The U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposed a rule update in April that would make it easier for people to install wireless repeater antennas—also known as signal boosters. In some rural regions, Wi-Fi can be the best way to extend the reach of fiber-optic networks at broadband speeds and at affordable prices.
The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), the lobbying group that proposed the change, argues that it’s necessary to keep up with market forces that are driving networks toward smaller hubs operating over shorter ranges. The update would also make it easier for communities to build more of their own Internet infrastructure. Already, despite rules in 26 U.S. states that create obstacles for community networks, some 3 million Americans, mostly rural, get their Internet that way.
Read the rest of this news story in the June IEEE Spectrum: [html] [pdf].
Spain’s centre-right People’s party suffered the worst defeat in its 30-year history, winning a mere 16.7 per cent of the vote as it was crushed between an insurgent far-right Vox party and the liberal anti-Catalan nationalist Ciudadanos.
Pablo Casado, who took over as PP leader nine months ago and has since steered his party sharply to the right and purged his party lists of associates of his predecessor Mariano Rajoy, admitted to the scale of the disaster.
“The results were very bad,” Mr Casado said, pinning the blame on the fragmentation of the rightwing electorate and the refusal of the other two parties to agree to local pacts to maximise support.
Read the rest of this news story in the Financial Times: [html].
The governing Socialist party (PSOE) has won Spain’s general election, taking 123 seats and giving prime minister Pedro Sánchez options to assemble a majority potentially without the support of Catalan separatists. The Socialists won 29 per cent of the vote and gained 37 seats on the previous election in 2016 in a decisive victory over a weakened rightwing opposition which split into three with the breakthrough of the ultranationalist Vox, which took 24 seats.
Read the rest of this news story in the Financial Times: [html].
Cattle may be at home on the range, but modern ranchers need to be able to find their wayward cattle, and inefficiencies in tracking cost the cattle industry around US $4.8 billion a year. At a recent conference about connected devices in Amsterdam, Jan Willem Smeenk of the Dutch company Sodaq and Thomas Telkamp of the startup Lacuna Space talked about connecting cattle into a future Internet of bovines.
This news story first appeared in the March 2018 issue of IEEE Spectrum [html] [pdf].
Journalist covering global development by way of science and technology.