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Global Broadband News

I love looking at news headings and articles from around the world. I’m fascinated by the fact that media, in different locations, choose a different lens to report a story. I had great fun researching global media on Mettacomms on Friday (13 September 2024), so I thought I’d share!

I used the Mettacomms platform – naturally – and was searching for articles about “broadband”. I kept the topic as open as possible assuming that I would get coverage of a lot of the same topics in different media. I searched for media coverage in Israel, USA, UK and India and I was absolutely blown away by the different choices of reader-relevant content that media, in different locations, chose to cover.

Heres’ how it  works: I chose a vertical – in this case Media. Within ‘Media’ I select a dropdown – choosing which country I want to review. Then I enter my search term – in this case ‘broadband’…. and here’s what I got back, in less than 10 minutes!

Multiple perspectives on the Broadband topic

My media search for articles about “broadband” returned me information on:

  • satellites over Gaza,
  • challenges to quantum network security,
  • setting up a satellite on a warship to get sports results,
  • designating datacentres as critical infrastructure,
  • the near monopoly of space by Starlink  and
  • the financial projections of one of the world’s largest broadband companies.

Let me tell you what the platform gave me, country by country.

Israel

In Israel, the focus was definitely on Elon Musk and the fact that his Starlink Satellites are now active in Gaza. The internet connectivity was activated in a hospital in Gaza with the support of Israel and the UAE.

United States of America (USA)

In the USA, there were two articles that really caught my eye. One was about the security of quantum networks (which instantly made me wonder how secure are they?). The second article was about broadband lobbying and the fact that the industry has stopped lobbying to revive low-income internet subsidies across the USA.  (There had been a low-income subsidy in place until summer of this year to encourage more uptake of broadband in poorer households).

United Kingdom (UK)

In the UK, I was drawn to a couple of articles which were entirely different again. The UK government has just granted “critical national infrastructure” status to datacentres. They were shaken to the core by the outages caused by the Crowdstrike incident apparently and decided that this piece of infrastructure needed protection. It is an interesting perspective when you consider that the Irish government’s focus seems to be on the volumes of electricity that these centres consume and how to prevent more being built until we solve the energy issue! Anyway – that’s just me going off on a tangent!! The second article in the UK was about a US navy chief, from the USS Manchester, who installed a satellite on a warship so that the crew had access to sports results!!

India

Finally, when I reviewed media in India, the broadband focus there was on the chair of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, who wants to see more competition in space. She is worried that Starlink has almost two thirds of the satellites in space right now, and has a huge volume of internet traffic. She is looking for competition. The other article from India was about Liberty Global, the spin-off of their Swiss telecom operator Sunrise, and their revenue projections for the coming year.

Authenticated Reference Sources

That’s why I love Mettacomms. A click of a button and you have the world at your fingertips. When you are done, you have the certainty of knowing that the information you read has been authenticated and validated as a source of reference so, whatever opinion you reach, or ‘nugget’ of conversation you take away with you, you have the certainly that the information is reliable. That means a lot into today’s world.

What’s the Benefit?

The benefit is that you get to understand what the media is saying about broadband in each of these countries. You immediately have a clear understanding of the broadband issues  which journalists believe are relevant to the readers in their country. It gives you C-Suite intelligence even if you are not sitting at the boardroom table.

Media

The media outlets that published the articles above that caught my eye were: Computer Weekly, Forbes, Independent (UK), Israel National News, NBC News, Satcom.com, Jewish Press and Ynetnews

Author – Ellen Gunning, CEO Mettacomms

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