Essays from Josh Lambert on rural broadband, the wireless industry, the open web, faith, and building durable things from a small town.
The Short Version Open ChatGPT right now. Ask it for the best internet provider in your town. If your WISP isn’t in the answer, you should be in a Code Red for marketing. Not next quarter. Right now. I ran that test for my own coverage area in Centreville, Alabama. ChatGPT ranked my WISP, Alabama Lightwave , fourth, behind AT&T Fiber, Spectrum, and generic “5G Home” boxes, and described local…
Somewhere in San Francisco right now, someone is sitting in a tattoo chair getting Sutro Tower inked on their arm. Not the Golden Gate Bridge. Not Alcatraz. A 977-foot steel broadcast tower on a hill. Permanently needled into human skin, because fifty years of standing there, tall, lit, impossible to ignore, turned infrastructure into something people claim as their own.
There is a moment near the beginning of the film, before anyone is running, before anything has gone wrong. The cars stop. Doors swing open. Alan Grant steps out into the light, and across the field, a Brachiosaurus lifts its head above the tree line.
You were on a tower last Tuesday. Your phone rang halfway up. Customer with a service issue, same guy you helped last month. You took the call because there’s no helpdesk, no tier-one support team, no one else. That’s the job. It’s always been the job. What changed is everything around it. Somewhere between the CPNI certification and the third SAS invoice and the BDC filing you couldn’t afford to…
At St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Montevallo , where I serve on the vestry, we recently completed another priest search. A new priest will stand at our altar next month. Transitions like that carry a quiet weight. You grow accustomed to a particular voice carrying the Eucharistic prayer. You come to recognize the cadence of someone’s pauses, the way they hold silence, the way they lift the…
Do you remember 2010? We were all playing Angry Birds, wearing Silly Bandz, and watching a 16-year-old Canadian kid with a swooping haircut take over the planet singing “Baby.” Justin Bieber was the new hotness. If you didn’t have Bieber fever, you were irrelevant. A few years later, that haircut aged about as well as a Facebook FarmVille invite. The fixed wireless industry might have the same…
Ours is a culture that mistakes recklessness for courage. We glorify the rule-breaker, the daredevil, the maverick who leaps first and thinks later. It is thrilling in a movie, but in the world of steel, voltage, and wind at 300 feet, that same spirit turns fatal. Precision, not passion, is what keeps the signal, and more importantly the people, alive. So let’s talk about The Princess Diaries 2.…
Disclaimer: These reflections represent my personal opinions and experiences. They are offered in good faith, not as factual claims about any specific organization or individual. The views expressed here do not reflect those of any church, company, or association with which I am or have been affiliated. I reference public and personal experiences for purposes of commentary, not criticism. In one…
“We’re stronger together than apart.” This timeless truth was on full display this year in the electric hallways of the Paris and Horseshoe Hotel in Las Vegas. The wireless internet industry descended on the venue for WISPA’s annual WISPAPALOOZA conference , a vital event that allows operators, vendors, and subject matter experts to compare notes, share deployment stories,…
My parents loved me. I can prove it; they introduced me to The Princess Bride at an early age. It’s a film that hits every note a young tween or teen could want: adventure, rescues, sword fights, and just enough wit to make you feel clever for keeping up. SPOLIERS AHEAD. STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT.
There’s an energy in the State of Alabama right now as the worldwide technology industry undergoes a continued evolution. From AI and fiber to software and LTE/5G deployed at the edge, the future is being built right before our eyes. There’s something truly special about getting in the room with the people building the “applied” technology that surrounds us every day. And…
DOOM AND GLOOM. That’s the constant drumbeat of the day. Scroll your social media feed, flip on cable news, or even just sit in some church pulpits on Sunday morning and you’ll hear the same chorus: the end is near. Whether it’s criminals, demons, immigrants, politicians, or your Aunt Sue, there’s always a phantom villain waiting in the shadows to finish off humanity. The…
Over the past few months, I’ve had the significant misfortune of participating through Zoom and Teams in virtual meetings where so-called “A.I.” bots were in attendance. These bots claim to be “taking notes,” “transcribing,” and offering “insights” on how the meeting went. Hopefully you’re catching all the air quotes I’d be making…
For years, Washington bet everything on fiber, spending billions in taxpayer money with the primary purpose of extending fiber cable to every home – all of this with the goal of future-proofing the American internet. It hasn’t worked. Instead, this backhoe bonanza has burned through public funds while leaving the country unprepared for the real shift: the rise of AI applications at the edge.…
When Apple unveiled iOS 26 and its sweeping new “Liquid Glass” UI design, many developers braced for impact. Major version jumps like this often send cross-platform frameworks scrambling to catch up, forcing developers to wait weeks or months for SDK updates, patches, and compatibility fixes. But for one framework, TiDev Titanium , iOS 26 support was ready on Day 0.
While Americans were locked down during COVID, a new kind of Cold War accelerated, not one fought with bombs or bullets, but with silicon, algorithms, and data. The artificial intelligence arms race is underway. China knows it. Russia knows it. And recent battlefield innovations in Ukraine have shown just how fast AI-powered warfare is evolving. The only question left is: does America know it?…
When you’re up against brutal terrain, dense trees, heavy forests, and tough topography, wireless internet deployment options narrow fast. You either pay for expensive licensed spectrum or turn to CBRS, a public-use radio band that delivers the signal strength needed to punch through obstructions and bring rural broadband and edge devices online. For most WISPs, licensed spectrum simply…
I recently joined Tony Porterfield , CTO for the City of Montgomery , at ALANOG-6 for a deep-dive “fireside” conversation about the MGMix , Alabama’s first and only city-owned Internet Exchange Point (IXP). CLICK HERE TO WATCH OUR FIRESIDE PRESENTATION MGMix (Montgomery Internet Exchange) was originally launched in 2016 enabling network operators with a presence at the RSA Dexter Data Center on…
For the first time in years yesterday I once again graced the doors of Birmingham’s Innovation Depot. This lovely startup incubation space was the venue for the 3rd “Breakfast Club” event I’ve attended hosted by local software development firm Daring Bit Assembly – this is a monthly “mixer” event where technology professionals meet to chat tech, business, investments, and more.
Today I attended a webinar hosted by Jane Zhang from Zapier’s product marketing team. The focus was on Zapier’s new AI agent offering , with the webinar providing some real concrete examples of how AI agents can help a business with their lead generation efforts. There’s a lot of buzz, hyperbole, and misinformation in this space – so it was nice seeing a reputable company like Zapier jumping in…
The “Cloud”, for all the marketing lingo and buzzwords flying around about it, is actually quite simple. At it’s core, the Cloud is simply computers connected across diverse areas and networks. That’s it. There’s no incantations or magic spells holding our digital age together – though on second thought, the engineers that design and keep these technologies working might as well be wizards. It can…
A gentle fog hung over Birmingham, Alabama this morning – visible as far as the eye could see from the 20th floor of the immaculate John Hand building. Industry and commerce humming about below the club floor powered by technology our ancestors couldn’t fathom in 1912 when this building joined Birmingham’s emerging skyline. The innovations we live amongst today are made possible through human…
I grew up on a more open internet. It wasn’t perfect, but generally speaking, gatekeepers were significantly less common than they are today. On the 2025 version of the internet – algorithms/AI and corporate hucksters get to be the primary gatekeepers of information. If a post isn’t shared on Facebook, X, or Reddit – likely you won’t see it – and even if it is shared, it likely won’t get the reach…
Pictures are worth a thousand words – and this one has a story indeed. Shown in the center is a Mimosa ethernet NID. It’s connected to an outdoor wireless internet CPE used for this customer to get internet. It was part of a recent install where a customer upgraded from unreliable fiber internet to Lightwave XR , an internet product offered by a company I’m invested in and operate…
The first breath of life is often followed with a scream. A startling statement from the newly born of their changed circumstances where they’re no longer in a safe and warm comfort zone. Discontentment and frustration sets the tone for a new battle of attitude that will follow the rest of their days. From birth, we show our colors. On bold and loud display is our propensity to view the…
Today, I take a departure from the usual technical subjects that occupy my writings, opting instead to delve into one of the most fervently discussed and debated theological issues within the Christian Church. A subject that has not only challenged scholars and theologians but has also engaged the hearts and minds of believers for several centuries. Probably not smart for this software engineer to…
The A.I. is hungry and your juicy data is on the menu. A new social media platform called “Threads” made its grand debut to the world yesterday with the stated goal to be the “ public conversations app with 1+ billion people on it ”. This launch comes in the wake of competing platform Twitter recently deploying aggressive rate limits with the apparent goal of curbing 3rd…
I’ve been a citizen of the Internet as long as I can remember. An early adopter of Facebook and Twitter, an avid user of streaming services like Netflix and Spotify – even old school services such as Grooveshark, the OG online music streaming service. (Remember that?) Gmail was my email, Amazon was my store of choice, and of course I’ve always had one smartphone or another. Mostly iOS,…
Magic. This is the first word sailing with haste through my brain after witnessing ChatGPT effortlessly write reasoned responses to my questions and prompts. For the uninitiated, ChatGPT is an A.I. powered chatbot built on top of large language models (sometimes called LLMs) that enables a user to prompt and question it through a human-centric conversation approach. For example, you can ask it…