The California Public Utilities Commission—a state agency that regulates power, water, and telecommunications companies, as well as movers, taxicabs, rideshare services, and self-driving cars—is headquartered in a large, curved building on Van Ness Avenue, in San Francisco, that looks a bit like a sun visor. Last Thursday morning, a small group of protesters gathered on the steps in advance of the commission’s vote on whether to allow the autonomous-vehicle companies Cruise and Waymo to expand their fleets, and charge for rides, like a taxi service, in the city. A man holding a megaphone denounced corporate greed, while other people unfurled hand-painted banners. One depicted a dead dog lying in the street—possibly a reference to the small dog killed earlier this summer by a Waymo car. Another showed an autonomous vehicle in flames bearing down on a crowd of firemen, police officers, and taxi-drivers. “Shut the robos down,” the protesters cried.

Members of Cruise’s public-affairs team held a press conference off to the side. Nearby, another demonstration, organized by Waymo, was forming. People wearing yellow shirts that read “SAFER ROADS FOR ALL” were congregating behind Tim Elder, the president of the California chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, as he addressed a row of cameras, touting the benefits of autonomous vehicles, or A.V.s, for blind passengers.

Earlier in the week, the commission had met with representatives from the city’s fire department, police department, and public-transit system, who had voiced their opposition to expanding autonomous-vehicle service. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Planning Department had also objected. Among their concerns was the lack of publicly available data about the cars and their operations. Although the A.V. companies do share some data with regulators, they do not disclose data about individual accidents, citing confidentiality concerns.

The companies tout their vehicles’ safety records: they say that their driverless cars follow the speed limit, are up to date on new regulations, and have so far had fewer collisions than human drivers. But city agencies have taken to collecting their own incident reports, and claim that problems with the cars have increased dramatically in recent months, presumably owing to increased driverless-car activity. The C.P.U.C. reported that first responders had filed nearly six hundred incident reports about driverless cars since June of 2022, while the fire department noted that its members had filed nearly sixty “unusual occurrence” reports in about the same time period. The cars block traffic; they stop without warning; they reportedly drive through stop signs and toward pedestrians in crosswalks; and, in their adherence to preprogrammed rules, they can behave in illogical, erratic ways. (Driverless cars cannot be cited by the police for moving violations.) In March, following a rainstorm, two driverless Cruise cars drove through caution tape, then proceeded to maneuver into a tangle of fallen electric-trolley lines and drag a wire several yards up the block. A.V.s have run over fire hoses, blocked fire stations, and sidled up to engines at active fire scenes, only to stall. (“An electric car with no driver kept driving towards fire scene and was going to run over our hoses and possibly put our firefighters at risk. . . . After warning car twice I smashed the window and the vehicle stopped,” one fireman wrote, in a report.)

Cruise and Waymo say that they have taken various measures to train emergency responders on how to dismantle or otherwise engage with their driverless vehicles; they have offered on-site training, produced instructional videos, and launched an emergency call-in line. But responders note that the tactics they’ve been urged to use, such as disabling a stalled car and pushing it out of the way, are time-consuming and resource-intensive in situations in which every second matters. “It is not the responsibility of my people to get in one of your vehicles and take it over,” Jeanine Nicholson, the San Francisco fire chief, told the commission, referring to Waymo’s and Cruise’s driverless vehicles. “It is the responsibility of the autonomous-vehicle companies to not have them impact us in the first place.”

After the meeting with the city agencies, the local NBC affiliate ran a widely shared segment on the vote, in which Bigad Shaban, its reporter, hopped into a Cruise vehicle for a test drive with a driving instructor. On a busy, two-way, six-lane street, the driverless car drove haltingly for about three minutes, occasionally between lanes, then accelerated toward the median and stopped outright, obstructing traffic for twenty minutes with two passengers inside. (A statement from Cruise, issued to NBC, cited complications from an “unexpected construction zone.”) Later that week, Mission Local, a San Francisco news site, published many of the “unusual occurrence” reports filed by the San Francisco Fire Department, detailing the specific struggles and detrimental encounters between first responders and Cruise’s and Waymo’s self-driving cars. Still, some critics of A.V. expansion have felt that the deck was stacked. The C.P.U.C., whose members are governor-appointed, has been criticized for its lack of transparency. One of its commissioners, John Reynolds, worked as managing counsel at Cruise from 2019 to 2021. There was pressure for Reynolds to recuse himself, though no indication that he might do so.

I asked a few people wearing the yellow T-shirts whether Safer Roads for All was a nonprofit or some sort of independent organization. No one seemed to know. One man told me that he worked for Waymo; several participated in Waymo’s Trusted Testers program. Soon, we proceeded into the auditorium, which had rows of pink-brown seats and a dark-blue carpet; the air felt thick and stagnant. It was precisely the sort of dingy, functional, bureaucratic place where pivotal decisions about the future of technology—involving public safety, urban infrastructure, accessibility, climate change, economic opportunity, surveillance, and policing—are made.

Public comment began at twenty minutes past eleven. “I’m a software engineer, and I’m very concerned about the lack of regulation around A.V. software,” the first commenter, who wore a baby-blue shirt and sunglasses pushed up on his head, said. “In any other industry where software controls dangerous mechanical devices, there are significant regulations to make sure that software is safe.” Calmly, he noted that stiff regulations govern the autopilot software in airplanes and the software controlling power plants. “With A.V.s, we have none of these assurances,” he went on. “We don’t know how thoroughly it’s being tested, or in what scenarios. We don’t know what kind of bugs they are finding. . . . Cars can be extremely dangerous, and it’s negligent to expand before we make sure that the software is safe.” Beside me, a man worked in pencil on the puzzles-and-games page of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The second commenter presented a statement from a friend, a volunteer firefighter, on another issue—the retirement of copper-wire landlines. “I need the safety and reliability of wired equipment,” the commenter read out loud. “It is a matter of survival in the hills of Marin County, where wildfires can happen quickly.” The writer of the statement said that “exposure to Wi-Fi” raised her blood pressure “to dangerous levels”: “I cannot use any wireless Wi-Fi or smart technology without actually risking my life,” the commenter read. Then a dull chime rang out, signalling the end of his allotted sixty seconds.

Some two hundred people had signed up to comment. There were taxi- and Uber-drivers who described fearing for their jobs and families, and who condemned the double standards applied to A.V.s. (If human-driven cars stalled the way A.V.s did, one professional driver pointed out, they would be towed, whereas A.V.s are left on the road.) There was a woman in a mobility scooter who wore a white helmet, and opposed the expansion of autonomous vehicles on the ground that they might not recognize her as a human. There was a self-identified advocate for workers’ government, who decried the corporate impulse, from Hollywood to A.I. companies, to “eliminate the human being.” (Another man closer to the speaker’s lectern stuck his hands in the air and wiggled all ten fingers in agreement.) The director of a disability-rights advocacy organization spoke in favor of A.V.s, describing them as agents of independence, and compared opposition to late-nineteenth-century anxiety about the bicycle. A wheelchair user in their mid-thirties spoke against A.V. expansion, citing a lack of clarity on accessibility standards, specifically around safe exit and entry, vehicle response time, and the hours and areas of availability. At the end of their sixty seconds, people clapped.

There were commenters who said that they felt safer bicycling alongside A.V.s and commenters who said the opposite. Some predicted that driverless taxis would be followed by driverless delivery vehicles, and widespread job loss; others pointed out that driverless cars cannot assist with luggage, call out to blind passengers, load and secure walkers and wheelchairs, intervene in back-seat disputes or assaults, or administer Narcan. One San Francisco resident noted that people who wished to ride in existing A.V. taxis were required to sign a liability release. “You guys aren’t stupid,” he said, addressing the commission. “Don’t be stupid.” A number of commenters suggested that it was irresponsible to expand infrastructure for private vehicles, even electric ones, during a climate crisis; it would be better to invest in public transportation.

The president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, a victim-service advocate from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and a member representing the Service Employees International Union Local 87 all spoke in favor of A.V. expansion. (Cruise has signed an agreement with the union chapter for custodial service in its charging garages.) “As a father of three adult daughters who have had unwelcome advances by drivers, no such inappropriate behavior will ever be incurred by autonomous vehicles,” an orthopedic surgeon said. A different father agreed, noting that, although he would never put his preteen daughter in a car with a stranger, he looked forward to putting her in a Cruise A.V. and sending her to the Stonestown Galleria, a shopping mall. Meanwhile, several more people identified as electromagnetic-sensitive. “I need my landline,” one said. “I cannot use a cell phone without becoming ill. There are so many like me that are unrecognized.” A little boy in the back of the auditorium, who had been vigorously working his jaw, emitted a perfect bubble of chewing gum.

It seemed that, in the absence of meaningful data, no side would be able to sell the other on its vision of the future. (It also seemed that any speaker who introduced himself as a resident of West Marin could be relied upon to comment on the issue of copper-wire landlines.) Anecdotes reigned, as did predictable but gridlocked dichotomies—technophobes versus futurists, human drivers versus computers. Whether various incidents involving A.V.s were signs of technological maturity or immaturity was a matter of perspective: If a car nearly hit a person but didn’t, was that a good sign or a bad one? As the day wore on, some commenters began to bristle. “That yes money can buy a lot of fuckin’ cheese, won’t it, you goddam rat,” one man said, addressing the commissioner John Reynolds—rudely, if poetically—over the call-in line. A woman recounted, “In some taxis and Ubers, I’ve encountered the smell of marijuana, I’ve seen beer cans in the back”—signs, she thought, of driverly inebriation. “A cabdriver earlier mentioned that she drives ten hours a day, which I find unsafe,” she said. “I wouldn’t want my driver on the end of a ten-hour shift.” I checked my phone; it was nearly 4 P.M. Five tedious, fascinating hours had passed.

A couple of days ago, Apple announced that it will be rolling out new technology that allows it to scan photos uploaded to iCloud using on-device machine learning and comparing their hashes to known images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC) repository. It also stated that it would inform parents if a child under 13 years of age receives or sends sexually explicit photos.

The move has drawn a lot of attention and criticism, with an open letter protesting the matter getting over 5,000 signatories at the time of this writing.

The open letter in question can be seen here. It is addressed directly to Apple and says that while the company's moves are well-intentioned because child exploitation is a serious issue, they create a backdoor in the ecosystem which undermines fundamental privacy rights of customers. The document further says that since the methodologies use on-device machine learning, they have the potential to break end-to-end encryption.

It also cites quotations from several organizations and security experts to emphasize that the tech is prone to misuse and undermines privacy. An excerpt reads:

Immediately after Apple's announcement, experts around the world sounded the alarm on how Apple's proposed measures could turn every iPhone into a device that is continuously scanning all photos and messages that pass through it in order to report any objectionable content to law enforcement, setting a precedent where our personal devices become a radical new tool for invasive surveillance, with little oversight to prevent eventual abuse and unreasonable expansion of the scope of surveillance.

[...] The type of technology that Apple is proposing for its child protection measures depends on an expandable infrastructure that can't be monitored or technically limited. Experts have repeatedly warned that the problem isn't just privacy, but also the lack of accountability, technical barriers to expansion, and lack of analysis or even acknowledgement of the potential for errors and false positives.

In light of the above, the letter has demanded that Apple immediately halts its deployment of the tech and issue a statement that confirms its commitment to user privacy. It has cautioned that the rollout will undermine all the work that has been so far towards user privacy.

The open letter has currently been signed by 5,544 individuals and 31 organizations including IVPN, Gigahost, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and more. You can also become a signatory via GitHub here. For its part, Apple has already acknowledged that people are worried about its new tech, but that is because of misunderstandings that it will clarify with time.

California today cleared all-day paid robotaxi service in San Francisco—with unlimited fleets of self-driving cars. Soon, anyone in the city might be able to hail a driverless car with a few taps of a phone. And San Francisco cab and ride-hail drivers will have new, automated competition.

The 3-1 vote by the California Public Utilities Commission came in response to applications from Cruise, backed by General Motors, and Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet. It was taken in a packed San Francisco hearing room after a marathon six-hour public comment session, over strenuous objections from San Francisco officials and some vocal residents. They urged the CPUC to deny any expansion, saying that even after years of testing on the city’s winding, foggy, and sometimes chaotic streets, the vehicles are not ready for prime time.

While driverless cars have delighted some early testers in San Francisco and sent tourists scrambling to post photos on social media, they have also frozen in the city’s streets and created traffic jams. The robots’ occasional struggles to interpret traffic conditions have in some cases delayed first responders, obstructed public transit, and disrupted construction work.

Cruise and Waymo have said that these unpredicted stops are infrequent and are the safest way to handle “edge case,” or unusual, situations. But the city asked the CPUC to slow the deployment of self-driving cars, and to force the companies to hand over more specific data on what the vehicles are doing on its streets. The controversy delayed the vote by two months, as commissioners gathered more information from city officials and the robotaxi companies themselves.

For Cruise and Waymo, the approval was an important step toward turning billions spent chasing a signature dream of the tech industry into a viable business—and to delivering returns to external investors that have backed the projects. General Motors reported $1.9 billion in losses on Cruise in 2022, a jump over the $1.2 billion loss the year before, despite expanding its paid rides program. Now, Waymo will be permitted to operate at speeds up to 65 miles per hour in the city; Cruise can travel up to 35 miles per hour.

Today’s approval does not place a limit on the size of their fleets, and the companies have not indicated how many robotaxis they will operate in San Francisco. Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina said in a statement that the company will gradually over the coming weeks invite more than 100,000 people on a waiting list for robotaxi service to ride.

Before announcing her yes vote, CPUC commissioner Darcie Houck warned Cruise and Waymo that approval for expansion “comes with tremendous responsibility, and they need to live up to this responsibility by putting safety first and foremost.” She said that California’s Department of Motor Vehicles and the CPUC could retract or change the companies’ permit requirements, and she called for a three-month check-in with the robotaxi operators, San Francisco officials, and commission staff.

Through a quirk of state law, the power to decide the robotaxis’ business fate fell to the state’s regulator best known for overseeing more established public services such as power, water, and telecommunications. The CPUC also regulates taxi and ride-hail services, giving it the final say in whether Waymo and Cruise could roll out their business model for self-driving cars full-time.

• The video-gaming industry is an early adopter of 5G technology.
• The tech helps game development and playing, especially in the growing sector of cloud gaming.
• It's a key component of AR and VR gaming as more headsets are scheduled to hit the market.
• This article is part of "5G Playbook," a series exploring one of our time's most important tech innovations.

The video-game industry is a behemoth; some estimate it could grow to be worth more than $320 billion this decade. So it's little wonder that it's adopting 5G as a cornerstone technology of its future.

It's the technology that powers mobile broadband, and now 5G is being used to speed up the delivery of games to end players, as well as to reduce latency within mobile games, allowing higher-quality graphics games to be played on mobile hardware, which wouldn't have been possible just a few years ago. It's also kick-starting the cloud-gaming revolution — removing the need for any kind of physical gaming media.

"The big, significant change in having 5G technology for people is obviously that it's faster and more stable internet for everyone," Bhavina Bharkhada, the head of communications and campaigns at Ukie, the trade body for the UK gaming industry, told Insider.

When it's available, 5G offers users higher data-transfer speeds and lower latency, which "help make playing games so much more fun," Bharkhada said.

The lower latency of 5G makes a consequential difference for gamers when they're tasked with making split-second decisions on where to shoot and what to block.

"Low latency is absolutely crucial to all that," she said.

"With faster internet, better connection speeds, and improved connections come a better gaming experience," James Whatley, the chief strategy officer at the gaming-creative agency Diva, told Insider.

The tech offers a revolution in gaming because of the simple advance in infrastructure, Whatley said: "More data packets can be exchanged at speed, meaning higher-quality output of games."

Mobile and cloud gaming could see the most change

For Whatley, there are real opportunities for so-called AAA game studios — the huge companies that release household titles.

"The genuine benefit of 5G is the enablement of AAA game-streaming services," he said. "Being able to boot up the latest AAA release and stream to your handheld or console device at high definition and/or 4K instantly is only really enabled by 5G technology."

Cloud gaming, where you can play games hosted in remote data centers without owning any physical game disc or cartridge, has become a major growth area for the industry. Research from the tech provider Ericsson found that 35 services launched cloud-gaming platforms in 2022, with more expected this year.

One of the biggest and longest-standing cloud-gaming platforms is Xbox Cloud Gaming, which was launched by Microsoft in 2019. Whatley said he believed that the success of Xbox Cloud Gaming was dependent on the rollout of 5G technology worldwide.

Such technology allows players to game not only on their home consoles but also on mobile devices. In previous years, that wouldn't have been possible because of slow internet speeds and the high data volumes required to render graphics and send and receive information about player movements. But with 5G's superfast internet speeds, it's possible to mimic the console experience wherever you are.

Bharkhada said cloud gaming would be a driver of the gaming sector: "5G is going to be really, really important because more players can connect to each other in that multiplayer experience."

At present, 5G is mostly used in mobile games but set to soon be used for cloud and streaming services when it becomes more widely available, as well as a new gaming use case: augmented- and virtual-reality headsets. The release of the Apple Vision Pro in early 2024 may kick-start a race for superfast, immersive games using the headset.

"Suddenly, that technology can be used by anyone," Bharkhada said. "It just opens up a whole host of opportunities that we've probably not had." 

Changes in gaming could trickle down to other industries

What happens in the games industry often trickles down to the wider world in time. Some TV productions, for instance, use the Unreal Engine, a game-rendering service, to produce real-time 3D graphics for sports analysis. Given that, Bharkhada said she believed that an increase in the quality of mobile and cloud gaming would also have positive effects on industries that borrowed elements from the gaming industry.

Video games are used as virtual training platforms for industries where the cost of real-world training is prohibitive, and 5G can help enable that. Also, the promise of immersive gaming through headsets could act as a test bed for real-world developments.

"Using that technology and testing it in our sector to then deploy across other sectors, I think, could be really beneficial," Bharkhada said.

The Golden State has quite a reputation for its contributions to the history of technology and the internet. From Apple to Intel to Silicon Valley, California is where it’s at. So it’s no surprise the state’s biggest metro areas are also great places to find fast, reliable home internet connections. Got to keep that data moving for remote workers, gamers and folks just looking to kick back and stream vintage ChiPs episodes at the end of the day. 

City dwellers will likely have several ISPs to choose from, but we want to give a special shoutout to AT&T Fiber, CNET’s choice as the best overall internet provider in California. AT&T Fiber topped our recommended ISP lists for San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento -- a feat that earned it our nod for best in the state. But fiber isn’t everywhere, and you may need to choose from other providers, whether it’s Spectrum, Xfinity, Cox, Frontier or a regional provider like Sonic. 

CNET examines customer service, speed, pricing and overall value before recommending the best broadband in your area. Your choice for home internet in California will come down to what’s available at your address, which plans fit your budget and the speeds you need to keep you happy while you’re working, streaming, gaming or browsing.  

Best internet options in California 

CNET chose the following ISPs for special recognition thanks to key factors like availability, speed or affordability, or a combination of those features. Every ISP has its pros and cons. You may be able to pull down blazing speeds with fiber, but top-end plans cost a pretty penny. You may be able to get fixed wireless in places other ISPs don’t serve, but speeds may or may not be great. Use this guide to find the best options for your home internet needs.

Note: The prices, speeds and features detailed in the article text may differ from those listed in the product detail cards, representing providers’ national offerings. Your particular internet service options -- including prices and speeds -- depend on your address and may differ from those detailed here. In addition, all prices listed on this page reflect available discounts for setting up paperless billing. If you decide not to go with automatic monthly payments, your price will be higher.

Source: CNET analysis of provider data

California is known for its big cities and pretty beaches, but many Californians live in rural areas and farming communities. That can limit available ISP options considerably. If you’re on the outskirts of a city or town, you may be able to get a DSL connection from a provider like AT&T. If you’re farther out, you may be down to two main options: fixed wireless or satellite internet. 

The chart above includes a selection of rural internet providers across California, but it’s not comprehensive. You may find a different provider services your area. One way to find these smaller ISPs is to plug your address into the FCC National Broadband Map to pull up a list of possible providers. Read CNET’s guide to the best rural internet providers.

Start with T-Mobile Home Internet for fixed wireless, but don’t be surprised if it’s unavailable at your address. Fortunately, California has local fixed wireless providers specializing in rural internet. Compared to city options, rural fixed wireless can be expensive and slow. Its main competitor is satellite internet from HughesNet, Viasat or Starlink. Consider pricing and speeds when making your decision. Here’s what you need to know about fixed wireless and how it compares to other internet connection types.

California broadband details at a glance

92% of residences in California have access to wired internet with speeds of at least 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up, according to the FCC. That’s the federal government’s minimum standard for broadband. Many internet users will find that too slow, especially remote workers, gamers and large households with multiple users. Rural households may not have much choice regarding faster speed tiers, but city dwellers can usually find speedier options.

Just over 29% of California residences can get wired internet with at least 1,000Mbps down. Not surprisingly, access is clustered around the big cities. Providers like AT&T Fiber, Sonic (in the Bay Area), Google Fiber (around Irvine) and Xfinity all deliver at the 1,000Mbps level and above. Rural areas are primarily serviced by satellite or local fixed wireless ISPs. Speeds aren’t always great, but it’s better than no connection at all.

How fast is California broadband?

The Golden State comes in at 11th place for Ookla’s Speedtest ranking of fixed internet speeds by state. Delaware, New York, Florida and North Carolina are some of the states that beat it out with faster median obtain speeds. Ookla’s ranking of internet speeds for the 100 most populous US cities has a strong showing by California. Irvine triumphantly comes in second (just below Raleigh, North Carolina) with a median obtain speed of 250Mbps. You can largely thank Google Fiber for that. Going down the list, you’ll find San Bernardino in 23rd place, San Jose in 27th and Santa Ana in 29th.   

FCC data lets us dial in on some of the details of internet speeds in California. The National Broadband Map shows roughly 30% of California households have access to fiber internet connections. A lot of that is concentrated in the wider Los Angeles metro area and in the Bay Area. Keep that in mind if you’re moving and fiber is a must-have. AT&T Fiber is plenty fast with speeds up to 5,000Mbps in some locations. Xfinity has limited availability of its 6,000Mbps plan in the Bay Area. You’ll also find regional fiber provider Sonic up in the Bay Area. It has a speedy 10,000Mbps plan available in some spots. Frontier Fiber has a small but notable presence in Southern California.

If you’re plagued by slow internet at home, there are some steps you can take to try to Improve it. The problem might be with your Wi-Fi setup rather than your internet connection. It could be finding a new router location or picking up a range extender. Follow these four steps to Improve your Wi-Fi. If it’s truly a matter of your ISP, it might be time to upgrade your plan or shop around to see if a different provider is faster or more reliable. Find the top ISPs in your area.

Internet pricing in California

Around $50 is a standard starting price for home internet. That will get you connected with decent speeds through most ISPs, from Xfinity to Spectrum to AT&T Fiber to Verizon 5G Home Internet. Promotional deals and new-customer contract offers can bring that starting price down. For example, Xfinity’s 75Mbps Connect plan will run you just $20 per month with a one-year contract. 

Affordable doesn’t have to mean slow. AT&T Fiber’s no-fuss $55-a-month 300Mbps plan is a good deal for fiber. If you’re not an internet power user, you should be perfectly happy with that speed level. Verizon and T-Mobile offer bargains for eligible phone customers. Bundle up and your Verizon home internet will cost as low as $25 a month while T-Mobile home internet will be $30 a month. If you’re in a good location, you may be able to pull down some decent speeds. 

When picking your plan, assess your needs. Are you uploading massive files for work? Are you a hard-core gamer? Do you have multiple people in the house who are all streaming at the same time? Maybe you need a higher-end, more expensive plan to handle all that. If not, look to budget options. Instead of AT&T Fiber’s $180-per-month 5,000Mbps plan, you might do just fine with the 1,000Mbps plan at $80 a month. Check out these eight ways to save on your internet bill.

The federal Affordable Connectivity Program is available to help low-income households access free or cheap broadband. If you qualify, you will get at least $30 off your monthly internet bill. Many ISPs participate. Use California’s low-cost internet plans search tool to see what’s available in your neighborhood.

The future of broadband in California

California’s big cities are well-covered with ISP options, but gaps exist in less-populated parts of the state. According to the office of Governor Gavin Newsom, roughly one in five Californians don’t have access to affordable high-speed internet. The state has been making investments to Improve this, but a lot of federal money is also coming to help California build out broadband. In June, the White House announced how the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program -- part of the Infrastructure Act -- will allocate funding. California can expect over $1.8 billion to expand high-speed internet access. 

California began construction on an ambitious 10,000-mile fiber network in late 2022. The “Middle Mile” project is intended to help connect communities with no internet or slow internet. The idea is that service providers will hook up to this main network to offer “last mile” connections to homes and businesses. The state hopes to complete the project by the end of 2026. If the project goes as planned, it could be a huge change for the better in rural areas and places that tend to be overlooked by major ISPs.  

How CNET chose the best internet providers in California

Internet service providers are numerous and regional. Unlike the latest smartphone, laptop, router or kitchen tool, it’s impractical to personally test every ISP in a given city. So what’s our approach? We start by researching the pricing, availability and speed information drawing on our own historical ISP data, the provider sites and mapping information from the Federal Communications Commission at FCC.gov.

But it doesn’t end there. We go to the FCC’s website to check our data and ensure we’re considering every ISP that provides service in an area. We also input local addresses on provider websites to find specific options for residents. To evaluate how happy customers are with an ISP's service, we look at sources including the American Customer Satisfaction Index and J.D. Power. ISP plans and prices are subject to frequent changes; all information provided is accurate as of the time of publication. 

Once we have this localized information, we ask three main questions: 

• Does the provider offer access to reasonably fast internet speeds? 
• Do customers get decent value for what they're paying? 
• Are customers happy with their service? 

While the answer to those questions is often layered and complex, the providers who come closest to “yes” on all three are the ones we recommend. 

To explore our process in more depth, visit our How We Test ISPs page.

Internet in California FAQs

Security officials at higher ed institutions perform a delicate balancing act, keeping campuses secure while attempting to preserve freedom of movement for students and faculty. The risk of active shooters is on everyone's mind, as is a heightened awareness of personal safety, cyber threats and identity theft. Students and their parents want to see visible physical and network security measures in place. At the same time, they don't want the campus life experience diminished by inefficient and inconvenient identity management solutions.

Within the past decade, campuses have begun replacing or supplementing student ID cards with mobile credentials. Apple and Android phones now make it easy for students on participating campuses to use their digital wallets to store their student IDs. They can use their phone or watch to interact with access control readers, point-of-sale devices, online test-taking software, and in other scenarios requiring identity verification. In 2021, the University of Alabama became the first school to issue mobile IDs exclusively.

This trend is no surprise. Today's students are digital natives. They carry their phones everywhere and expect to use them for everything. They use Apple Pay and Venmo instead of credit cards. They prefer using digital tickets when attending concerts and sporting events or riding public transportation. They use apps to control the smart home technology they encouraged their parents to install. Why should school be any different? Plus, eliminating plastic cards is consistent with Gen Z's commitment to sustainability. Within the U.S., tens of millions of students are enrolled in higher ed. Imagine how many IDs end up in landfills each year.

However, despite all the benefits of mobile IDs, there are situations on campus when students must or would like to be separated from their devices, at least temporarily. For example, instructors may prohibit the presence of cell phones during exams. Students may find them inconvenient when engaging in certain athletic activities. Some coaches are banning the use of phones during games or practices because social media posts disrupt players' concentration and affect their morale. Students sometimes want to "unplug" for a few hours for mental health reasons. And what if a phone needs charging? A dead phone can't open a door or pay for lunch. Neither can a lost phone. A 100% reliance on mobile credentials is unrealistic.

Enter Biometrics

Colleges and universities have begun integrating biometrics with their campus credentialing platforms, adding a convenient, highly secure, and flexible means to verify and authenticate student identities. Depending on the application and specific setting, biometric identity technology can be deployed in different ways:

•     As a choice for students to use instead of presenting a card or phone. Some manufacturers offer solutions that support all three options – biometric, mobile, and RFID – in a single-reader device.

•      In conjunction with other modalities – like face and card – for high-security, multimodal authentication.

•      In place of a card or mobile reader, for streamlined throughput in high-traffic locations or where other options are impractical. A glance at an iris reader can eliminate the need to carry anything.

College-age students overwhelmingly embrace the speed and convenience of biometric identity verification and authentication. 75% of 18-to-34-year-olds use biometrics with at least one app daily. Allowing them to use biometrics on campus instead of cards or phones meets them in their comfort zone.

Security Applications

Of course, no solution is right in all conditions. It's necessary to consider where and how students will interact with the technology. Biometrics are unlikely to replace cards or phones across entire campuses, but they are ideal for some locations.

Adding biometric readers to exterior doors of residence halls, fraternities, and sororities ensure students never get locked out and prevents credentials from being shared with others. For example, Phi Sigma Kappa at Purdue University and Sigma Phi Epsilon at Kansas State University each use fingerprint biometrics to secure their frat houses. Only residents can enter unescorted.

Alabama's Auburn University has relied on an iris-based biometric identity solution for over a decade within its athletic facilities. The solution is deployed to secure locker rooms and training areas, allowing student-athletes to move about freely while wearing pocketless uniforms, swimsuits, or workout gear.

Rob Stanford, Facilities Management Technology Specialist at Auburn, explains, "When students leave a team or graduate, we just change the permissions and turn off their access. We've had some coaches and students leave and return a few years later. We haven't had to re-enroll them. The system still recognizes them because their eyes don't change. We just reactivate their permissions." The solution can hold and differentiate between thousands of enrollees, including students on the teams, student trainers and managers, coaches, and others with job functions requiring access to regulated areas.

High-security areas like research facilities, labs, and data centers are prime locations for adding biometrics. Universities experienced a 44% increase in cyberattacks in 2022 compared to 2021. 99.9% of modern, automated cyberattacks can be blocked through multifactor authentication (MFI). Many security experts insist that biometrics are the most accurate and reliable form of authentication, making them ideal for MFI in physical and logical security applications. The University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin use iris-based biometrics in conjunction with their lab facilities' access control systems.

Beyond Security

Biometric identity solutions are ideal for many non-security applications too. Stadiums, theaters, and cafeterias can offer "fast track" lines at entrances and cash registers. Healthcare clinics can immediately identify patients when they check in for appointments, reducing sign-in paperwork and ensuring accurate record-keeping.

They are also an excellent tool to thwart cheating on exams. The frequency of online cheating has increased 14-fold compared to the 15 months before the pandemic. Confirmed incidents include students attempting to take tests on behalf of classmates during proctored exams.

India's Department of Higher Education has mandated that colleges and universities deploy biometric identity solutions to track student attendance and test-taking more accurately. Classroom biometric readers log the identity of students as they enter, preventing an imposter from taking a student's place. American universities may soon embrace similar practices.

Ease of Deployment

Many of today's biometric identity solutions integrate seamlessly with other security, operations, and Point-of-Sale (PoS) platforms thanks to APIs allowing disparate systems to communicate. Campuses can preserve the value of existing technology while adding biometric readers to Improve convenience. Students’ biometric data is stored within a siloed, secure, encrypted database that links with the institution’s primary identification platform. Should a network be compromised, there's no risk that a biometric can be reverse-engineered or traced to a student's identity.

Enrolling students is a simple process that any administrator can manage without special technical skills. Some biometric identity solutions even accommodate self-enrollment using the camera on a mobile device.

Biometric solutions may be scaled up over time. Many higher-ed institutions are testing the waters, initially adding biometric readers only at locations with the most urgent requirements to Improve safety or convenience. The positive response from students, parents, and faculty paves the way for more widespread adoption.

Summary

Today's students crave convenience, speed, and simplicity. At the same time, campuses are struggling with expanding operational requirements, shrinking enrollments, greater competition, and tighter budgets. In response, student identity platforms are under scrutiny.

The next few years will prove pivotal as higher-ed institutions transition away from plastic and look for ways to meet Gen Z students in their comfort zone – where convenience and sustainability are both highly valued. Integrating biometrics with campus credentialing platforms will deliver on both while helping colleges and universities remain competitive, Improve efficiencies, and increase safety.

About the author: Bobby Varma is the CEO/ Founder of Princeton Identity, a manufacturer of biometric identity solutions to streamline security, optimize operations, and control costs. She is a recipient of SIA's 2022 Women in Biometrics Award and a member of SIA Women in Security Forum's Power 100.

Do you remember the concluding lines of Citizen Kane’s screenplay?

Thompson: Well—it’s become a very clear picture. He was the most honest man who ever lived, with a streak of crookedness a yard wide. He was a liberal and a reactionary; he was tolerant—“Live and Let Live”—that was his motto. But he had no use for anybody who disagreed with him on any point, no matter how small it was. He was a loving husband and a good father—and both his wives left him and his son got himself killed about as shabbily as you can do it. He had a gift for friendship such as few men have—he broke his oldest friend’s heart like you’d throw away a cigarette you were through with. Outside of that—

Girl: What about Rosebud? Don’t you think that explains anything?

Thompson: No, I don’t. Not much anyway. Charles Foster Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get or lost. No, I don’t think it explains anything. I don’t think any word explains a man’s life. No—I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle—a missing piece.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, like Orson Welles’s and Herman J. Mankiewicz’s Charles Foster Kane, was a mess of contradictions, an enigma and a puzzle: A “perpetually distracted, endearingly eccentric, brainy naif.” An impulsive, amoral womanizer and risk taker. An ambitious egotist and narcissist, aloof and arrogant with an incredible ability to compartmentalize his life into many discrete parts. He’s also a man whose ambitions, snobbish self-regard and moral scruples frequently collide.

Like Kane, Oppenheimer is viewed through contrasting lenses. He’s a crybaby, in President Truman’s words; a narr—a fool—in Einstein’s; a weakling, according to his wife.

The new film Oppenheimer is as much a work of art as it is of biography or history, with its nonlinear, fractured structure and jumbled timeline, featuring flashbacks, abrupt shifts from black-and-white photography and color (to contrast subjective and objective realities), searing close-ups, a shrill and booming soundtrack, and nearly psychedelic, hallucinatory glimpses of Oppenheimer’s inner life. Oppenheimer is, as a friend and a leading historian of the 20th century Maurice Isserman, put it, “One of the greatest historical movies—no, scratch that, one of the greatest movies, period, I’ve ever seen.”

It is also a penetrating psychological study—of the grotesqueries of ambition (whether Oppenheimer’s, Lewis Strauss’s or Edward Teller’s) and of the erratic, unpredictable functioning of the Los Alamos scientists’ moral compass.

Read the reviews and you’ll be struck by some critics’ scoffing, sneering and sniping: about Christopher Nolan’s supposed failure to adequately develop the women characters, or to explicitly depict the effects of the radiation released by the Trinity test on neighboring peoples and the impact the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most mean-spirited review, by The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, describes Oppenheimer as “Ultimately a History Channel Movie with Fancy Editing.” I wholeheartedly disagree, but to each his own—all critics are entitled to their opinion.

I’d say Rex Reed has it right when he calls the film “an unforgettable rarity in a currently stagnant cultural swamp of movie mediocrity.”

But what strikes me in many of the reviews is the failure to unpack the movie’s larger themes, beginning with the scientists’ Jewishness. Nolan does a great job of getting at the complexities of left-wing, New Deal–era Jewish support for the labor movement, the antifascist mobilization in Spain and, of course, the Communist Party, including divisions about toeing the party line, supporting Stalin or transforming Communism into 20th-century Americanism.

I was especially impressed by the film’s treatment of two conflicting forms of mid-20th-century upper-middle-class Jewishness: Oppenheimer, who finds meaning in the life of the mind, the sensual pleasures of the body and the world of culture and (for a time) radical politics, and Strauss, like Irving R. Kaufman, the judge in the Rosenberg case, resentful, ruthless and determined—but both, in the vernacular of the day, pushy strivers, like Duddy Kravitz and Sammy Glick, craving acceptance by the structures of power.

Then, there’s the reviewers’ failure to address one of the movie’s key themes: the issue of science and power and the Los Alamos scientists’ dawning realization that far from being partners in power, they were the servants of power, not a countervailing power.

As the historian of science Alex Wellerstein observes, Oppenheimer’s scientific contributions are difficult to pin down: “it is not so much about any particular discoveries or scientific insights he had (again, he was considered quite brilliant, but not focused enough), so much as it is about his role in the changing context of how science was done in this country.” Science involved teamwork, which has many intricate effects: it diffuses responsibility and makes science increasingly dependent on outside, generally governmental, funding.

During the 20th century, it became clear that expert knowledge, technical skills and technocratic management were the keys not only to military power, but to other forms of power. As Loren Baritz wrote in his 1960 classic, Servants of Power, groups of social scientists played an instrumental role in the creation of modern advertising, hiring practices, human relations, personnel testing, scientific management and employee training.

Scientists, in particular, face a moral challenge. Their discoveries and inventions can be used for good or ill—a decision that lies largely outside their hands. But that means that scientists mustn’t think of themselves as morally neutral and disinterested pursuers of truth. They cannot simply leave it to others to decision how to use their creations and breakthroughs.

Then, too, there are the ethical issues raised by the deployment of the atomic bomb. The movie clearly lays out the conflicting motives for deploying the new weapon and the reservations of many of the scientists. It also exposes the haughtiness of administrators, bureaucrats and political and military leaders who are annoyed by the presumptuousness of scientists who want to participate in policy decisions. It asks, in effect, what hath man wrought?

As Isserman points out, the movie “doesn’t require you to condemn or approve of the choice to develop and use the bomb. It presents the issue as it seemed to the principal actors at the moment, which was full of tension and ambiguity. And, finally, treats the issue of communism in a grown-up fashion, with its own tensions and ambiguity.” As the historian Michael Sherry pointed out in his history of American air power, “the crucial moral divide about slaughtering civilizations from the air had been crossed years earlier, first by the enemy, then by us.”

In one of the movie’s most arch lines, Edward Teller says, “Nobody knows what you believe. Do you?” Implicitly, the father of the hydrogen bomb is asking the audience for its views about the use of the new weapon.

In addition, the movie asks how we should evaluate a complicated, contradictory life: Oppenheimer is not a saint or a man of marble. He is deeply flawed. He may have regarded himself as a martyr, but he ultimately did name names to those investigating Communist infiltration of the Manhattan Project. In that sense, he resembles Elia Kazan. How, the movie asks, do we make sense of such a man?

Oppenheimer is a rarity these days: a movie for adults, not simply because of its R rating, but because it assumes a level of background knowledge and allusions that few films these days dare ask for. It also approaches its Topics with a degree of nuance and complexity absent from so much of today’s popular culture. It includes elements too often missing from today’s films: jealousy, envy, betrayal, loyalty, score settling, self-destruction, idealism and human foibles. It’s at once empathetic and damning.

A biopic, a historical epic, a work of art and a psychology study, Oppenheimer offers faculty in history, political science and sociology a fantastic opportunity to probe some of the biggest issues of our time: the social consequences of scientific progress, the nature and limits of patriotic duty and the Faustian bargain of trading one’s soul in exchange for knowledge, power and status.

It also offers a lesson for anyone who writes. Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin titled the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography on which the movie draws American Prometheus, and the movie begins with an epigraph:

By organizing his film around the theme of hubris and torment and making judicious use of symbolism (a poisoned apple), the director is able to create a movie that is truly mythic, yet also surprisingly concise. Oppenheimer the man becomes “a prophet of apocalypse who put the fear of God (or something even bigger) into his countrymen as well as their enemies and a martyr-slash-scapegoat for an international scientific community reckoning with the blood on their hands.”

Oppenheimer was indeed a modern-day Prometheus who tapped the power of the atom not for scientific discovery nor for energy too cheap to meter, but as an instrument of war. A big reason why Western societies, apart from France, don’t rely on nuclear power is, in part, due to its association with mass destruction. Instead, we depended upon coal and other fossil fuels at enormous political, military, moral and environmental expense.

A bit like Citizen Kane, Oppenheimer concludes with dialogue that combines irony and gravity. The audience learns that Lewis Strauss wholly misunderstood an exchange between Einstein and Oppenheimer. No, the bomb’s father did not insult Strauss. Instead, he acknowledges, to Einstein’s distress, the horrors that he had unleashed.

Oppenheimer: Albert, when I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world.

Einstein: I remember it well. What of it?

Oppenheimer: I believe we did.