Sam Altman to Join Microsoft, New FCC Broadband Map, Providers Form 4.9 GHz Coalition
After being fired on Friday by the board of OpenAI, former CEO Altman will join Microsoft and lead its AI.
November 20, 2023 – Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced in an X post Monday that former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will be joining Microsoft after being fired from the machine learning company.
Over the course of the last four days, OpenAI has undergone several shifts in leadership, which includes OpenAI investor Microsoft acquiring OpenAI president and chairman Greg Brockman to lead an AI research team alongside Altman.
Brockman, who had been concurrently relieved from his role as chairman of the OpenAI board, announced his resignation Friday via X, upon learning that the board had decided to fire Altman.
OpenAI said in a blog post Friday that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”
OpenAI then notified The Information Saturday that Emmett Shear, co-founder of streaming site Twitch, would serve as CEO after having CTO Mira Murati serve that role in the interim.
Following Nadella’s announcement Monday morning, nearly 500 of the 700 OpenAI employees were signatories to a letter threatening to leave their roles to work under Altman and Brockman at Microsoft unless all of the current board members resign.
As of Monday, OpenAI board member Ilya Sutskever posted a message of regret on X regarding the board decision to remove Altman and Brockman. The phrase “OpenAI is nothing without its people,” is now emerging from employee’s X accounts.
FCC announces new national broadband map
The head of the Federal Communication Commission announced Friday the third iteration of its national broadband map, showing just over 7.2 million locations lack access to high-speed internet.
That is less than the 8.3 million identified in May.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel noted that map data continue to fluctuate less between iterations, showing improvements in map accuracy.
Previous iterations of the national broadband map had been criticized for not accurately depicting areas with and without service, with widespread concern that that would impact the allocation of Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding.
The map outlines where adequate broadband service is and is not available throughout the nation and provides viewers with information on the providers who service those areas and the technology used to do so.
Providers form spectrum advocacy coalition
A group of telecom industry players including Verizon and T-Mobile announced Thursday the formation of the Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure to advocate for select use of the 4.9 GigaHertz (GHz) spectrum band.
The coalition is in support of prioritizing state and local public safety agencies as main users of the 4.9 GHz band, while ensuring that non-public safety licensees operate on the band to avoid interference.
“Public Safety agencies have vastly different needs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and they should decide what compatible non-public-safety use means within their jurisdictions,” read the coalition’s letter.
In January of this year, the FCC adopted a report to manage the use of the 4.9 GHz band, while seeking comment on the role a band manager would play in facilitating license allocation between public safety and non-public safety entities.
It had proposed two methods of operation for the band manager in which it would either lease access rights from public-safety entities and then sublease that to non-public safety entities, or to facilitate direct subleasing between public safety operators and external parties.
In its letter to the FCC, the coalition announced support for the second of those methods stressing the fact that it will allow public safety license holders retain authority over who they sublease their spectrum to.
