FTC Sues Meta, USDA Awards $401M for Broadband, Ookla Acquires CellRebel
‘Meta in recent years has set its sights on building, and ultimately controlling, a VR ‘metaverse.’
Teralyn Whipple
July 28, 2022 – The Federal Trade Commission filed for an injunction Wednesday to block Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, from buying virtual reality company Within.
“Meta in recent years has set its sights on building, and ultimately controlling, a VR ‘metaverse,’” read the FTC’s complaint, listing several moves Meta made to acquire virtual reality studios. The metaverse is a 3D virtual world where virtual characters meet as if they were in the real world.
Meta has “become a key player at each level of the VR ecosystem: in hardware with its Meta Quest 2 headset, in app distribution with the Quest Store, and in apps with Beat Saber and several other popular titles,” the complaint claimed.
FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan argued that regulators must stop violations of competition and consumer safety when it comes to virtual and augmented reality, not just in areas of business where companies already dominate the market, according to Competition Policy International.
In February, the company announced that Horizon Worlds, its metaverse platform that allows players to interact with friends and build virtual worlds together, grew to 300,000 users.
USDA plowing $400M into broadband
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that it is investing $401 million to provide high-speed internet for rural businesses and residents in 11 states across the nation.
The announcement includes money from loan and grant programs ReConnect and the Telecommunications Infrastructure Loan and Loan Guarantee program.
The funds will support high-speed internet investments in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota and Texas. Several of which will connect people and businesses on Tribal lands.
Uprise LLC will receive a $27.1 million grant to deploy fiber-to-the-premises in a Nevada county as part of Thursdays announcement. It plans to connect over 5,00 addresses with symmetrical service of 200 megabits per second.
Midvale Telephone Company is set to receive a $10.6 million loan to build fiber networks in Idaho and Arizona that will connect over 500 addresses. Arkansas Telephone Company will receive a $12 million grant to connect over 1,000 addresses via fiber-to-the-premises.
USDA plans to make additional investments for rural high-speed internet later this summer through the ReConnect Program.
Ookla acquires CellRebel
Performance measurement company Ookla announced Wednesday that it is acquiring CellRebel, a company aiming to help operators and telecommunications companies improve mobile networks worldwide.
Together, the companies said they hope to bring enhanced consumer network experience insights to the global telecommunications marketplace, read the announcement.
“The complexity of modern networks demands diversified streams of data to fuel holistic insights on performance, quality, and accessibility,” Doug Suttles, founder and CEO of Ookla, said in a statement. “It is vital that we understand more about consumer experiences with networks, and CellRebel brings billions of daily data points with innovative analytical views to help fulfill this need worldwide.”
CellRebel will bring a robust localized network experience data and sophisticated data visualization capabilities, continued the report, which will support network performance and optimization use cases. CellRebel will bring a “host” of real world consumer experience measurements to Ookla’s portfolio, the announcement said.
Ookla is a sponsor of Broadband Breakfast.
