Weekly output: inflight WiFi, Visible’s prepaid Verizon home 5G, Uber’s travel ambitions, AT&T emergency response

Happy World Press Freedom Day to all who celebrate! Which should be all who don’t want to accept the lies of people in power.

I wrote an extra post for Patreon readers Wednesday explaining three fair ways that you can take one story idea and sell it more than once.

4/28/2026: Looking for Fast Wi-Fi on Your Next Flight? Pick an Airline With Starlink, PCMag

This was going to be a straightforward writeup of Ookla’s report about Speedtest measurements of inflight connectivity, but some details seemed just off enough to require follow-up questions.

4/29/2026: Verizon’s Visible Prepaid Brand Adds $300-Per-Year 5G Home Broadband, PCMag

This was going to be a a straightforward writeup of Verizon’s prepaid brand reselling Verizon’s fixed-wireless home broadband at a discount, but then I couldn’t get Visible’s site to show me the FCC-mandated broadband-facts label or even let me start a service order.

5/1/2026: Uber wants to be your travel agent, concierge, and personal shopper next, PCMag

I took a day trip to New York Wednesday to cover Uber’s Go-Get press event. This Amtrak run was not like any of the others I’ve taken earlier between D.C. and NYC because it featured infrastructure that hadn’t been first built by the Pennsylvania Railroad 90-plus years ago: the new Portal Bridge in the Meadowlands, which is replacing a janky old drawbridge that sometimes gets stuck open.

5/1/2026: For AT&T, Disaster Recovery Includes Flying COWs and a Robot Dog, PCMag

I spent a couple of hours in one of the parking lots next to the former site of RFK Stadium–it’s still weird to see nothing where that concrete donut had stood since 1961–to check out the exhibit of emergency-response hardware that AT&T had set up there.

AUSTIN–This week started with stories datelined from a city some 4,000 miles east of D.C. and ends with pieces datelined from a city about 1,300 miles southwest of home.

3/4/2024: SpaceX rivals pitch their phone-to-satellite alternatives, Light Reading

I wrote most of this piece recapping an MWC panel featuring multiple non-SpaceX satellite-to-phone services–including my Falls Church neighbors Lynk Global–on the flight home to D.C., then somehow pieced together enough scraps of jet-lagged consciousness to finish and file it Thursday night.

3/5/2024: FWA cheer spreads across the world, Light Reading

My MWC coverage wrapped up with my writing and filing this post about fixed-wireless access Friday afternoon. One thing that continues to be great about this event: how it exposes me to multiple non-U.S. perspectives on wireless-service situations we have here.

3/6/2024: Biden’s Broadband Chief Sounds Alarm on Expiring Affordable-Internet Subsidy, PCMag

This post was going to recap a few different panels at ACA Connects Summit, hosted by a D.C. trade group for smaller Internet providers, and then a publicist for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration asked if I’d like to sit down with NTIA administrator Alan Davidson for a quick conversation after his panel.

3/9/2024: 5G Home Internet Soars in 2023, As Cable and Phone-Based Broadband Slump, PCMag

I wrote up the latest subscriber stats gathered by Leichtman Research Group, showing the continued conquests of fixed-wireless services. Contrary to a prediction I’d offered in a post about a previous LRG broadband update, T-Mobile did not end 2023 as the fifth-biggest ISP because the privately-held cable provider Cox still has a few more hundred thousand subscribers, in LRG’s estimate.

3/9/2024: Actors Union Rep Warns Game Studios Over AI: Odds of Strike Are 50-50, PCMag

I put this panel–featuring my fellow Georgetown grad Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, now SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator–on my SXSW schedule early on because of its intersection of technology, policy and culture.

3/10/2024: Printer Bashing and Staplers: ‘Office Space’ Cast Files a TPS Report at SXSW, PCMag

I quote from Office Space almost as often as any other movie I’ve seen–and that includes the original Star Wars trilogy and Dr. Strangelove–so there was no way I wasn’t going to see this panel. Even if I then had to watch it on SXSW’s YouTube stream because the room in the Austin Convention Center hit capacity while I was still on line to get in.

3/10/2024: Cybersecurity as a Cornerstone of Brand Trust, Grit Daily House

I moderated this panel–featuring Zach Eikenberry, CEO of Hook Security, Jess Garza, owner of Texas Performance Pyschology, and Andy Bennett, CTO, Apollo Information Systems–at an offsite venue for my fellow conference person Jordan French’s startup-industry publication.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/03/11/weekly-output-satellite-to-phone-services-fixed-wireless-access-broadband-buildout-risks-2023-broadband-subscriber-stats-actors-negotiating-for-ai-rights-office-space-reunion-how-companies-talk/

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