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Weekly output: Qualcomm’s automotive ambitions, MEF Connects USA, corporate America’s tech ideas, Verizon 5G home and gaming news, Halo car sharing

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I went to my last Nats game of the year Saturday–a 13-4 trouncing of the Phillies that reminded me of better days in the past and, I trust, the future. We also had tickets for Sunday, but with rain forecast all day I declined the opportunity to participate in the sunk-cost fallacy.

9/27/2022: Qualcomm sells a story of in-car inevitability, Light Reading

I wrote this recap of Qualcomm’s pitch to the auto industry at an event in New York the previous Thursday. Note that Qualcomm’s pitch to invited attendees included comped travel; I already had my train fare to and from NYC covered by the Back Market conference at which I spoke earlier that week but did accept two nights in a hotel to simplify my logistics–after obtaining my client’s permission.

A printout shows the order of panels at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum's MEF Connects USA conference.9/27/2022: MEF Connects USA, Mobile Ecosystem Forum

After joining this industry’s group’s podcast in April, the MEF people asked if I’d be interested in speaking at the conference they were organizing for the day before MWC Las Vegas. I wound up emceeing the afternoon half of the program and moderating three panels–one about the future of mobile identity yielded a what-if post for my Patreon readers, while two others on carrier billing for services educated me about aspects of the mobile industry that I’d overlooked.

9/29/2022: Sorry, But Your Boss Is Pretty Hyped About Today’s Most Annoying Tech Trends, PCMag

I can’t claim any credit for the headline on this post summing up a KPMG survey of attitudes among senior U.S. tech executives towards such topics as cryptocurrency and VR.

9/29/2022: At MWC, Verizon unwraps upgraded FWA receiver and 5G gaming gambit, Light Reading

With the MEF folks having agreed to cover my airfare and two nights of lodging, sticking around for another two nights on my own dime to cover MWC Las Vegas was an easy call. This recap of Verizon’s announcements during the opening keynote was the first of two posts I wrote for my telecom trade-pub client that week.

10/1/2022: Hello, Halo: This Car-Share Service Remotely Drives Its Vehicles to You, PCMag

With nothing blocking my schedule Thursday afternoon, I opted to ditch the conference for a few hours to try out Halo, the car-sharing service I’d covered for Fast Company last summer that has the car meet you, controlled remotely by a professional human driver, instead of your having to make your own way to the vehicle. As I quickly learned, the reality of this service in its beta-test stage includes some safety-driven inefficiencies.

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Weekly output: Google location-privacy lawsuit, C-Band 5G and aviation safety, Neil Young vs. Spotify, broadband nutrition labels, C-Band 5G explained

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The traffic stats for my post about where I should move my home e-mail account once Google will start charging for it suggest I’m not alone in this confusion. Readers: story assignment received.

1/24/2022: Lawsuits Accuse Google of Surveilling Customers, Profiting From Their Data, PCMag

For once, a request for comment from a giant tech company accused of misconduct by multiple states yielded a data point I didn’t know before: At some recent point (Google hasn’t told me when), the company began limiting the accuracy of its location estimates for Web searches to a “general area” no smaller than one square mile.

Screenshot of Arirang's Global Insight page listing recent episodes, as seen on an Pixel 5a on T-Mobile 5G1/26/2022: What’s going on with 5G and flights?, Arirang TV

In what I’m pretty sure was my debut on Korean TV, this English-language news network had me on its Global Insight show to talk about the intersection of C-Band 5G wireless and aviation safety, as well as the broader picture for 5G in the U.S.

1/26/2022: Neil Young to Spotify: Since You Won’t Dump Joe Rogan, I’m Dumping You, PCMag

I would have written this faster if I hadn’t made a point of stuffing multiple references to Neil Young’s work into the post.

1/27/2022: FCC to Require ISPs to Post Broadband ‘Nutrition Labels’, PCMag

Almost six years after I wrote about an earlier attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to encourage Internet providers to list the basic parameters of their service in a nutrition-label format, the FCC voted to write rules making such a thing mandatory.

1/30/2022: What is C-Band? Here’s what a new 5G flavor means for AT&T and Verizon users, USA Today

This explainer about C-Band 5G offered advice about how to read Verizon’s 5G coverage map. It also shared some hope, possibly foolish hope, that these mid-band 5G frequencies can lead to a meaningful expansion of Americans’ choices in home broadband.

Weekly output: T-Mobile and Verizon wireless home broadband, sports on streaming TV, MLB streaming (x2), Netflix earnings, WiFi hotspots, the future of live events, Fios TV, WWE, Facebook’s new audio features, Mark Vena podcast

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The list you see below reflects a lot of work done in earlier weeks–three virtual panels recorded in advance, plus a Wirecutter update that I started researching last year.

4/19/2021: Time to cut internet cords: T-Mobile, Verizon up their bids to be your next home broadband, USA Today

I wrote about the fixed-wireless home-broadband services now available from these two carriers–one of which looks better positioned to let more Americans dump their local cable or telco monopoly.

4/19/2021: A key lesson of sports on OTT: first, do no lag, FierceVideo

An editor at this trade pub asked if I could fill in with coverage of an online event they were hosting. That work started with a write-up of a panel about lessons learned in distributing live sports events on over-the-top (aka “OTT,” meaning delivered on a third party’s broadband) video services.

Screenshot of the panel as seen on an iPad, with me at the left and Marinak at the right4/20/2021: Keynote Interview: Producing OTT Sports Content, StreamTV Sports Summit

I didn’t just write about Fierce’s conference, I also participated in it by interviewing Chris Marinak, Major League Baseball’s chief operations and strategy officer. You can watch our banter after registering with your e-mail or Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter accounts; meanwhile, take a close look at the screenshot at the right and you may be able to recognize the Nationals bobblehead I’d placed on my desk for this recording.

4/20/2021: MLB to RSNs: It’s time to think direct-to-consumer, FierceVideo

Fierce then invited me to write up my own appearance at its show, so I led with Marinak’s answer to my question about his statements in a March season-preview event that MLB wants regional sports networks to sell game coverage direct to subscribers instead of making them sign up for a big pay-TV bundle. (I’d covered those earlier comments in an Opening Day post at Forbes.) Marinak reiterated that stance, and my recap got picked up at a few places; among them, Awful Announcing‘s Andrew Bucholtz and The Streamable‘s Jason Gurwin provided useful context.

4/21/2021: Netflix subscriber growth downshifts in Q1, FierceVideo

I wrote one more post for Fierce, in this case because the usual reporter was taking a just-in-case day off after getting his second dose of a coronavirus vaccine. Netflix earnings are less annoying to cover than those of other tech companies, because NFLX posts an “earnings interview” video instead of making people listen to an audio-only recording on which all the executives usually sound alike.

4/21/2021: The Best Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wirecutter

This overdue update to the guide I’d last revised in those innocent days of early 2020 brings a new 5G-specific pick, T-Mobile’s M2000 hotspot. AT&T and Verizon’s 5G hotspots, lacking the midband 5G T-Mo offers, were nowhere close–and yet Verizon’s LTE remains so good that the top pick went to the same Vz 4G hotspot as last year.

4/21/2021: Preparing for the return to live, Collision

I started this interview of Nathan Hubbard (formerly of Musictoday, Ticketmaster, Twitter and Rival) by mentioning the last game and concert I’d attended in the Before Times. That last musical event was a John Hiatt set at the Birchmere, which led Hubbard to recount how he’d once played that Alexandria venue himself.

4/21/2021: Verizon’s Slumping Video-Subscriber Numbers: Here’s What A Post-TV Provider Looks Like, Forbes

Seeing Verizon lose another stadium’s worth of pay-TV subscribers led me to take a closer look at both its Fios TV service and its sales pitch for it online, which at this point represents the softest of sells.

4/22/2021: WWE: Breaking down the data, Collision

I talked to WWE CTO Rajan Mehta about the network’s applications of technology… after offering the disclaimer that not only am I not anybody’s idea of a WWE viewer, as a D.C.-based journalist I must self-identify as a C-SPAN man.

4/22/2021: Facebook Exec Sounds Off On Its New Audio Features, Forbes

Fidji Simo, who heads Facebook’s app efforts, spoke at a couple of Collision panels about the social network’s upcoming audio features–while other Collision speakers made some good points about Facebook’s history of not thinking through the implications of new products and features.

4/24/2021: SmartTechCheck Podcast (4-23-21), Mark Vena

I returned to my tech-analyst friend’s podcast to discuss Apple’s announcements from its “Spring Loaded” event and talk about my findings from testing 5G hotspots around the D.C. area.

 

Weekly output: D.C. United’s online-TV experiment, 5G’s home-broadband potential, how the four carriers offer 5G, a 5G forecast for 2020

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One of this week’s stories isn’t like the others–because it doesn’t mention 5G wireless at all.

12/9/2019: What D.C. United’s streaming experiment can teach about soccer’s TV future, FierceVideo

D.C.’s soccer team tried to cut its own cord and go with online-only video coverage of matches. That didn’t work, but that doesn’t mean D.C. United was wrong to dump traditional pay TV–or that Major League Soccer has much use for broadcast partners that require an old-school cable or satellite TV package.

12/11/2019: Can 5G replace everybody’s home broadband?, Ars Technica

The second feature in this series for Ars covered 5G’s potential as a source of uncapped home broadband. I struggled mightily to find somebody, anybody, who could testify to their experience of the 5G Home service Verizon sells in small areas of a handful of cities and finally found a few users on Reddit willing to share their experiences.

12/11/2019: Want crazy-fast internet? Here’s what AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint offer right now, Fast Company

The four nationwide U.S. carriers are selling four degrees of 5G, and I couldn’t explain them all adequately without going over my usual word count. Note that we updated this post after publication to add a quibble from Verizon over my use of the 5G hotspot that firm sells to judge its 5G connectivity: That $650 M1000 hotspot apparently can’t share more than 400 Mbps or so of 5G speed over WiFi. (My friend Sascha Segan called that out in his review at PCMag, but I had missed that.)

12/12/2019: 5G’s rollout is confusing, uneven, and rife with problems, Fast Company

I wrote up an Opensignal forecast of 5G’s prospects in North America next year. Like me, the people at that London network-analysis firm have serious concerns over the confusion the carriers are introducing by hyping millimeter-wave 5G that many people won’t be able to use.