Musk Pauses Twitter Deal, Telefonica and OneWeb Join Forces, Ting to Bring Fiber to Alexandria, Va.
Musk has taken a step back from the acquisition, but insists he still intends to purchase Twitter.
Benjamin Kahn
May 16, 2022 – SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced in a tweet on Friday he is pausing his multibillion-dollar deal to acquire Twitter to verify stats about spam accounts on the platform.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 [percent] of users,” he Tweeted, before issuing a follow-up tweet, “Still committed to acquisition.”
In subsequent tweets, Musk emphasized the need for transparency in how Twitter recommends items on users’ feeds. “I’m not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it’s trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints,” he said. “Open source is the way to go to solve both trust and efficacy.”
Telefonica and OneWeb partner to serve rural communities
On Friday, Telefonica and OneWeb announced a partnership to serve rural and remote communities across both Latin America and Europe.
The goal is to utilize Telefonica’s terrestrial fixed and mobile infrastructure combined with OneWeb’s low earth orbit satellites to improve broadband penetration in communities that may otherwise go unserved.
“By partnering with OneWeb, we can augment our portfolio by offering solutions that require low latency,” Telefónica Global Solutions CEO Julio Beamonte said. “Our experience will be essential when adapting the OneWeb solution to provide corporate, [business-to-business] and cellular backhaul services and help fuel adoption of critical business applications in the hardest-to-connect areas.
Ting to bring fiber to Alexandria, Va.
On Monday, Ting Internet announced that it would become Alexandria, Virginia’s first city-wide fiber provider.
Ting was awarded the contract by the city to connect 90,000 addresses across Alexandria, and construction is slated to begin this summer.
“Fiber internet brings significant economic opportunity and technological resilience to communities, benefiting local residents and businesses for decades to come,” Ting Executive vice president Jill Szuchmacher said in a release.
In her statement, Szuchmach called the build “future-proof” – a term many fiber providers have adopted to reflect the ability for the network to scale to greater capacity and speeds.
Ting will also provide internet at no cost to the consumer for a subset of addresses as part of its digital equity and inclusion program.
