Warner Music signed with Community to enable artists to personally text with fans, free of “social algorithm interference,” spam and ads, said the text messaging platform Monday. The deal is Community’s first with a major record label, it said. The collaboration gives artists a “direct line” to their fan base, “knowing they have an engaged and eager audience on the receiving end,” it said.

The Wireless ISP Association it’s developing a certification program “designed to protect vulnerable internet and cloud access from climate-related events.” Thursday, WISPA said it tapped David Theodore, chief technology officer of Climate Resilient Internet, to chair a working group developing best practices there.

MediaTek’s new Filogic series of chipsets, targeted for broadband routers, mesh systems, enterprise access points and retail routers, has Wi-Fi 6 and 6E support, and “ushers in a new era of smart Wi-Fi solutions” with “extreme” speeds, low latency and peak power efficiency, said the chipmaker Thursday. Devices using Wi-Fi 6 connections in the 6 GHz band “are designed to make use of wide 160 MHz channels and uncongested bandwidth” for rendering “multi-gigabit, low latency Wi-Fi,” it said. The Wi-Fi Alliance picked MediaTek as the Wi-Fi 6E test bed in January, said the company.

The in-flight connectivity market for business aircraft has largely recovered from the pandemic, said Valour Consultancy co-founder and analyst Craig Foster Thursday in a webinar, saying Gogo and Inmarsat are close to resuming installation rates in line with pre-COVID-19 trends. He said it will take a handful of years before new low earth orbit constellations filter through to smaller aircraft as those constellations' initial focus will be on large-cabin jets. He said small and mid-sized aircraft are technological challenges for LEO satellite services, such as creating electronically steered antennas for smaller aircraft. He said in the nearer term, the business aviation market will focus more on L-band service and air-to-ground systems.

It's "shameful" that "nearly half of all humanity" lacks internet access, said ITU Telecom Development Bureau Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin Wednesday in prerecorded remarks during the virtual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. Getting people connected "requires a laser focus" on "innovative, responsive, [and] adaptive regulation, innovative financing models, and innovative people-centric multistakeholder partnerships," Bogdan-Martin said: "Business as usual isn't going to cut it this time around, and we cannot sit back and hope that market forces alone will bridge the connectivity chasm." Giga, an initiative led by ITU and UNICEF, expects to complete connectivity mapping of 1 million schools in 36 countries to "connect at least 1,000 schools in each of our first 17 priority countries" by Dec. 31, Bogdan-Martin said.

A big hurdle to widespread free in-flight Wi-Fi -- limited satellite capacity -- could be lifted in three to five years due to intense competition from low-earth-orbit satellite constellations, plus more supply from high-throughput satellites, Northern Sky Research analyst Joseph Ibeh blogged Tuesday. That could spawn improved service and a sharp reduction in recurring monthly costs, making free Wi-Fi more feasible for many airlines, he said. Advertising-supported user portals and sponsored content also could become more of a norm, he said.

The Biden administration "stands ready" to enable Cubans to have “safe and secure access to the free flow of information on the Internet,” it announced Wednesday. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), the state's Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez (R) and other Republicans urged President Joe Biden to enable U.S. businesses to provide internet service to Cubans (see 2107160065). Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a joint fact sheet Wednesday detailing the actions. OFAC and BIS “stand ready to engage” with stakeholders to provide “guidance and respond to applications for specific licenses” under relevant regulations which help support Cuban internet access, said the fact sheet. It encourages interested parties to take advantage of general license exemptions for software and services for Cuban internet users and BIS license exemptions for the export and re-export of commodities, software and technology. The Senate’s 50-49 approval Wednesday of Senate Concurrent Resolution 14, the blueprint for a coming $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation measure (see 2108100062), followed voice passage Tuesday of an amendment from Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; and Rick Scott, R-Fla., aimed at pressing Biden administration facilitation of internet access to Cuba. The nonbinding Rubio-led amendment would create a Deficit Neutral Reserve Fund in the next reconciliation bill that would be used to develop and deploy tech to facilitate internet access to Cuba. Senators frequently propose DNRFs amid a budget reconciliation process to make a statement about myriad issues. “My colleagues sent a clear, bipartisan message that the United States is committed to getting uncensored and unrestricted internet access to the people of Cuba,” Rubio said.

Akamai had “de minimis” financial impact from the two service disruptions in as many months that cost some customers their connectivity (see 2107300039), said CEO Tom Leighton on a Q2 call Tuesday. “We lost, at the peak, about 2% of our traffic for up to one hour,” he said. “We care a lot about reliability at Akamai. It is core to everything we want to do, and we've put a ton of effort into making our solutions be reliable over the last 10-plus years.” Akamai had a “disastrous” outcome in 2004 when “we actually took the entire platform down for about an hour,” said Leighton. “That didn't happen in this case, but we did hurt hundreds of our customers, and we deeply regret that.” In both the recent outages, an update “caused a problem,” he said: “We are taking a fresh look at how we release updates to make sure that something like this won't happen again.”

Akamai acknowledges the “unacceptable situation” two recent service disruptions in as many months caused customers “and our need to restore” their confidence, blogged CEO Tom Leighton. “Many of our customers experienced interruptions in service, and for that I sincerely apologize,” he said. “Any downtime is unacceptable, and all of us at Akamai deeply regret the impact.” Neither disruption was caused by a cyberattack, Akamai said. “We have conducted a thorough review and root cause analysis of both incidents,” Leighton wrote Friday. Though the “direct causes of the incidents were different, our platform maintenance processes played a contributing role in both cases,” he said. “The safety mechanisms we had put in place to prevent problems associated with updates to these services did not perform in the manner necessary to prevent a disruption.” Akamai is performing “a full audit of all tools, systems, and processes associated with updates for all of our services,” he said: Until the audit is complete, “there will be additional manual supervision of all updates.”

Altice's Altice Mobile service is becoming Optimum Mobile, said the cable operator Friday. Altice said the name change is the start of a plan to align all its operations under its Optimum brand. The first of the moves takes effect Sunday.