fixed-wireless 5G ambitions, Russia bans Facebook, U.S. tech companies fire Russia

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I got home from MWC Thursday afternoon and finally got a Flickr album uploaded Sunday night. I’m blaming not just jet lag and a busy schedule, but a weird bug in the Flickr Android app that strips out geotags from photos automatically backed up. My workaround for this has been to select the pictures I want to share in Google Photos, download them to my Mac, and then upload them to Flickr. I would very much like to see this bug get fixed already.

Screenshot of the story as I viewed it in my Android phone's copy of Chrome on the way to MWC3/1/2022: Rosenworcel’s MWC appearance hints at shifting spectrum policy, Light Reading

My first MWC dateline came from me covering a speech by somebody whose office sits less than five miles from my house–Federal Communications Commission chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who came to Barcelona to suggest two changes in the FCC’s spectrum-policy priorities.

3/1/2022: Rocket Lab to Build, Launch, and Land Reusable Rockets in Virginia, PCMag

The second story I filed from Barcelona also had a back-home component–the news that Rocket Lab USA would build a factory for its partially-reusable Neutron rocket on Wallops Island, Va.

3/3/2022: Verizon’s Sowmyanarayan on how FWA supports edge computing, private wireless, Light Reading

Story number three from Barcelona involved me interviewing a Verizon executive who works 200+ miles northeast of me.

3/4/2022: Russia Blocks Facebook for Not Giving State Media Free Rein, PCMag

The day after I got back from Barcelona, I covered Russia’s latest temper tantrum over American social networks not obliging its authoritarian streak.

3/5/2022: American tech sanctions against Russia, Al Jazeera

Saturday, I joined the Arabic-language news network (overdubbed live) to talk about the trend of U.S. tech companies cutting off Russia. As I noted, the likes of Apple and Intel can afford to fire Russia as a customer–it’s not a Japan, a U.K. or even a Canada.

Weekly output: Joe Rogan apology, Pozio Cradle, C-Band 5G and air safety (x2), broadband and real estate, foreign-app risks, Amazon earnings, competitiveness bill

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One of this week’s stories is not like the others.

1/31/2022: Joe Rogan Apologizes (Sort Of) for Hosting Guests Who Spout Pandemic Misinformation, PCMag

I did a quick writeup of the podcast host’s quasi-apology and had to think about the complete absence of any such contrition at other places with a history of providing a platform for anti-vaccine quacks–like Substack and Fox News.

2/2/2022: What a phone-jamming cradle says about our privacy fears, Fast Company

After seeing the Pozio Cradle’s ability to jam a smartphone’s microphone demoed at CES, I had to put this thing through my own tests.

2/2/2022: More C-band uncertainties show up in 5G’s radar, Light Reading

One surprise in reporting this story about what might come next in the inter-industry dispute over possible interference with radio altimeters from C-Band 5G: Nobody I talked to could point to any confirmed cases of such interference happening.

2/2/2022: Resolving C-Band 5G Mess Will Take at Least Another Year, FAA Says, PCMag

Federal Aviation Administration administrator Steve Dickson’s two-hour appearance at a House hearing yielded one bit of news: He doesn’t think we’ll have standards for C-Band-resistant altimeters until early 2023.

Photo of the story as it appeared in the Post's print edition Saturday2/3/2022: Does the home you want to buy have good high-speed Internet? You may have to do some sleuthing to find out., The Washington Post

After years of writing about the problem of inadequate rural broadband for other outlets, I finally thought to pitch my old shop on a feature unpacking this situation and offering advice to home shoppers. I’m glad I did: The piece ran as the cover story in Saturday’s Real Estate section, a few days after being published on the Post’s site.

2/3/2022: Commerce Department’s foreign-apps study, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me to discuss a Commerce initiative focused on the risks posed by apps that could be subverted by foreign adversaries–by which I mean, the hosts mostly asked me about TikTok.

2/3/2022: A limited media message in Amazon Q4 earnings: be content with our content, FierceVideo

I filled in at my trade-pub video client to cover Amazon’s latest earnings, which reminded me of how much effort Amazon is putting into original video and how little time I’ve been able to devote to watching that output.

2/4/2022: House OKs Sprawling Competition Bill That Aims to Boost US Chip Manufacturing, PCMag

The House passed a Christmas tree of a tech-competitiveness bill months after the Senate voted by larger margins for a narrower competition bill; this post noted one problematic component of the House bill that isn’t in the Senate legislation.