Weekly output: NASA reopens lunar-lander contract, Verizon adds “Lite” home-5G plan

I got out of bed earlier than usual today to go cheer for people who had woken much earlier to go run 26.2 miles, because I see supporting people running the Marine Corps Marathon as a civic duty. Saturday saw me taking on another civic duty: poll-worker training for the 15-plus-hour day I have coming up Nov. 4.

Patreon readers got a bonus post from me this week: an explanation of why it pays for freelancers to know which topics don’t have full-time coverage by a staff writer at a client.

10/21/2025: NASA Reopens Lunar Lander Contract, and Elon Musk Is Big Mad, PCMag

I wasn’t sure that NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy saying that the space agency would seek new bids to build a lunar lander for the first U.S. moon landing since 1972 would amount to a PCMag story. And then Elon went on a rage-tweeting spree about that…

10/23/2025: Verizon Adds Cheaper, Data-Capped ‘Lite’ Wireless Home Broadband Option, PCMag

Verizon is a few years behind T-Mobile in selling a data-capped version of its home fixed-wireless service in areas with limited capacity, but its data cap is much more forgiving than T-Mobile’s.

#ArtemisIII #ElonMuskX #fixedWireless #FWA #HLS #home5G #moonLanding #SeanDuffy #Starship #Verizon5GHome

Anyone have Verizon 5G Home service? How well does it work? What upload and download speeds do you get? How much does it cost?

My partner’s family needs to get off Xfinity and I’m helping research options. Verizon’s web site is vague, but the contact form requires a Verizon phone number. Calling the phone number also has the phone tree ask for a Verizon phone number. I’m not a Verizon customer, I’m trying to do research. Maybe I have to drive to a store?

#verizon5g #verizon5ghome

If anyone out there is using Verizon 5G Home and is having problems with slow network or some websites not loading (including ironically verizon.com so your can't contact support) well I just discovered this is due to a firmware update which broke passthrough networking mode. Most Verizon customers would never have enabled that mode but if you're a power user that did and perhaps has to then see this Reddit thread for a solution: https://www.reddit.com/r/verizonisp/s/sXIGbtZGvE

#Verizon5GHome

This year’s business travel is in the books for me: With my return from Web Summit in Lisbon Friday, the rest of 2023 has no more out-of-town conference badges or hotel keys left. That’s pretty exciting, even if CES looms seven weeks away.

11/13/2023: T-Mobile Within Striking Distance of Becoming Fifth-Largest US ISP, PCMag

The way 5G has brought choice and competition to millions of American homes remains an underappreciated story in telecom.

11/14/2023: Is big tech killing trust?, Web Summit

I interviewed Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker and University of California at Irvine professor Veena Dubal about ways that people might reclaim some leverage against tech giants. Our conversation had some hiccups, in the form of acoustics that Whittaker said made it difficult for her to hear me–even while I could hear her mostly fine.

11/14/2023: Strike Up the Bands: White House National Spectrum Strategy Light on Mobile Details, PCMag

I stayed up late Monday to file this post unpacking the long-awaited release of the White House’s spectrum-policy roadmap–and explaining how some of the spectrum bands covered in the document seem unlikely to boost bandwidth to any phones or homes.

11/15/2023: Mozilla: Friends Don’t Get Friends These Tech Gifts, PCMag

I was going to write up the release of the 2023 edition of Mozilla’s “Privacy Not Included” anti-gift guide based on an advance look at the press release about it, then saw enough questions unanswered by that embargoed release that I decided to wait until the next morning to file. And then this nonprofit’s post announcing the guide had very little in common with the copy I’d seen before.

11/16/2023: Audience with a robot: AGI and a decentralised beneficial Singularity, Web Summit

My first panel Thursday had me interviewing one human, SingularityNet COO Janet Adams, and one non-human, that company’s talking, AI-powered robot Desdemona. I decided to test the robot’s conversational skills by asking her questions based on the Three Laws of Robotics and the Voight-Kampff Test, and she fielded them reasonably well.

11/16/2023: Raising money for robots, Web Summit

In my second panel Thursday, I interviewed Energy Robotics CEO Marc Dassler about the investment climate for robotics startups. We had fewer people show up to watch this, which I think has a great deal to do with this panel being scheduled right before a lunch break.

11/17/2023: Why Qualcomm Wants to Keep More of Your AI Offline, PCMag

I sat down with Qualcomm chief marketing officer Don McGuire Wednesday after watching one of his panels, then turned my notes from that interview into this post.

11/18/2023: Starship’s Second Flight Test Burns Bright But Not Quite Long Enough, PCMag

I assumed that jet lag would have me awake well before the scheduled launch time Saturday of SpaceX’s Starship rocket and so volunteered to write it up. I made a point of noting how much progress this incomplete test represented over April’s messier flight test and nodding to a Reuters report documenting some fairly gruesome workplace-safety issues with Starship.

https://robpegoraro.com/2023/11/19/weekly-output-wireless-broadband-rises-tech-vs-trust-national-spectrum-strategy-mozilla-non-gift-guide-ai-meets-robotics-robotics-startup-fundraising-qualcomms-on-device-ai-pitch-starship-f/

#BigTech #Desdemona #EnergyRobotics #fixedWirelessAccess #giftGuide #Lisbon #NationalSpectrumStrategy #onDeviceAI #PrivacyNotIncluded #Qualcomm #roboticsStartups #SingularityNet #SpaceX #spectrumBands #Starship #TMobileHome5G #techlash #Verizon5GHome #WebSummit

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.

4/20/2021: 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.

https://robpegoraro.com/2021/04/25/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-facebooks-new-audio/

#5G #AirTags #baseball #ChrisMarinak #Clubhouse #Collision #FacebookAudio #FidjiSimo #FiosTV #LTEHotspots #MLBTv #NathanHubbard #Netflix #newIMac #NFLX #OTTVideo #overTheTopVideo #RajanMehta #SpringLoaded #TMobileHomeInternet #TMobileM2000 #verizon #Verizon5GHome #Verizon8800L #VerizonLTEHomeInternet #Vz #WashingtonNationals #WWE