"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."
The firm's study, 'North American Fiber Broadband Report: FTTH Review and Forecast 2026-2030,' indicates that nearly $200 billion will be spent on fiber over the next five years, highlighting a significant investment in fiber-to-the-home services.
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.
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.
A router is the hub that sends internet traffic from the modem to every connected device. Even with a fast plan, an outdated or weak router can throttle home internet speed, causing buffering, lag, and slow loading times. This often shows up when multiple people stream, game, or join video calls at the same time.
The opportunity is to have more devices that are smart, adopting AI and [highlighting] the evolution of the original cloud AI with complementary support happening at the edge. We are able to grow the performance of platforms. Two things are converging: from one side, AI models are working with better performance [with a] reduced number of parameters, [and] at the edge, you can see more and more inference happening.
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.
Our 5G+ service is now available to millions of customers across the UK, and uniquely, it's available to everyone on O2 across all Plans - unlike other networks. The upgrade boosts performance in busy areas, including major venues that host big crowds, benefiting both residents and businesses.
Across 2025 as a whole, the company tracked more than 180 significant disruptions, with the final quarter dominated by cable damage, power problems, and routine operational failures. There was just one confirmed government-directed shutdown during the period. Tanzania saw a sharp drop in internet traffic on October 29 as violent protests broke out during the country's presidential election, with traffic falling by more than 90 percent. Traffic returned briefly before declining again, and routing data pointed to throttling rather than a clean shutdown.
Light-based internet provider Taara, which spun out of Alphabet's "moonshot" incubator last year, just launched Taara Beam to provide 25Gbps connectivity within cities over invisible beams of light - line of sight permitting. Unlike last year's Taara Lightbridge, which connects communities separated by water and mountains at distances up to 20km (over 12 miles), the shoebox-sized Beam can be mounted to street poles and roof tops for city-wide connectivity at distances up to 10km. The 8kg (less than 20 pounds) device typically consumes about 90W.
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.
A new rumor from a Chinese leaker suggests that Apple's C2 modem which is expected to be featured inside the iPhone 18 Pro series will support 5G satellite connectivity. The rumor claims the C2 modem will offer support for New Radio Non-Terrestrial Networks (NR-NTN) connectivity. This means devices with the new modem will be able to connect to low-Earth orbit satellites for direct internet access in areas without traditional cellular coverage.
Stefanovic found that Starlink carried data more quickly than connections that started on European cellular networks, despite the space broadband service often requiring more network hops and not using Tier 1 networks. She hypothesized that Starlink's performance can be attributed to the satellite-to-satellite laser connections SpaceX employs, which route traffic across the satellite network so it can reach the most appropriate terrestrial egress point. That laser network, she suggested, should perhaps be considered a new routing layer for the internet.
Edge computing is a type of IT infrastructure in which data is collected, stored, and processed near the "edge" or on the device itself instead of being transmitted to a centralized processor. Edge computing systems usually involve a network of devices, sensors, or machinery capable of data processing and interconnection. A main benefit of edge computing is its low latency. Since each endpoint processes information near the source, it can be easier to process data, respond to requests, and produce detailed analytics.
"Despite generational differences in the types of problems experienced, one thing is clear: wireless network quality is strong," Carl Lepper, J.D. Power senior director of technology, media and telecom, said in a prepared statement about the mobile study.
The achievement was revealed at the recent CES 2026, using commercial modem silicon, with real satellite-to-satellite mobility, leading to a standard 5G phone said to stay connected while switching between satellites, using the new 3GPP Release 19 n252 band, as defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) under Release 1. The demo also represented the public validation of n252 in an NTN system, a band expected to be adopted by next-generation low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations.