Making sense of the EUs fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

Making sense of the EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

Image: Apple

The European Parliament recently voted on regulation that would, among other things, require smartphone manufacturers to make their device’s batteries more easily user-replaceable. Here’s the fine print.

If you’ve been online in the past week, you’ve probably seen one or two headlines about the European Union voting in favor of easy-to-replace batteries in smartphones by around 2027. That’s based on a June 14th vote in which the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of an agreement that would overhaul the rules around batteries in the bloc.

The good news is that those headlines are fundamentally accurate; the EU is moving forward with regulation designed to require smartphones to have batteries that are easier to replace, to the benefit of the environment and end users. But this being the European Union, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. And it’s these details that could have a significant impact on how and when manufacturers will actually have to comply.

Competing legislation

For starters, the widely cited 2027 deadline for offering smartphones with more easily replaceable batteries isn’t quite the whole story, according to Cristina Ganapini, coordinator of Right to Repair Europe. That’s because there’s another piece of legislation currently working its way through the EU’s lawmaking process called the Ecodesign for Smartphones and Tablets. It contains similar rules about making smartphone batteries easier to replace and is expected to come into effect earlier in June or July 2025. So by the time 2027 rolls around, some smartphone manufacturers may have already been selling devices with user-replaceable batteries in the EU for over a year.

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge

Replacing the battery in HMD’s Nokia G22, the kind of repair process the EU wants to bring to all smartphones.

According to a draft version of the ecodesign regulation on the EU’s website, batteries should be replaceable “with no tool, a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part, or basic tools.” It also says that spare parts should be available for up to seven years after a phone’s release, and, perhaps most importantly, “the process for replacement shall be able to be carried out by a layman.” The legislation is currently being scrutinized by the European Parliament and Council, and Ganapini expects it to pass into law in September this year, with its smartphone battery replicability requirements coming into effect a year and a half later.

Despite the overlap between the two pieces of legislation, the battery regulation voted on by the European Parliament this month is still important. That’s because the battery regulation is more stringent than the ecodesign regulation in a key way: it doesn’t offer a loophole that would allow smartphone manufacturers to avoid having to make their batteries easy to replace if they’re able to make them long-lasting instead. Specifically, they’ll need to maintain 83 percent of their capacity after 500 cycles and 80 percent after 1000 cycles to qualify. Such devices would also have to be “dust tight and protected against immersion in water up to one meter depth for a minimum of 30 minutes,” according to the ecodesign rules — capabilities often achieved with glue.

“We would rather have seen longevity requirements alongside repairability requirements rather than leaving the trade-off to manufacturers,” says iFixit’s repair policy engineer Thomas Opsomer. “That said, 83 percent capacity after 500 cycles and 80 percent capacity after 1000 cycles is a fairly ambitious requirement; it would probably translate to at least five years of use.”

“A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools”

It’s unclear exactly how many manufacturers’ smartphone batteries may meet the requirements for this longevity loophole. For example, one Apple support page notes that a “normal battery” typically retains up to 80 percent of its original capacity after 500 complete charge cycles. But other manufacturers may already be providing batteries that are this long-lasting. Fairphone spokesperson Anna Jopp tells me the (fully replaceable) battery in its Fairphone 4 already fulfills these longevity requirements, while Oppo recently boasted that some of its batteries retain 80 percent of their charge after as much as 1,600 charge cycles.

In addition to not offering the longevity loophole, Opsomer also points out that the battery regulation covers all products with a portable battery; it’s far wider-reaching than the phone and tablet-focused ecodesign regulation.

What makes a battery “removable” anyhow?

So what exactly does it mean for a smartphone’s battery to be easy to replace? A lot of the EU’s definition boils down to what tools are required for the procedure. Although “removable” recalls the feature phone era or one of Fairphone’s devices that only require a fingernail to open, the definition used in the battery regulation voted on this month doesn’t go that far. Instead of requiring removal without tools, the battery regulation instead places limits on the kinds of tools that will be needed to replace a battery. Here’s the relevant section:

“A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it.”

Rather than calling for entirely tool-free battery replacement, the wording of the regulation focuses on preventing end users from having to use proprietary tools or finicky processes. So the EU’s goal is less about turning every phone into a Fairphone 4, with its battery you can pop out in a couple of seconds with your bare hands, and more like the recent HMD Nokia G22, whose iFixit battery replacement guide still calls for the use of a basic tool or two. In other words, the G22’s battery can be replaced using commercially available tools that don’t seem terribly specialized and doesn’t require proprietary tools, solvents, or thermal energy like heat guns or an iFixit iOpener, which are designed to melt the glue some manufacturers use to hold components together. Simple, right?

Image: iFixit

A Google Pixel smartphone, alongside the kinds of tools needed to repair it.

Not so fast, says iFixit’s Opsomer. He points out that while EU law only defines “basic tools, product group specific tools, other commercially available tools, and proprietary tools,” it doesn’t define “specialized tools.” “This current specification could easily give rise to a situation where in order to replace a battery, a user would have to purchase a tool that is in fact specialized but not officially defined as such,” Opsomer says, “The cost of which could easily exceed the cost of the replacement battery.”

So iFixit is pushing for lawmakers to count a device as user-repairable under the battery regulation if it can be repaired using “basic tools.” Included in this category are common screwdriver styles like flat-head, Phillips, and Torx, though Opsomer admits it’s likely to include some nicher implements like iFixit opening picks.

Another potential point of contention is how user-replaceable batteries could coexist with waterproofing. The battery regulation contains an exemption for devices “that are specifically designed to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance, in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion.” Opponents of such rules often bring up waterproofing as a feature that could suffer if a device is designed to be easily opened.

“A big success for the right to repair”

In a statement, Opsomer said the EU’s exemption is based on “unfounded safety claims” and cited underwater flashlights as an example of a device that’s able to offer both a user-replaceable battery alongside a waterproof construction. In a YouTube video, repair technician Louis Rossmann cites the Samsung Galaxy S5 (IP67 — so it can be immersed in relatively shallow water for up to 30 minutes) and Sonim XP10 (IP68 — which can be immersed in deeper water for longer periods of time) as phones with good water resistance that also offer removable batteries, though other recent repairable phones like the Fairphone 4 (IP54 — offering protection against splashing water) and Nokia G22 (IP52 — protected against dripping water) fare less well.

A good start

Qualms about the specifics aside, the result of this month’s vote on new battery regulation was broadly welcomed by right-to-repair campaigners. Right to Repair Europe’s Ganapini called it “a big success for the right to repair,” while Fairphone’s legal counsel Ana-Mariya Madzhurova said the regulation “will further empower consumers by ensuring that batteries across industries are more durable, sustainable and repairable.”

The EU’s user-replaceable battery rules still have a long way to go, despite this month’s successful vote. The battery regulation will need to be formally endorsed by the Council of the EU while the ecodesign rules are still being scrutinized by the European Parliament. Although the passage of both sets of rules seems likely given their current progress, discussions are ongoing behind the scenes between different groups vying for looser or stricter interpretations of the written rules.

But, in the years ahead, it’s looking like smartphone buyers in Europe will have a far easier time keeping their devices running and out of the landfill after their batteries degrade naturally over time. And, unless manufacturers want to produce devices with user-replaceable batteries that are only sold in Europe, it seems like the rest of the world is also set to benefit.

NFC technology is getting better range and charging capabilities

NFC technology is getting better range and charging capabilities

Apple Pay uses NFC technology, and it requires you to effectively touch the terminal to make a connection. | Image: The Verge

Tap-to-pay services like Apple Pay may soon no longer need the actual tapping part to work. That’s because NFC, the technology that enables you to pay at shops by touching your phone to a payment terminal, is getting new capabilities over the next next two to five years, such as a communications range boost, more powerful wireless charging for tiny devices like earbuds, and more (via Android Authority).

NFC, which stands for Near Field Communication, is inside thousands of devices today ranging from smartphones to video game-enhancing figurines. Now the body that decides how to standardize the technology, the NFC Forum, is outlining key areas that will move NFC tech forward through 2028. The Forum is comprised of hundreds of companies, including Apple, Google, Huawei, Sony, NXP, and Qualcomm.

Image: Nintendo

Nintendo’s Amiibo figures use NFC, and perhaps future iterations with upgraded NFC won’t need this instructional on where exactly to make contact.

One of the friction points of using NFC tech is its incredibly short range. For an NFC connection to be successful, the devices need to be within 5mm of each other — which is short enough to make “contactless payments” a misnomer. The NFC Forum is looking to stretch that “four to six times” further, which would make it more like 30mm (or 1.18 inches).

With the added distance (and power), people taking public transit in places like New York City could more easily wave their hand bags on terminals instead of taking out their phones. And merchants can stress less about customers magic-wanding their smartphones around payment terminals hunting for the precise connection point.

Standards-based wireless charging of individual earbuds? Maybe!

The NFC Forum is also looking to increase wireless charging power from the 1W currently, to a more usable 3W. While that’s far less than the Qi standard’s max of 15W, it’s enough for the Forum to boast that “The change will bring wireless power and charging to new and smaller form factors, disrupting industrial design while defining new markets.” So, standards-based wireless charging of individual earbuds? Maybe!

The roadmap includes changes meant to make point-of-sale transactions easier, as well. Apple had enabled a Tap to Pay API last year that lets developers turn iPhones into payment terminals. Future NFC standards aim to make this functionality native so that businesses and individuals can receive payments anywhere.

In addition, the NFC Forum is looking to add a “multi purpose tap” that could do several actions in just one tap, like having all your crew’s tickets being allowed entry at a concert with just one tap instead of swiping to the next one by one. And NFC is planning for a feature that can act like an info drop on the device it’s attached to, specifically to share its composition for easier recycling instructions.

The NFC Forum will be presenting its development roadmap during a public webinar on June 27th.

Reddit Wants to Grow Up. Will Its Community Let It?

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Canadas Online News Act Targets Facebook and Google

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Reddit pressures mods to end the blackout as they find new ways to protest

Reddit pressures mods to end the blackout as they find new ways to protest

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit appears to be ramping up the pressure on moderators to open communities that closed in the blackout protest against recently announced platform changes. A Reddit admin — an employee of Reddit — has told unpaid volunteer moderators of a subreddit that the “expectation here is that communities reopen,” according to a message shared publicly by a moderator of r/DIY.

The pressure worked. The community was closed, but it reopened on Thursday, and a mod said that fears of Reddit actions forced the team’s hand: “We’re re-opening because if we don’t, the mods that Reddit appoint may not care about the subreddit the way we do,” the mod wrote.

The mod’s post also announced a vast number of changes to the subreddit’s rules that hew more closely to Reddit’s general requirements, while also undoing many of the norms and rule tweaks that were in place to improve the quality of content. The changes include no longer requiring users to do basic research and lowering the standard for what the subreddit counts as spam. Reddit has its reopened community, but at what cost?

We’ve seen messages from other moderators where the admin, ModCodeofConduct, uses similar rhetoric. To the moderators of r/homeimprovement the admin said that “to be very clear you cannot remain closed so we need to know if any mods here wish to participate in opening the community.”

To the moderators of r/harrypotter, the admin account wrote that “keeping the community closed is not an option” — even though users have voted for the subreddit to be private, according to a post from a r/harrypotter mod.

More than 2,600 subreddits remain dark in protest, and users on r/ModCoord (moderator coordination) are still sharing their stories of receiving messages from Reddit that they view as threatening and intimidating. “My tiny 27-user sub is being threatened for staying blacked out,” one user wrote. “Reddit is a BULLY,” said another, sharing a screenshot of where they told ModCodeofConduct their messages were “harassment and intimidation.”

Reddit didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.” In the absence of corrections, then, you can assume Reddit believes none are necessary.

Meta is yanking news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada

Meta is yanking news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta will be removing news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada now that the country’s Senate has passed the Online News Act, the company announced on Thursday. The legislation, officially Bill C-18, will force tech companies like Meta and Google to negotiate with news publishers and pay them for their content.

Meta has been a vocal opponent of the Online News Act for some time. “The world is constantly changing and publishers, like everyone else, have to adapt,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement in May. “Asking a social media company in 2023 to subsidize news publishers for content that isn’t that important to our users is like asking email providers to pay the postal service because people don’t send letters any more.” Meta also warned on June 1st that it would begin testing the removal of news from the apps in anticipation of the passage of the law. Bill C-18 will take effect six months after it gets royal assent, according to the Associated Press.

Pablo Rodriguez, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, has pushed back on Meta’s choice to pull news. “Facebook knows very well that they have no obligations under the act right now,” Rodriguez wrote on Twitter. “Following Royal Assent of Bill #C18, the Government will engage in a regulatory and implementation process.”

Google has also tested blocking news content for some Canadian users, but in a statement to The Verge, the company said that it’s still working with the government on a potential solution that would address the company’s concerns.

“We’re doing everything we can to avoid an outcome that no-one wants,” Google spokesperson Jenn Crider said in a statement to The Verge. “Every step of the way, we’ve proposed thoughtful and pragmatic solutions that would have improved the Bill and cleared the path for us to increase our already significant investments in the Canadian news ecosystem. So far, none of our concerns have been addressed.”

According to National Post, the company is in “last-minute talks” with Rodriguez as of Thursday afternoon.

Meta has removed news in an entire country in the past. The company pulled news content from Facebook in Australia in 2021 in opposition to a law similar to Canada’s, but it brought news back after the Australian government amended the law.

YouTube is getting AI-powered dubbing

YouTube is getting AI-powered dubbing

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube wants to make it easier to dub your videos in other languages by giving you some help with AI. The company announced Thursday at VidCon that it’s bringing over the team from Aloud, an AI-powered dubbing service from Google’s Area 120 incubator.

Here’s how it works, according to Aloud’s website. The tool first transcribes your video, giving you a transcription that you can review and edit. Then, it translates and produces the dub. This video has the details.

YouTube is already testing the tool with “hundreds” of creators, YouTube’s Amjad Hanif says in a statement to The Verge. And Hanif says that Aloud currently supports a “few” languages, with “more to come”; according to spokesperson Jessica Gibby, Aloud is currently available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Still, even with a limited number of languages, Aloud could be a useful tool as a growing number of creators add multi-language dubs to their videos. And if you want to hear an example of Aloud’s results for yourself, check out the Spanish dub track in this video from the Amoeba Sisters channel. (Click the gear icon, then “Audio track.”)

Down the line, YouTube is “working to make translated audio tracks sound like the creator’s voice, with more expression, and lip sync,” Hanif says. Those features are planned for 2024, Gibby says.

Motorola Razr Plus review: the right moves

Motorola Razr Plus review: the right moves

The Razr Plus is a much better phone than the preceding models. It’s a little fiddly, but for the right kind of person, it presents a rewarding experience.

The Motorola Razr Plus is the first folding phone that makes me genuinely excited for what’s ahead. In the here and now, it’s a good device, though not quite as ready for the mainstream as Motorola wants you to believe. But for a specific kind of tech-inclined person willing to try out something new, the Razr Plus will be very rewarding.

One feature defines the Razr Plus experience: the 3.6-inch outer display. It’s bigger than anything else offered on a flip-style foldable right now — in fact, it’s bigger than the screen on the first iPhone. It’s not just a check-your-notifications display; it’s a display, full stop. It opens up a whole bunch of use cases that I kept discovering the more I used the phone. It definitely has its limits, but if you’re willing to work within them, then the cover screen becomes kind of a secret weapon.

Aside from the outer display, using the Razr Plus is a thoroughly average flagship phone experience — and that’s actually a win for Motorola. For one thing, it’s $999, which is much more reasonable than the two phones that preceded it. You can still get more phone for a grand from a traditional slab-style device, but the Razr Plus doesn’t present any major compromise on battery life or day-to-day performance. Going about your business on the main 6.9-inch screen, it’s easy to forget you’re using a different kind of phone until someone notices you folding it in half and asks you about it.

That said, the Razr Plus isn’t quite ready for the mainstream. It’s better suited for someone who doesn’t mind the certain amount of fiddling required to get the cover screen to do the things you want. You’ll encounter a stray bug or two, which isn’t unexpected on a device this complicated. And long-term durability is still a question mark — most other phones that cost $1,000 come with much more robust IP68 dust- and water-resistance ratings, but the Razr Plus is quite literally built different.

The cover display’s homescreen includes shortcuts to the various panels you’ve enabled.

The main attraction is the best place to start talking about the Razr Plus: that’s the cover screen, of course. It’s an OLED panel that’s a few pixels shy of square. The sides and bottom of the front panel are curved, but the display stops well before the edges, and I didn’t have any trouble with accidental touches.

It works like this: you have a homescreen with notifications, the time, etc., and some shortcuts to various full-screen “panels,” which you can tap on or swipe to cycle through. The panels are… fine. There aren’t a lot to choose from, and they’re not as interactive as I’d like them to be.

Take the calendar panel: you can tap an icon in the upper right to switch between a daily or monthly view, but nothing happens if you tap on the events on your calendar. The Spotify panel is designed to let you control your music or jump to one of your recent listens quickly, but it’s a little unreliable. It frequently told me I was offline when I was very much online.

This is where you can launch full apps on the cover screen, consequences be damned

There aren’t many panels to choose from, either — so the apps panel is where the real action is. This is where you can launch full apps on the cover screen, consequences be damned. There’s no particular Moto magic happening here — just a whole-ass app scaled to the tiny proportions of the outer display. As you can imagine, some apps work okay like this, and some really, really don’t. But that, my friends, is the beauty of the cover screen.

This is also where the Razr Plus reveals itself as a gadget-lover’s gadget. If you want to use an app on the cover screen that isn’t in the handful of pre-populated suggestions, you need to give it permission in the external display settings — they’re in a menu you get acquainted with in the onboarding process, but it’s still a bit of a detour. This needs to be done for every single app you want to use. Then you can add it to the app panel. None of this is difficult, but it’s not exactly seamless.

During my initial setup, I picked a few that I thought would come in handy, but as I actually lived with the phone, I kept discovering with delight new use cases for the outer display. There’s kind of a sweet spot for these apps: functions that are too complicated or impossible to carry out on a smartwatch but don’t require the full firepower of the main screen. Things like typing a Spanish word into Google Translate as I’m reading with my son or checking bus arrival times at the stop by my house. I can do this all comfortably and single-handedly on the cover screen.

Typing out a text on the cover screen feels like less work than opening your device and coming face to face with everything on your phone.

In my testing, the outer screen was also perfectly adequate for answering texts. If I wanted to, like, really get into it, I would open the phone and use the main screen, but it’s helpful for quick responses. You can’t see the message you’re responding to as you type because the keyboard takes up the whole screen, but it’s fine overall, and it supports swiping, so you don’t have to peck at the slightly smaller keys. I found myself missing the space bar on the keyboard at first, but that wasn’t something I had a problem with in my long-term tests.

I’m generally terrible about getting back to texts, and I don’t have hard data on this, but I think my average text response time was much improved while using the Razr Plus. Maybe the cover screen reduces the emotional overhead of unlocking your device and coming face-to-face with absolutely everything else on your phone. It’s kind of soothing knowing you can just type “lmao,” hit send, and just move on with your life without getting sucked into an unscheduled social media scrolling session.

The cover screen does have its limits, of course. Things get lost behind the camera cutouts in the full-screen view, UIs break, and sometimes you have to tap a pop-up text option the size of a toothpick. But the badness is also kind of great. You can tap on an Instagram notification and start mindlessly scrolling through your feed, but it’s an objectively terrible experience. At that point, you come to your senses and either stop or commit to opening your phone.

Unfolded, the Razr Plus feels thoroughly average.

Guess what: there’s a whole other phone attached to this phone! The inner screen is a familiar 6.9-inch OLED with up to 165Hz refresh rate. It gets just bright enough to combat direct sunlight, and I have no qualms with it. There is, of course, a modest crease. It’s something I noticed when I swiped my thumb across it, but in most situations, it’s actually quite hard to see unless you’re looking for it.

Motorola moved the fingerprint sensor to the power button in the Razr Plus — last time around, it was awkwardly placed in the rear panel “M” logo. With the phone closed in one hand, my thumb falls naturally on the sensor in its new spot so I can unlock it quickly and type out my little text replies. Much improved, I’d say.

The whole thing is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which came out in the second half of 2022. In the phones I’ve tested, it’s proven to be more battery efficient while running a little cooler than the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. It does an admirable job in the Razr Plus, where it’s paired with 8GB of RAM. It doesn’t cut through demanding games quite like this year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but it’s good enough to keep day-to-day tasks flowing smoothly. It does heat up with a lot of video recording or portrait mode photos, but I never saw that compromise performance.

Crucially, it will sit upright in the 90-degree laptop position to play Elmo for your toddler so he will brush his teeth

The Razr Plus ships with Android 13 and is promised three OS upgrades and four years of security support. Recent Motorola flagships have only come with a couple of years of OS upgrades, so that’s great news. You’ll still get more out of a Samsung flagship — four OS updates and five years of security patches — but I’d call it acceptable, even if there’s room for improvement.

The Razr Plus carries an IP52 rating, which means it offers some protection against dust and just a little protection against water; Motorola defines this as “spills, splashes, or light rain.” Dust is a major concern with a foldable — a little dust under that inner screen is very bad news. So some dust protection is good, but it’s not clear to me how it will hold up in the long run, IP rating notwithstanding. There’s plenty of dust already gathered up along the edge of the hinge on my review unit after a couple of weeks. After years of use, how much of that ends up inside the phone, mucking things up? What happens if you drop it in a toilet? It’s just impossible to know at this point, and it’s a major point of consideration if you’re interested in buying one.

The Razr’s hinge allows the two halves of the phone to close almost completely flat — not the case with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4. But unlike the Flip, the Razr Plus’ hinge doesn’t quite support the screen open at every angle. Once you get it almost all the way open, it kind of flops flat. Likewise, the top will flop shut once you close it down past about 45 degrees. I ran up against this limit once when I was trying to angle the front camera just right, but otherwise, it didn’t bother me. Crucially, it will sit upright in the 90-degree laptop position to play Elmo for your toddler so he will brush his teeth. Ask me how I know.

Two small phones wearing a trenchcoat

The Razr Plus is actually two small phones wearing a trenchcoat, which means it has a very specific small phone problem: a small battery. There’s a 3,800mAh cell here, which falls well short of the 5,000mAh batteries on a lot of big phones these days. But I’m going to cut to the chase: battery life is fine. It is thoroughly average, and for a small battery, that’s actually great.

On a day with three hours of screen-on time, using mostly mobile data, I was down to about 40 percent by the end of the day. When it’s time to recharge, there’s fast 30W wired charging available (AC adapter sold separately) or wireless charging at a glacial 5W. I’m used to plopping my phone down on a wireless charging stand at the end of the day, so the slow pace didn’t bother me. The Razr Plus fits just fine on the Motorola-branded charging stand that came along with my review unit, but I have to open the phone and position it just right to get it charging on my Belkin charger.

Hands-off photography is one of the flip-style foldable’s benefits.

There’s a stabilized 12-megapixel main camera and a 13-megapixel ultrawide on the rear panel cover and a 32-megapixel selfie camera on the inside. Overall, photos from the Razr Plus are what I’ve come to expect from Motorola: occasionally great but somewhat inconsistent. I’m never sure when it’s going to go overboard on the HDR or saturation, but most of the time, it’s fine.

Photos in good lighting show plenty of detail, and the Razr Plus is capable of holding onto detail in dim lighting. In the main camera mode, it struggles to keep the shutter speed fast enough to avoid blur from moving subjects, but it actually does a bit better in portrait mode under the same conditions. Subject isolation isn’t nearly as good as on the Samsung Galaxy S23, which is the gold standard right now, but it’s passable.

There’s a lot of fun to be had once you close the phone and open the camera app from the front display. You can take selfies with the main camera, which is better in low light than the actual selfie camera (or pretty much any other selfie camera out there). There’s also a photo booth mode, which shows a countdown and takes photos on an automatic interval. I have an adorable series of photos of me and my toddler where he grows increasingly determined to snatch the phone out of my hand.

What I liked best was the ability to utilize the front-facing screen with the phone open. You can have the cover screen show a cute little animation to get a child’s attention so you can take their photo. The “get the attention” part worked, but he looked like a deer in headlights in my photos as he tried to figure out what the hell he was seeing. What worked better was using the cover screen to show a live preview of what you’re photographing — that’s when I got the best photos of my kid grinning and goofing off for the camera.

There’s also the flip-phone advantage I appreciated from the Galaxy Z Flip 4: you can set the phone down to take photos or video. I can stay engaged in whatever my kid is doing — rolling a bus toy back and forth across the kitchen, in our case — and get a cute video or some photos in the meantime. I will very much miss this when I switch back to a slab-style phone.

Video quality is good enough, though clips in dim lighting can look a bit dark and overly contrasty. You can choose from 4K or 1080p at either 60 or 30 fps — standard fare.

If you’re the right kind of person, the cover screen can be your secret weapon.

I like the Razr Plus quite a bit, but I recommend it with some reservations. It requires you to be a little more hands-on with your phone than I think most people prefer — setting app permissions, wrangling apps on a small screen, dodging the occasional bug. You’ll also need to be mindful that it’s not as dust or water-resistant as most thousand-dollar phones. If you’re prepared for all that, then using the Razr Plus is a rewarding experience.

It’s unfair to compare it to a phone that doesn’t exist yet, but it’s impossible to ignore the Galaxy Z Flip 5 looming on the horizon. We’re expecting it to launch in July, and rumors all point to a bigger cover screen on that device similar to the Razr’s. It’ll likely come with the same IP68 rating that the last Flip offered, as well as a more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. If all of that comes at the same $999 price as the Razr Plus, then it’s hard to see how Motorola will be able to compete. This is all based on speculation, but it’s worth considering before you sink a thousand dollars into a new phone.

I felt like I was more in control of how engaged I wanted to be with my phone at any given time

The summer of 2023 is, as we all know, Hot Foldable Summer, and at least part of the excitement around the Razr Plus is that it finally presents some real competition for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series. But more than that, this is a likable phone all on its own. Finding new use cases for the cover screen is genuinely delightful. I got some candid photos and video of my kid that I don’t think I could get with a slab-style smartphone. I generally just felt like I was more in control of how engaged I wanted to be with my phone at any given time. For the right person, I think these things are worth $999. They’re all things I absolutely want more of from my phone, and I’m glad that Motorola is back in the foldable conversation.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Sky launches TV webcam for video calling and watch parties

Sky launches TV webcam for video calling and watch parties

Sky’s Live camera sitting on top of one of its TVs. | Image: Sky

Comcast-owned British broadcaster Sky has launched a new camera that’s designed to add more social, fitness, and gaming features to its smart TVs. The Sky Live camera attaches magnetically to the top of Sky Glass smart TVs and connects via USB-C and HDMI. It lets you watch TV simultaneously with other households, supports making video calls over Zoom, can track home workouts, and also comes with Kinect-style motion-controlled games.

Sky Live costs £290 (about $370) upfront, but it’s also available to buy for £6 per month on a 48-month contract, or £12 per month on a 24-month contract. But The Guardian notes that Sky is also offering introductory deals that bring the cost of the camera down to £3 a month when bought alongside a TV. The camera requires a Sky Glass TV to function, which itself starts at £14 a month over a 48-month contract, but scales up as you add more content to your Sky package.

The launch of Sky Live comes as Xumo, a joint venture between Sky’s parent company Comcast and Charter is preparing to launch a new lineup of 4K smart TVs in the US this year in partnership with Element Electronics. The TVs will be sold under the Element Xumo TV brand, after Comcast renamed its earlier XClass TVs.

“Sky Live makes your TV much more than just a TV, by introducing new entertainment experiences for the heart of your home,” Sky’s global chief product officer Fraser Stirling said in a statement. “Get active with motion control games, work out with body tracking technology, video call on the big screen and watch TV with loved ones – even from afar. And this is just the start. With our powerful Entertainment OS ecosystem, it will keep getting better with every update.”

The camera itself is 12-megapixels in resolution with a 106-degree field of view, and has four microphones built in. It supports auto-framing to keep you in the center of the shot during video calls, and there’s also background noise suppression that attempts to keep you audible even when things get noisy. There’s no physical privacy shutter, instead you get a button to manually turn off the camera and microphone.

Image: Sky

There’s no privacy shutter, but you get a button to turn the camera and microphone off.

The watch together feature appears to be Sky’s take on Apple’s SharePlay, allowing you to watch TV remotely with up to 11 other households, The Guardian notes. Friends’ video streams appear to the right of the main video feed. The feature works with all live channels and Sky’s on-demand content, but not third-party streaming services like BBC’s iPlayer or Netflix, and streams are limited to HD rather than 4K. According to WhatHifi, Sky boasts that playback should be synchronized across all call participants (important if you’re watching live sports together), and anyone can pause or rewind the content you’re watching. It’s supposed to emulate watching TV together in the same room, after all.

The fitness and gaming features are where the Kinect comparisons become more apparent. There’s a built in Mvmnt fitness app with over 130 interactive workouts, and the Sky Live camera can keep an eye on your form and track your reps. There are also motion-controlled games including Fruit Ninja (obviously), and a version of Monopoly which is controlled with the TV’s standard remote and supports online multiplayer. But, as WhatHifi notes, Sky Live isn’t intended as a hands-free controller for the TV itself. You’ll still be using a traditional remote to choose content to watch.

Disclosure: Sky’s parent company Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.

Adobe XD put on life support ahead of Figma acquisition

Adobe XD put on life support ahead of Figma acquisition

Adobe’s own product design platform may be dropped entirely in favor of Figma. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Days appear to be numbered for Adobe XD. As spotted by developer Alex Ivanovs, the UX / UI product design platform is no longer available as a standalone app under Adobe’s Creative Cloud launcher, effectively sunsetting the software for folks who hadn’t already purchased it.

Considering Adobe is in the process of acquiring Figma, a remarkably similar set of design tools, this news isn’t entirely unexpected. But it doesn’t mean that the Adobe XD app is dead. Not yet anyway.

Anais Gragueb, Senior Manager for Creative Cloud & Innovation Public Relations confirmed to The Verge that Adobe will continue to support Adobe XD for existing customers. If you didn’t purchase an XD subscription before it was pulled then the app will still be available to download through the Creative Cloud All Apps plan. This is a package subscription for over 20 Adobe apps that starts from $54.99 per month (compared to the $9.99 per month for the standalone Adobe XD app), though Adobe XD is not one of the Creative Cloud apps listed on the landing page.

Image: Alex Ivanovs

As Ivanovs highlights here, the entire UI & UX section on the Adobe CC launcher has been removed alongside the standalone Adobe XD app.

It’s unclear when the standalone Adobe XD app was actually removed — back in May, a member of the Adobe Support Community forums highlighted that they were unable to find a download link to install it, and that it had disappeared from the company’s list of Creative Cloud applications. An Adobe representative responded in the forum to clarify that Adobe XD was no longer available.

Adobe hasn’t disclosed any plans to completely shut down the Adobe XD app. It won’t be too surprising if that does happen though — when the company announced it was purchasing Figma back in September last year, one particular question (aside from the various concerns regarding creative market monopolization) came to mind: doesn’t Adobe already have its own app for this?

Figma was Adobe XD’s biggest competitor prior to the acquisition. It’s a more popular service for a myriad of reasons: It’s web-based, has a free-to-use membership tier, and some designers argue that it’s simply a more flexible and powerful tool for prototyping designs. According to one study from UX Tools, Figma was dominating a whopping 77 percent of the UI design market back in 2021 — and its popularity has only grown since that point.

It’s likely that pulling the standalone Adobe XD app from sale is Adobe’s way of discouraging people away from the service before a full closure. After all, once its acquisition of Figma is approved, there’s no reason to keep running two similar applications that directly compete with each other. Whether it does get approval is a matter for regulators, with the EU expected to launch a formal investigation into the matter that could delay — or even unravel — the $80 billion deal.

Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match

Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match

Zuckerberg says he recently completed “the Murph Challenge” workout in just under 40 minutes, which is insane. | Mark Zuckerberg / Meta

Here we go.

After Elon Musk recently tweeted that he would be “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO shot back by posting a screenshot of Musk’s tweet with the caption “send me location.”

I’ve confirmed that Zuckerberg’s post on his Instagram account is, in fact, not a joke, which means the ball is now in Musk’s court. “The story speaks for itself,” Meta spokesperson Iska Saric told me.

I’m up for a cage match if he is lol

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023

Screenshot: The Verge

Zuckerberg posted this on his verified Instagram account Wednesday.

The backstory here: since I recently reported more details about Meta’s forthcoming Twitter competitor, Musk has been taunting Zuckerberg on Twitter with zingers like “Zuck my .” During an internal all-hands meeting at Meta last week, chief product officer Chris Cox told employees the company thinks creators want a version of Twitter that is “sanely run,” drawing cheers. “I’ve always thought that Twitter should have a billion people using it,” Zuckerberg said during a recent podcast interview with Lex Fridman.

In terms of tech billionaire CEOs literally fighting, Musk versus Zuckerberg would be as good as it gets. Musk, 51, has the upper hand on Zuckerberg in terms of sheer physical size, and he has talked about being in “real hard-core street fights” when he was growing up in South Africa. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg, 39, is an aspirational MMA fighter who is already winning Jiu-Jitsu tournaments. He also claims to have recently completed the grueling “Murph Challenge” workout in just under 40 minutes.

Regardless of who would win, I think we can all agree that a Musk-versus-Zuckerberg match would be one of the most entertaining fights of all time. It needs to happen. Don’t back down now, Musk.

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Chinas Cloud Computing Firms Raise Concern for U.S.

China’s Cloud Computing Firms Raise Concern for U.S. The Biden administration is exploring whether it can mount a campaign against Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Huawei, potentially fueling tensions with Beijing.

Meta is increasing the performance of its Quest 2 and Pro headsets

Meta is increasing the performance of its Quest 2 and Pro headsets

The Meta Quest 2 is about to get performance enhancements (and not a new strap). | Image: The Verge

Mark Zuckerberg announced the Meta Quest 3 VR headset at the beginning of this month, which should bring enhanced capabilities for those who want to upgrade their Quest 2. But that more performant Quest 3 won’t be here until September, so in the meantime, Meta promised a future update will boost the Quest 2’s (and Quest Pro’s) performance and keep the hardware supported for much longer.

Meta is now rolling out those changes in the v55 update. The Quest 2 will get a 19 percent GPU speed increase while Quest Pro owners will get an 11 percent jump. Both of the VR headsets are also getting up to 26 percent performance increases in CPU power as well, according to Meta.

The performance upgrades should give users overall smoother game performance and a more responsive system UI, Meta says, and the company is also adding Dynamic Resolution Scaling that lets applications take advantage of more pixel density with consistent frame rates.

Developers will also be able to update their games and apps to take advantage of the performance gains. Meta’s blog post includes a sample video of The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners enjoying a higher resolution thanks to the headset performance updates.

Image: Meta

Messenger in VR.

The v55 update also has some new software experiences. The Explore tab now encapsulates Meta’s media content, including short-form videos and content from your Facebook and Instagram accounts, and as previously tested, Reels. Meta Horizon Worlds also has new places to explore, along with new Avatar digital outfits. The new Explore part of the update is rolling out “gradually” to users now.

In version 54 of the Meta Quest software, the company had introduced notifications from non-VR apps, including ones from Messenger. Now in v55, Meta is adding a standalone Messenger app in VR so you can communicate with friends without needing to take your headset off and pull out your smartphone.

Image: Meta

You can use two fingers to zoom in and out in the web browser like on a multitouch device.

Finally, Meta Quest Browser is getting multi-touch gesture support that lets you zoom in and out and interact with elements with not just the Touch controllers but also with only hand gestures. It’s like getting a taste of the hand controls available in another upcoming headset.

Amazon Prime Day 2023 will take place on July 11th and 12th

Amazon Prime Day 2023 will take place on July 11th and 12th

Amazon’s Prime Day will take place in mid-July. Other retailers will likely also hold competing events around that time. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s that time of year again. Amazon once again announced its annual sales event for Prime members. Amazon Prime Day officially kicks off at 3AM ET / 12AM PT on Tuesday, July 11th, and runs through Wednesday, July 12th.

If you can’t wait until the Black Friday / Cyber Monday holiday shopping season, Prime Day offers some of the best deals you can get on a range of goods. That’s assuming, of course, Amazon won’t surprise us again with another “Prime Early Access Sale” (aka, Prime Day 2.0) as it did in early fall last year.

We don’t yet know everything that is going to be on sale, but one thing is almost certain based on past trends: the best discounts will likely land on Amazon devices. Historically, we’ve seen everything from Amazon’s smart displays to streaming devices drop to some of their lowest prices to date. That includes products from Amazon-owned companies like Ring and Blink, so everything from the latest Echo Dot to the Ring Video Doorbell 2 is fair game.

Like last year, early deals officially kick off weeks prior to the actual event, with Echo speakers, Eero mesh Wi-Fi routers, and other Alexa-enabled devices receiving up to 55 percent off starting as early as this week. Amazon also says it will be dropping prices on various services during the 48-hour event, offering discounts on Amazon Music Unlimited, Audible, and Amazon Prime Video, among other services.

But it’s not all Amazon devices and services, though. The two-day sales event offers one of the year’s best opportunities of the year to save on other kinds of electronics, including robot vacuums, wireless earbuds, laptops, charging accessories, and 4K TVs. Amazon says the sale will showcase the “lowest prices so far this year” on select products from Bose, Theragun, and a host of other well-established brands. Outside of that, there tends to be a plethora of deals available on tabletop games, home goods, toys, beauty products, and pretty much everything else under the sun.

As usual, these Prime Day deals will be available to Prime members living in the US but also to those in other countries, including Australia, Germany, Japan, and more than 20 other regions around the globe. As we do every year, we’ll be highlighting the best Prime Day deals from Amazon and other retailers holding competing sales events. Be sure, then, to bookmark The Verge dot com and check back between now and July 11th for all of our Prime Day coverage.

Discord plans to let creators sell downloadable products

Discord plans to let creators sell downloadable products

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Discord plans to give creators a new way to make money from their communities by selling digital products via one-time purchases. These new “Downloadables” can be things like a recipe ebook, a gaming guide, or a digital wallpaper, and the company plans to begin experimenting with them “over the coming months,” Discord’s Derek Yang wrote in a Tuesday blog post. Downloadables will be available to purchase from a Server Shop, which is also in testing.

The new Downloadables and Server Shop add to Discord’s server subscriptions as ways for creators to monetize their servers. Server subscriptions are getting an improvement, too: the company is adding tier templates to make it easier to decide what subscriptions to offer to your community. (Though Yang’s blog has a reminder that “not every opportunity to generate revenue needs to become a get-rich-quick scheme,” perhaps to dissuade people from using subscriptions to try and cash in.)

As part of Tuesday’s announcements, Discord also introduced a new type of channel in beta: Media Channels. These are designed to be focused on things like videos, photos, and files, and could be a useful option for communities that want to better split up meme dumps from text chat. They’re rolling out Tuesday to “all Community servers with Server Subscriptions enabled,” Yang wrote.

The growing number of features could make Discord a more attractive platform to build a community. And with people looking for new places to hang out given the changes to platforms like Twitter and Reddit, these new updates might encourage even more people to jump over.

Reddit starts removing moderators behind the latest protests

Reddit starts removing moderators behind the latest protests

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit has started removing moderator teams managing subreddits that switched the labeling on their communities to Not Safe For Work (NSFW) in the latest protests against the site. In addition to applying an age gate for desktop viewers and restricting access on mobile devices to logged-in users in the Reddit app, Reddit also doesn’t show ads on subreddits tagged NSFW. This cuts into its ability to monetize them, which is a major part of Reddit’s disputed push to charge apps for using the API.

CEO Steve Huffman told me in an interview last week, “90-plus percent of Reddit users are on our platform, contributing, and are monetized either through ads or Reddit Premium. Why would we subsidize this small group? Why would we effectively pay them to use Reddit but not everybody else who also contributes to Reddit?”

“Moderators incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said to The Verge. He declined to comment when asked if Reddit removed the mods.

According to a post in r/ModCoord (moderator coordination), moderators of r/MildlyInteresting moved forward on Tuesday with changing the sub to NSFW after a user vote. In making that change, r/MildlyInteresting followed the steps of other subreddits that went NSFW recently, including r/interestingasfuck and r/TIHI (Thanks I Hate It).

However, according to the now-former r/MildlyInteresting mod that wrote the post, just after they switched the subreddit over, they were logged out of their account and locked out. It quickly became clear that Reddit-employed administrators (as opposed to the mods, who don’t work for Reddit) were involved:

Following this, another mod posted our update instead. Right after, the u/ModCodeofConduct [a Reddit admin account] account removed the post and flipped the sub back to restricted instead of public. Then, the second moderator was also logged out of their account and locked out. Other mods tried to re-approve the post, one of them was promptly logged out and locked out as well.

After that, according to the former r/MildlyInteresting mod, the entire mod team was removed from the subreddit. As I write this, r/MildlyInteresting, which has more than 22 million subscribers, says it is currently unmoderated. The mod says the entire team received a 7-day suspension.

It’s apparently not just r/MildlyInteresting. Subs including r/interestingasfuck (11 million subscribers), r/TIHI (1.7 million subscribers), and r/ShittyLifeProTips (1.6 million subscribers), which had all gone NSFW or loosened their rules, are currently unmoderated.

Removal of mods is perhaps Reddit’s biggest action yet against its moderators, who are unpaid volunteers that sometimes dedicate years of their lives to managing these communities. Some mods said they felt threatened by messages sent by the company last week indicating it would unseat moderators who didn’t work to reopen their communities, and now that it’s a reality, the effects on those communities could be massive.

Twitch adds new labels for streams with mature content

Twitch adds new labels for streams with mature content

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Twitch is replacing its Mature Content toggle for livestreams with new “Content Classification Labels,” according to a blog post published Tuesday. The new labels are more descriptive, meaning streamers can be more specific about what viewers might see.

Twitch says streamers can now mark if their stream features:

• Mature-rated games
• Sexual themes
• Drugs, intoxication, or excessive tobacco use
• Violent and graphic depictions
• Significant profanity or vulgarity
• Gambling

Any games you play with an Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) of Mature will automatically get the “Mature-rated game” label, and if you change to playing a non-M-rated game, the label will be removed. And any labels you have will be automatically applied to VODs.

We’re rolling out new Content Classification Labels to clarify when streamers should label their streams, and to give viewers more info about the content they see.

Tune in to /Twitch today at 10AM PT to learn more and get your questions answered. pic.twitter.com/lH67iQQiUg

— Twitch (@Twitch) June 20, 2023

In its blog post, Twitch notes that it’s not updating its community guidelines; instead, it’s just offering more specific labels for certain types of content. Streamers who don’t label their streams will receive an email warning, and the correct label will be applied, Twitch says. “Streamers will not receive suspensions for failing to accurately label their streams,” according to Twitch, but if a streamer doesn’t use the correct labels after “multiple warnings,” their channel may be locked for “a period of days or weeks.”

Tuesday’s blog post also includes an FAQ that provides further clarification on when you’ll need to use a label. The significant profanity or vulgarity label will be required for using those types of language “in a persistent and excessive manner throughout the duration of your stream,” for example.

The new content labels are part of a string of recent updates from Twitch. Earlier this month, the company rolled out new ad rules that many streamers pushed back on, and Twitch walked back the ad rules a day later. Last week, it announced a new “Partner Plus” tier that outlines what streamers need to do to get a 70 / 30 revenue sharing split.

The government is helping Big Telecom squeeze out city-run broadband

The government is helping Big Telecom squeeze out city-run broadband

Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge

President Joe Biden’s internet access plan will hand $41.6 billion to internet service providers. In many places, that money will get funneled into private hands.

I started fantasizing about moving to Idaho when I heard about the broadband. I knew the state was a gem — I didn’t know a 20,000-person city leads the entire country in equitable internet access.

In Ammon, Idaho, every home has access to a fiber optic connection with 1 gigabit per second download and upload speeds. It costs roughly $30 per month. And it’s not controlled by a single big company. Nine different providers can offer you that connection. If you wanted, each of the four ethernet ports in your home gateway could deliver service from a different ISP.

It’s all thanks to one simple idea picking up steam in pockets of the United States: the internet should be treated like a public street. “We’ve built a road,” Ammon city administrator Micah Austin tells me. “We allow any number of UPS trucks or USPS trucks or Amazon trucks to deliver as many packets as they want to residents. The road we’ve built has unlimited capacity. There’s a million lanes. Really, the biggest limitation is your driveway.”

That means providers have to compete, unlike many parts of the US where people are lucky to have even two real choices of ISP and subsequently pay some of the highest rates in the world.

I tell Austin that he’s just described the waking nightmare of AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Cox, Lumen (CenturyLink), and Frontier. We both laugh. But it’s not really a joke – not when tens of billions of dollars in federal funding are at stake.

The United States is about to deploy $41.6 billion to expand high-speed internet access across all 50 states and every major US territory through a program called Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD). It’s the largest public investment in US broadband ever, and the Comcasts of the country will try their damndest to make sure that public money winds up in private hands.

But in many states, the fight will be over before it even begins — because of lobbyists.

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

In 2021, I wrote about the sorry state of internet in the US.

$100 billion was the original plan.

It was March of 2021. President Joe Biden had just taken office, declaring his intent to “bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American.” And instead of relying on Big Telecom, as much money as possible would go toward public networks. Biden promised to prioritize support for networks “owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, non-profits, and co-operatives.” He even suggested he’d clear the way legally for new municipal networks to exist by “lifting barriers that prevent municipally-owned or affiliated providers and rural electric co-ops from competing on an even playing field with private providers.”

This last promise was a key piece of the puzzle. Over the past three decades, hundreds of US cities and towns have tried to launch municipal broadband services in one form or another. But the deck has always been stacked in favor of incumbents.

Biden’s proposal could have launched a thousand new Ammons. When it passed eight months later, it was barely recognizable.

The American Jobs Plan became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, which was finally signed as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The $100 billion shrunk to $65 billion, then to $42.45 billion for last-mile connections to people’s homes — technically $41.6 billion, after a 2 percent cut for feds to administer the program. And surprise, surprise: the final law (pdf) didn’t prioritize local networks at all.

Biden’s proposal could have launched a thousand new Ammons

States can’t outright exclude local networks from grant eligibility under Biden’s infrastructure deal. (It says “may not exclude” right in the law.) But they’re only required to submit a “description” of how they intend to coordinate with local governments and “ascertain…whether” it makes sense to establish co-ops or public-private partnerships… or not. After that, they can hand the grants straight to big corporations. And in nearly one-third of the US, that decision may have already been made.

As of this article’s publication, 16 states have laws aimed blatantly at protecting telecom incumbents from pesky public competition. Did you know the state of Michigan only lets you build a network if enough private companies don’t bid? Florida requires local officials to explain how their network will be profitable within four years, as if profits were the point of fixing the digital divide. Nevada will only let towns and counties with tiny populations erect their own networks. Virginia local networks aren’t allowed to charge less than the incumbents — it’s illegal to make the internet more affordable!

These laws weren’t just supported by Big Telecom, by the way — some were effectively written by telecom lobbyists. They can reportedly be traced back to a model law written in 2002 by ALEC, a right-wing legislative group whose donors previously included AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Lumen, and Verizon, and which would allegedly invite state legislators to meet telecom companies at fancy hotels.

Image: Erik Carter for The Verge

In 2022, The Verge teamed up with Consumer Reports to reveal how much our readers actually pay for internet.

In theory, these laws exist because municipal broadband doesn’t work. Its critics certainly have some ammo on their side — and not just openly partisan fare like 2020’s “The Failed Promise of Government Owned Networks Across America” from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

A recently revised study by the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is a linchpin in attacks on municipal broadband. It’s cited in reports that are provided to members of Congress, and it broadly suggests that municipal fiber doesn’t pay. Examining 15 municipal networks, it concludes most failed to turn a profit, many put their towns in debt or hurt their bond ratings, and some were eventually sold at a loss. “City leaders should carefully assess all of these costs and risks before permitting a municipal fiber program to go forward,” wrote lead author, professor Christopher Yoo.

But take a close look at the study’s “failures,” and you’ll find something a lot more complicated.

At first, some of the report’s case studies sound like horror stories. “Marietta, Georgia sold its system for $11.2 million at a loss of $24 million,” wrote Yoo. “Provo, Utah sold its system for $1, leaving behind $39 million in debt.”

“He promised he would sell the fiber network to the highest bidder”

But long-time broadband journalist Philip Dampier revisited those debacles for Stop the Cap! in 2012 and 2017, respectively, and he concluded that Marietta and Provo didn’t sell their networks because of financial problems. They did it because pro-telecom politicians forced their hand.

“Marietta’s then-candidate for mayor, Bill [Dunaway], did not want the city competing with private telecommunications companies. If elected, he promised he would sell the fiber network to the highest bidder. He won and he did,” wrote Dampier. Not only did the supposed $24 million “loss” not count the money Marietta FiberNet was earning — the city was reportedly on track to pay off its debt just two years later. And the company that bought Marietta’s network didn’t fire its management and didn’t change its marketing plans.

As for Provo, it appears telecom lobbyists were at least partly to blame. When Provo was starting out, a new Utah law surprised the city with requirements to wholesale its network and finance it with debt. Meanwhile, the neighboring town of Spanish Fork has a thriving community network to this day because the law didn’t exist yet, ILSR director Chris Mitchell pointed out in 2015.

And while Provo made headlines by selling the network for a dollar, it got more than a single dollar for its $39 million investment: Google Fiber promised to offer seven years of free basic service for residents and 15 years of free service to the city. Perhaps more importantly, it created competition. Google still operates there today, offering gigabit speeds and unlimited data for $70 a month, the same price Comcast charges with a 1.2TB data cap. Provo may not be getting the best value for money, but is the result actually a failure for residents?

Image: Penn Law

Christopher Yoo’s study does capture some of the risk cities may face — but may miss the big picture, among other things.

You could ask the same of Monticello, Minnesota, where Yoo correctly points out that the city defaulted on its debt — but only after getting frivolously sued by the local phone company, after that phone company used the distraction to build its own fiber-optic competitor, and finally after Charter cut its prices by more than half to force the city out of business.

Despite all that, FiberNet Monticello still exists today as a public-private partnership that offers 100Mbps symmetrical connections for $30 a month or gigabit speeds for $75. And all those attempts to drive it out of the market meant competition that wound up lowering consumer prices from their $150-a-month highs. The city’s long-time administrator went on the ILSR podcast in 2020 to discuss how much of a success it’s been for the town — and revealed that its municipal network now makes an annual profit of $280,000.

Yoo originally even tried to use Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Electric Power Board (EPB), one of the highest profile success stories in municipal fiber, as a note of caution — since the city saw its bond rating cut from “AA+” to “AA” in March 2012. But he neglected to point out that S&P upgraded its rating to AA+ later that same year on the strength of its network, and the 2022 version of his study simply omits the EPB from the same argument.

When I mention the Yoo study to Ry Marcattilio, senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR), he attempts to discredit it on the spot. “It’s neither credible nor particularly well done, nor sensitive to the actual details of any of the case studies it uses,” he says, adding that Yoo initially got basic details wrong about how local entities were financing and modeling the economics. “Nobody who’s been in this space takes anything he has to say on that seriously.” (The ILSR published a rebuttal to Yoo’s study in 2017, and here’s Yoo’s response.) Yoo did not respond to my requests for comment.

Katie Espeseth, EPB’s VP of new products, suggests I take a look at a study by Dr. Bento Lobo instead — which suggests Chattanooga’s network not only paid for itself in the second year but also contributed $2.2 billion of positive economic impact in its first decade. (Note, though, that it’s not a wholly independent study: Dr. Lobo received a $25,000 grant from the EPB to conduct that research.)

But the best evidence that studies like Yoo’s are flawed, the ILSR claims, are the hundreds of communities across the country that are successfully building their own networks without making national headlines.

Ry Marcattilio joined the ILSR in 2020 specifically to help track the growth of local networks since the covid-19 pandemic, and he says the number has risen by roughly 25 percent to 345 municipal networks during that period. “Altogether, those 345 networks span 89 cities in the United States, of which 269 cities have a citywide physical network serving them,” he says. The American Association of Public Broadband, an advocacy group that just launched this May under Gigi Sohn, puts the number even higher: over 750 community networks in the USA.

Some of that growth is publicly funded. Marcattilio points me to this list of projects using dollars from the American Rescue Plan, and he expects BEAD will make a difference, too. “A good portion of the BEAD money will end up going to the monopoly ISPs. Where it changes the game for municipal networks is where states have set up good rules that favor local voices and where cities have done due diligence in getting this money to take action,” he says. Marcattilio thinks Vermont, Maine, Colorado, and New York are particularly poised to do well with the additional investment.

Image: The Verge

In 2021, The Verge took an interactive county-by-county look at the broadband gap.

But will BEAD funds be pouring into an illegally rigged playing field? That’s the question that’s been bugging me for weeks.

Because no matter how much Biden’s infrastructure bill was weakened, the final federal law still says states “may not exclude” public entities from a chance at the grant money. And yet, the federal agency responsible for BEAD broadband dollars apparently doesn’t agree.

Remember the 2 percent deduction from the infrastructure act? That $849 million helps fund the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which lays out all the requirements for states and their subcontractors to get BEAD funding in this 98-page document (pdf). But the NTIA has seemingly decided not to challenge the states. Even as the agency “strongly encourages” waiving pre-existing laws, it’s simultaneously assuring states it won’t act if they ignore that request.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

The law says “may not exclude.” But the NTIA says preexisting state exclusions don’t count.

While the NTIA does interpret the law as banning new restrictions, the only thing states have to do about pre-existing restrictions is to “disclose each unsuccessful application affected by such laws and describe how those laws impacted the decision to deny the application.” It’s effectively a grandfather clause, where the only penalty is paperwork.

And while the NTIA does reserve the right to “determine whether the use of funds” complies with both the letter and spirit of the law, an NTIA representative has already been telling states (and told FierceTelecom) that BEAD funding won’t be delayed to states with pre-existing laws that restrict municipal broadband. Even in places like Nebraska, where most forms of municipal broadband are straight-up banned, the state’s broadband director said he expects no delay or reduction in federal dollars.

NTIA spokesperson Virginia Bring repeatedly deflected our questions about the legal discrepancy between the federal and state laws. None of the agency’s answers to The Verge addressed it at all. Two telecommunication lawyers confirmed to me that the legal discrepancy is real — but suggested the NTIA could get tangled up in a lawsuit if it tried to use the federal law to preempt state ones.

When I ask veteran tell-it-like-it-is telecom reporter Karl Bode about the whole BEAD situation, he tells me: “This is a historic infusion of broadband subsidies that will absolutely result in a lot of amazing progress. At the same time there’s just endless potential for fraud and misuse of funding, given monopoly telecom’s influence on the legislative process.”

But, he points out, some states may at least try to level the playing field before it’s too late.

Colorado used to be the 17th state with laws keeping local entities from easily erecting their own networks. But on May 1st, the state repealed every one of them. Colorado no longer prioritizes private telecom bids, no longer requires a referendum to build a municipal network, and no longer keeps local governments from creating their own middle-mile infrastructure.

In Washington, there’s even a bill in committee that would require BEAD funding to be spent only on open-access networks, making it less desirable for big business to invest.

Some states are challenging the FCC’s broadband maps, too. That’s important because the law requires that states prioritize unserved and underserved regions to help close the digital divide, but that requires knowing where they are. Historically, the FCC has let the wolves guard the henhouse by relying on ISPs to truthfully say which houses they cover — data that the FCC didn’t even audit.

Lastly, while the NTIA may be grandfathering in old laws restricting municipal broadband, the agency does hint it could step in if states make things even harder than before. Before it approves a state’s “final proposal,” the NTIA says it will “consider” whether any “new laws, regulations, policies, procedures, or any other form of rule or restriction” winds up excluding “any potential providers from eligibility.”

Again, the NTIA will only “consider” those things before granting its approval, but at least that’s a veiled threat instead of nothing at all.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In 2018, Karl Bode wrote for The Verge about how the FCC was relying on a false picture of internet access for federal funding. Improvements have been made, but it’s not clear they’re fixed.

Municipal networks can thrive even without these billions in federal funding, and despite restrictive state laws. Tennessee’s law didn’t stop the Chattanooga Electric Power Board from serving 135,000 homes and businesses with 25Gbps symmetrical internet — it mostly just kept the company from expanding beyond its own electrical footprint, restricting its ability to close the digital divide in neighboring cities and towns.

Even then, there are ways to do more. The EPB’s network can touch over a million homes because it offers wholesale services to communities on the edge of its network, Espeseth tells me. Ammon does something similar.

And if you do have the legal authority, Ammon technology director Dan Tracy says justifying a network isn’t as challenging as you might expect. Your city needs water and power anyhow, it uses SCADA systems to control them, and a fiber-optic backbone for those systems can also turn into internet for the residents with a bit more work. “Infrastructure is kind of all the same that way, in that it’s close to where it needs to be,” says Tracy. Ammon hired its own construction crews, bought its own fiber splicer, and built a six-strand network with two fibers just for the city’s backbone connectivity.

But Ammon is a relatively wealthy town, he admits.

So here’s my question: should local entities do without the biggest federal investment in broadband ever? Should they have to do it on their own with these restrictive laws in place, or trust that Comcast and Cox and CenturyLink will fix a problem that they currently benefit from? Should Big Telecom get to own billions of dollars of additional network funded by taxpayers?

Should we really be building toll bridges instead of public roads?