Over the last two years, the UK has surged ahead globally with its National AI Strategy, rapid public-sector adoption, and an ambitious AI Opportunities Action Plan. Boardrooms are investing aggressively, experimentation is everywhere, and GenAI is no longer a futuristic concept, it’s a line item in annual budgets.

Yet despite this ambition, many UK organisations are stuck in what analysts call the “Experimentation-to-Value Gap.” They can run pilots, but they can’t scale impact. They showcase proofs of concept, but they can’t embed AI into mission-critical operations.

In other words: many leaders are buying a Formula 1 car but using it for the weekly grocery run.

In July, the Trump administration released an artificial intelligence action plan titled “Winning the AI Race,” which framed global competition over AI in stark terms: whichever country achieves dominance in the technology will reap overwhelming economic, military, and geopolitical advantages. As it did during the Cold War with the space race or the nuclear buildup, the U.S. government is now treating AI as a contest with a single finish line and a single victor.

But that premise is misleading. The United States and China, the world’s two AI superpowers, are not converging on the same path to AI leadership, nor are they competing across a single dimension. 

Nearly 5 million U.S. homes, schools, libraries, and small businesses still lack access to reliable and affordable high-speed internet.

After years of work, states and territories are closer than ever to building new networks under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. But internet for all requires more than money: the hard work is far from done.

Key markers that will shape BEAD's progress:

Ookla published a WISP Report Card in November that looks at the speed performance of eight large WISPs – Etheric Networks, GeoLinks, NextLink, Resound Networks, Rise Broadband, Starry, Unwired Broadband, and Wisper Internet. Since this article was published, Starry has been acquired by Verizon. Ookla trended speed test results for each WISP by quarter from…

Two high-speed internet expansion projects funded by the Oklahoma Broadband office and the federal government have been completed in two southwest counties in Oklahoma.

Residents and businesses in Washita and Greer counties saw recent completion after being administered by the state office and funded through the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund.

The projects, completed by Dobson Fiber, are delivering what the State Broadband Office called “reliable, fiber-optic internet service” to 366 locations in and around Burns Flat and Granite. With the availability of fiber-optic technology, residents will now have access to faster speeds, improved reliability, and enhanced connectivity to support education, healthcare, business development, and everyday needs.

State and local leaders must find a way to carry out their digital equity plans if they want their communities to stay abreast of tech’s growing role in society, experts say. 

With industry leaders hailing innovations like agentic artificial intelligence as the next big thing in 2026 and beyond, government leaders who do not prepare their residents for a tech-forward future could fall further into the digital divide and miss out on the benefits of a modernized workforce and economy, experts say. 

The COVID-19 pandemic galvanized a lot of investment into digital inclusion and skills programs, as most jobs, classes and services entered a remote environment, but now states and localities are grappling with how to maintain the momentum of their digital inclusion initiatives amid budget and funding uncertainty and competing priorities.

Jan. 13, 2026 – Sertex Broadband Solutions has been awarded a $1.58 million contract to expand a community-owned fiber-to-the-home network in southeastern Vermont, adding approximately 60 miles of new fiber infrastructure across five towns.

After years of waiting, states and territories will soon begin breaking ground on projects intended to expand access to high-speed internet nationwide under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

In June of 2025, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the Department of Commerce agency responsible for administering this program, published updated rules for BEAD, rescinding previous guidance and conditional approvals for funding. The agency gave states 90 days to integrate new requirements and finalize their projects. On Nov. 18, the NTIA announced the first 18 approvals and has continued to make approvals on a rolling basis.

If you stand quietly in the nave of the former Christian Science church on Funston Avenue in San Francisco’s Richmond District, you can hear the sound of the internet breathing. It is not the chaotic screech of a dial-up modem or the ping of a notification, but a steady, industrial hum—a low-frequency thrum generated by hundreds of spinning hard drives and the high-velocity fans that cool them. This is the headquarters of the Internet Archive, a non-profit library that has taken on the Sisyphean task of recording the entire digital history of human civilization.

Here, amidst the repurposed neoclassical columns and wooden pews of a building constructed to worship a different kind of permanence, lies the physical manifestation of the "virtual" world. We tend to think of the internet as an ethereal cloud, a place without geography or mass. But in this building, the internet has weight. It has heat. It requires electricity, maintenance, and a constant battle against the second law of thermodynamics. As of late 2025, this machine—collectively known as the Wayback Machine—has archived over one trillion web pages.1 It holds 99 petabytes of unique data, a number that expands to over 212 petabytes when accounting for backups and redundancy.3

The scale of the operation is staggering, but the engineering challenge is even deeper.

New York communities can now apply for a new round of state funding aimed at expanding high-speed internet access.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that up to $36 million is available through the ConnectALL Municipal Infrastructure Program to support locally driven broadband projects in unserved and underserved areas across the state.

The program funds open-access, publicly controlled broadband infrastructure, giving municipalities more control over how internet service is delivered. Since launching, the Municipal Infrastructure Program has committed $268 million to projects in 24 counties, supporting more than 2,300 miles of new fiber optic lines and 68 wireless hubs serving more than 96,000 homes and businesses.

“Our ConnectALL initiative is delivering results — connecting thousands of homes and businesses to high-speed internet across every region of the state,” Hochul said.

Western Oklahoma – High speed fiber internet is now live for residents and businesses in and around Burns Flat and Granite, marking a major step forward for connectivity in western Oklahoma.

Two broadband expansion projects serving Washita and Greer counties have been completed with funding from the federal State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund and oversight from the Oklahoma Broadband Office. The projects were built by Dobson Fiber and deliver reliable fiber optic service to 366 locations across the two communities.

This dashboard tracks how BEAD Eligible Entities are progressing through major program milestones. Check back here to see how each state an

Last week, in a quiet room in Westminster, a group of leaders gathered to discuss AI. I cannot name them because we met under Chatham House rules, but I can say that the group included people who have built national systems, advised ministers at difficult moments, and lived with the real and messy constraints of digital change.

They understand the promise of AI. And they see, and experience, the structural barriers holding Britain back.

Among Americans with an opinion about cryptocurrency, 72% see it as an overhyped scam while only 28% consider it an exciting and important technology.

The nonstop cryptocurrency talk in Washington suggests an issue for which the American public must have deep interest and enthusiasm. In its 2024 platform, the Republican Party listed “Crypto” first among the emerging industries it would champion. Item three in Kamala Harris’s five-point “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” was “protect cryptocurrency investments.” President Donald Trump has promised to make the United States “the crypto capital of the world” while Senator Chuck Schumer declared, “we all believe in the future of crypto.”

But by “we all,” Schumer must have meant his audience at a “Crypto4Harris” fundraiser, because the rest of America has a different answer. In a survey of 1,000 Americans, conducted last year in partnership with YouGov, American Compass put the question directly:

By Greg Maynard Massachusetts is home to more than 250 local cable access stations. Bay Staters know them as the folks who videotape and broadcast local government meetings, high school sports and community public affairs shows. But trouble is looming. For the better part of a decade, the revenue these stations depend on has been…

For too long, businesses in our region have been accepting their connectivity limitations. If the legacy network could handle the emails, maybe a video conference or two, and a basic website, it was considered sufficient.But today, the internet isn't a utility you plug into; it's the foundation upon which your entire business strategy is built. If that foundation is cracking, your business is limited. It's time to shift away from merely managing outdated connections and start demanding infrastru

I was flying home from CES when a close friend and fellow Deadhead texted me the news of Bob Weir’s death. Coming off the high of a successful show, the message hit hard. Bob’s music is woven into every decade of my life. He was the soundtrack to the best moments and a lifeline during the hardest ones. Heading out with friends to follow the Dead was the closest I ever came to feeling like Jack Kerouac or any of the heroes of the American road.

Bob Weir joined the Grateful Dead at 15 and may have played more live shows than any musician in history. For him, music created community.  I had seen that same force at work days earlier in Las Vegas, where people from around the world came together to build, trade ideas, and push forward. “Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand” is from one of Bob’s songs and it also describes the magic that happens anywhere people of different backgrounds gather face to face with a common purpose.

The Dead were deeply embedded in Bay Area tech culture from the beginning. A remarkable number of early computer and internet pioneers were Deadheads: Stewart Brand, John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor, Steve Wozniak, Howard Rheingold, and others. Some of the first digital messages traded between researchers at Stanford and MIT in the early Arpanet era were Grateful Dead setlists. The band’s ethos influenced how these founders thought about digital rights, user communities, creative exploration, and the cultural tone of early Silicon Valley.

Starlink did something new and recently issued an update discussing the recent history and the outlook for the company. Perhaps the company will update this kind of report periodically. Coverage and Customers. Starlink says it became available in 42 new countries around the world during 2025. The company says it has over 6 million customers,…