"Lehigh Valley residents deserve internet that works as hard as they do. We're not just expanding our network—we're giving customers a superior choice. By signing up now, residents can secure early access to faster speeds, better reliability, and a customer experience built for them."
"We share The Wonderful Company's vision of ensuring the entire Lost Hills community has access to reliable, high-speed Internet," said Matthew Murphy, CEO of unWired Broadband. "We're proud to play a role in making that vision a reality. Partnerships like this demonstrate how collaboration between the public and private sectors can expand critical infrastructure and help ensure families, students, and local businesses have the connectivity they need to succeed."
Sloot is one of more than a dozen customers with whom Marketplace has spoken who say they are frustrated with the poor customer service they received from Canada's big three telecoms: Rogers, Bell and Telus.
"The most important aspect of pricing for consumers is knowing their total price rather than an advertised price that comes with hidden fees: 88% of respondents believe all fees should be included in advertised pricing."
A 40% reduction in USF support would mean that broadband operators couldn't continue operations on existing networks, threatening the long-term viability of broadband access in rural areas. About half of the cost of network operating expenses are due to labor costs, which rise faster than inflation in rural areas.
Rise Internet represents who we are today and where we're headed. We believe great internet service isn't just about speed or technology. It's about responsiveness, local customer service, honest pricing and a promise to keep improving. Strong internet isn't a luxury utility confined to big city living, it's an essential service that supports work, education, health care and daily life.
Eight of the municipal networks studied beat their local provider competitors in median upload speed. Sherwood Broadband - in the town of the same name in Oregon - was the only one to beat its local competitor in median download speed.
Google Fiber, now just GFiber, will merge with Stonepeak's Astound Broadband to create a new network provider. Stonepeak will hold a majority ownership stake, while the existing GFiber executive team will run the company. According to the pair, the move gives GFiber the external capital and necessary focus to drive its next phase of expansion, allowing it to buildout its fiber footprint across the US.
The goal of the new USTelecom program is to show consumers, businesses, civic leaders, and policymakers why maintaining legacy copper for the small portion of end users is not an efficient approach. A key part of this is explaining why modern technology is better.
The FCC approval enables SpaceX to add 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites to orbit, doubling its current number and bringing its total network to 15,000 satellites. According to the FCC, the additional satellites will enable SpaceX to better provide low-latency, high-speed internet communications across the globe. The FCC approval should enable SpaceX to leverage its recently announced speed increases, which were announced on the social media platform X late last year. "Significant improvements in @starlink network performance in 2025, with median peak-hour network-wide speeds increasing by over 50%," Starlink Vice President of Engineering Michael Nicolls said in a tweet.
Sade Hogue was five months pregnant with her second daughter when her home lost power during a deadly 2021 winter storm that left millions of Texans without power or heat for days. Hogue and her family went to stay with relatives who still had electricity. Then, a few days later, they also lost power. "Not only are you worried about you, but you're worried about the unborn child because you don't know what the effects of this freeze is doing to the child as well,"
If you were affected by the Verizon outage earlier this month that took down the company's network for most of a day, the Federal Communications Commission wants to hear from you. In a document released earlier this week, the FCC explained that its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau was officially investigating the outage and was seeking information from frustrated customers, particularly those who tried to call 911 or other public safety numbers but couldn't.
Ookla said the growing use of ChatGPT and other AI tools places much more demand on mobile networks than the typical activities of browsing social media and the web, watching videos, texting, and making the occasional phone call. As a result, more speed and expanded capabilities will be necessary. The report said advanced AI capabilities like AI-enabled glasses will put a particular strain on upload connections in the future.
If your TikTok feed has felt a little off lately, it's not just you. TikTok says it's working to fix its service in the US following a power outage at one of its data centers that's caused widespread issues in the app. TikTok users have reported problems logging in and uploading videos, as well as with the app's "for you" algorithm.
Altogether, Cloudflare reported in its 2025 fourth quarter analysis that it observed more than 180 internet disruptions worldwide over the course of 2025, ranging from short, localized incidents to multiday nationwide outages. The most dramatic outages involved physical infrastructure failures, especially submarine cables and national power grids. For example, in Haiti, Digicel suffered two separate international fiber cuts in October and November, pushing traffic on its network close to zero during one incident and triggering multi‑hour outages until repairs were completed.