Weekly Wrap-Up, April 03, 2015

The technology world is notoriously male-dominated. But, as Tony Wan explains in Fast Company, educational technology might be a field where women are paving the way.

Comcast will be entering the gigabit market, reports Brian Fung for the Washington Post. The company has announced plans to offer Internet speeds up to 2 Gbps, beginning in Atlanta, GA.

In other gigabit news, Google Fiber has responded to Kansas City’s request to open its sign-up period again.

Los Angeles Councilmember Bob Blumenfield authored an article in the Hill on the slow and expensive Internet available in Los Angeles and the need to change it.

The problem of backup systems affected customers in northern Arizona last month. As Felicia Fonseca and David Lieb report, smaller cities and rural areas often don’t have the backup systems in place that major cities do, and thus, when infrastructure is damaged, it can mean long Internet outages.

Why do educational technology companies shut down? Mary Jo Madda breaks down the difficulties these companies face and reports on advice on how to avoid these problems.

Pew Research released a new report this week on smartphone usage in the United States. Writing for Ars Technica, Jon Brodkin explores the report. Most prominent is the statistic that 10 percent of Americans rely solely on their smartphone for home Internet service.

And finally, the Center for Public Integrity analyzes the price of Internet in cities in the United States as compared to cities in Europe. Their report finds that higher Internet prices seem to be correlated with a lack of competition.