EE is taking aim at one of streaming’s biggest annoyances, endlessly scrolling for something to watch.

The company has launched Smart Search, a new AI-powered feature on EE TV. It lets users find content simply by describing what they’re in the mood for.

Instead of typing exact titles, Smart Search understands more natural queries like “a funny detective show” or even a quote from a scene. It then pulls results from across live TV, on-demand services and integrated streaming apps. As a result, it presents everything in one place.

The idea is simple: less app-hopping, more watching.

Alongside it, EE is introducing Mood Matcher, another AI-driven tool designed to tackle the “what should we watch?” problem. Users answer a few quick prompts about mood, genre or themes. The system then serves up tailored recommendations. This is something EE says is particularly useful when multiple people are trying to agree on what to watch.

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The launch leans heavily on a very real problem. EE’s own research suggests 41% of viewers struggle to discover new content, while 45% fall back on rewatching shows just to avoid the effort of choosing. Perhaps more tellingly, 38% say deciding what to watch causes household tension which probably sounds familiar.

There’s also the issue of fragmentation. With 42% of users relying on their phones to find content and 61% wanting a more unified viewing experience, EE is positioning Smart Search as a way to bring everything together into a single interface.

That broader shift, making discovery as important as the content itself, is becoming a key battleground for TV platforms. As analyst Paolo Pescatore puts it, speed and simplicity are now just as critical as having a deep catalogue.

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Smart Search and Mood Matcher are available now through the EE TV app on compatible devices. A wider rollout is planned for EE TV Pro and EE TV Box Edge hardware in the near future.

For EE, the pitch is clear: stop searching like a database, and start searching like a human.

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To stay competitive, many small businesses need advanced wireless communication networks, not only to communicate but also to leverage technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and robotics. Often, however, the businesses lack the technical expertise needed to install, configure, and maintain the systems.

Bhaskara Rallabandi, who spent more than two decades working for major telecom companies, decided to use his expertise to help small businesses. Rallabandi, an IEEE senior member, is an expert certified by the International Council on Systems Engineering.

In 2023 he helped found Invences, a telecommunications automation company headquartered in Frisco, Texas.

Invences services include designing, building, and installing data centers, as well as cost-effective and secure wireless, private, IoT, and virtual communications networks.

The company has set up systems for farms, factories, and universities in rural and urban areas including underserved communities. Its mission, Rallabandi says, is to “build autonomous, ethical, and sustainable networks that connect communities intelligently.”

For his work, he was recognized last year for “entrepreneurial leadership in founding and scaling a U.S.-based technology company, advancing innovation in 5G/6G and Open RAN [radio access network], shaping global standards, and inspiring future leaders through mentorship and community impact” with the IEEE-USA Entrepreneur Achievement Award for Leadership in Entrepreneurial Spirit.

Building a telecommunications career

He began his telecommunications career in 2009 as a manager and principal network engineer at Verizon’s Innovation Labs in Waltham, Mass. He and his team ran some of the earliest long-term evolution and evolved packet core performance trials. (LTE is the 4G wireless broadband standard for mobile devices. EPC is the IP-based, high-performance core network architecture for 4G LTE networks.)

That work at Innovation Labs, he says, was key to the development of the first 4G systems. It set the stage for scalable, interoperable broadband architectures that underpin today’s 5G and 6G designs.

“We built the first bridge between legacy and cloud-native networks,” he says.

He left in 2011 to join AT&T Labs in Redmond, Wash. As senior manager and principal solutions architect, he oversaw the design, integration, and testing of the company’s next-generation wireless systems. He also led projects that redefined automation of networks and set up cloud computing systems including FirstNet, the nationwide broadband network for first responders, and VoLTE, the first voice-over-video LTE for conducting video calls.

In 2018 Rallabandi was hired as a principal and a senior manager of engineering at Samsung Networks Division’s Technology Solutions Division, in Plano, Texas. He led the development of 5G virtualization and Open RAN initiatives, which enable more flexible, scalable, and efficient large network deployments and interoperability among vendors.

Designing networks for small businesses

Feeling that he wasn’t reaching his full potential in the corporate world, and to help small businesses, he opted to start his own venture in 2023 with his wife, Lakshmi Rallabandi, a computer science engineer. She is Invences’s CEO, and he is its founding principal and chief technology advisor.

Invences, which is self-funded and employs about 100 people, has more than 50 customers from around the world.

“I wanted to do something more interesting where I could use the knowledge I gained working for these big companies to fill the gaps they overlooked in terms of automation” for small businesses, he says. “I have a team of people who, combined, have 200 years of technology experience.”

The startup builds networks that simplify its clients’ operations and reduce their costs, he says.

Instead of duplicating how major telecom carriers build networks for dense urban areas, he says, his designs reimagine the network architecture to lower its complexity, costs, and operational overhead.

“Connectivity should not be a luxury. Rural communities deserve an infrastructure that fits their needs.”

The systems integrate new technologies such as Open RAN, virtualized RAN, digital twins, telemetry, and advanced analytics. Some networks also incorporate agentic AI, an autonomous system that runs independently of humans and uses AI agents that plan and act across the network. Digital twins evaluate the agent’s decisions before releasing them.

“Autonomy is not about removing humans from the loop,” Rallabandi says. “It is about giving systems the ability to manage complexity so humans can focus on intent and outcomes.”

Rallabandi also has worked on AI-driven telecom observability technologies designed to allow networks to detect anomalies and optimize performance automatically.

He has developed a virtual O-RAN innovation lab, where clients can test the interoperability of their 5G systems, try out their enhancements, run trials of future functions, and experiment with updates.

Invences partnered with Trilogy Networks to build the FarmGrid platform for farms in Fargo, N.D., and Yuma, Ariz. FarmGrid used private 5G networks, edge-computing AI, and digital twins to make the operations more efficient.

“The project connects farms with sensors, analytics platforms, and autonomous equipment to enable precision agriculture, water optimization, and real-time decision-making,” Rallabandi says.

IEEE Senior Member Bhaskara Rallabandi talks about partnering with Trilogy Networks to build the FarmGrid platform for farms in Fargo, N.D., and Yuma, Ariz.TECKNEXUS

Paying it forward through IEEE programs

Rallabandi says he believes staying involved with IEEE is important to his career development and a way to give back to the profession. He is a frequent invited speaker at IEEE conferences.

He is active with IEEE Future Networks and its Connecting the Unconnected (CTU) initiative. Members of the Future Networks technical community work to develop, standardize, and deploy 5G and 6G networks as well as successive generations.

CTU aims to bridge the digital divide by bringing Internet service to underserved communities. During itsannual challenge, Rallabandi works with the winning students, researchers, and innovators to help them turn their concepts into affordable, cost-effective options.

“CTU represents the best of IEEE,” he says. “It is about taking innovation out of conferences and into communities that need it the most.

“Connectivity should not be a luxury. Rural communities deserve an infrastructure that fits their needs.”

He participates in the recently launched IEEE Future Networks Empowerment Through Mentorship initiative, which helps innovators, entrepreneurs, and startups expand their companies by educating them about finance, marketing, and related concepts.

“IEEE gives me both a voice and a responsibility,” Rallabandi says. “We’re not just developing technology; we are shaping how humanity connects.”

from the good-news-only-is-not-journalism dept

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Martha Gellhorn stowed away on a hospital ship to become the only woman journalist to land on Normandy Beach on D-Day. She carried stretchers before writing her harrowing account of the invasion.

The New Yorker’s famously epicurean writer A.J. Liebling subsisted on military rations and came under fire during World War II to describe what it was like for the soldiers and sailors at war.

Syndicated columnist Ernie Pyle died, in a helmet and Army fatigues, among some of the troops whose names and hometowns he carefully included in his dispatches. “At this spot, the 77th Infantry lost a buddy,” read the makeshift sign posted at the place where a Japanese machine gun bullet felled him.

Those reporters told stories of war in all its gore and its glory, its exhilaration and its ennui. Others have laid bare the anxiety and doubts.

Veteran Vietnam correspondent Neil Sheehan broke the story of the Pentagon Papers, which showed how government officials deceived the public about the Vietnam war. Sheehan won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, “A Bright Shining Lie,” which chronicled the war’s impact on idealists who once believed in it, through the story of his relationship with an inside source.

Well before bombs started dropping on Iran and President Donald Trump began to tease the notion of a ground invasion, his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, began putting obstacles in the way of the reporters with the most experience covering the nation’s military. While Hegseth’s moves haven’t stopped the reporters from doing their jobs, it has made it harder for them to keep the public informed.

As someone who worked as a Washington correspondent for decades, I worry that these obstacles could limit the number of reporters who have the experience with – and trust of – key sources to do the kind of in-depth, nuanced journalism that a war, with its price in lives and resources, deserves.

Corralling the watchdogs

Generally, war correspondents need the cooperation of the military they are covering to get to the front. For the U.S. press, that requires relationships and credibility at the Pentagon.

Early in 2025, Hegseth ordered major news organizations to give up their desks in the Pentagon press room to MAGA favorites. NPR’s desk went to Breitbart News. Roaming the hallways, where reporters sometimes found sources who would deviate from the company line, became verboten.

Eventually, the area in the Pentagon where reporters were allowed was circumscribed to a single corridor outside the press room – even though the public affairs officers who worked most closely with reporters were in an office on the other side of the 6½-million-square-foot building.

Then Hegseth conditioned the issuance of press credentials on reporters, effectively giving military brass the right to censor or sanitize their reports.

As a result, almost the entire Pentagon press corps, which included outlets ranging from The Associated Press to The New York Times to Fox News and USNI News, which covers the Navy, moved out of the building in October 2025. Some have been invited back for the press briefings Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have begun to give on progress of the battle in Iran.

But after the first of these briefings, the Pentagon abruptly banned photographers from attending, reportedly because Hegseth’s staff found some of their images of him to be unflattering.

Secretary on defense

Gone are the off-camera “background” briefings where Department of Defense brass could give trusted reporters greater context and nuance for battlefield decisions. Gone are the impromptu hallway meetings where reporters have, with luck or persistence, picked up information that deviates from an administration’s agreed-upon script.

Also not in evidence, at least not so far: the deployment of the kind of journalistic embed program that the Pentagon used during the Iraq war to give the American people an up-close look at troops in the conflict zone.

How might that affect what you, the public, gets to know? It was a combination of an anonymous tip and insider access that led the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to break the devastating story of My Lai, the American soldiers’ massacre of civilians during the Vietnam War.

At the made-for-TV briefings he does hold, Hegseth devotes most of the session to questions from outlets such as the Epoch Times, The Daily Caller and LindellTV – owned by Mike Lindell, the head of the well-known pillow company.

At one recent briefing, one of the favored new cadre tossed Hegseth a shameless softball. Referring to American troops in the Middle East, the questioner asked: “What is your prayer for them?”

Yet as hostilities drag on, even some among Hegseth’s chosen press corps have begun to ask irksome questions about the war. The normally Trump-friendly Daily Caller ran a less-than-flattering piece about the president berating a reporter for asking about troop deployments.

On March 4, 2026, Hegseth accused journalists of focusing on war casualties to make “the president look bad.” On March 13, Hegseth castigated as “more fake news” CNN’s report that the Trump administration had underestimated the impact of the war on shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

“The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth concluded, adding fuel to the speculation that a Trump supporter who won a bidding war for CNN’s corporate parent is going to turn the network into a more administration-friendly outlet.

Soon after, Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr threatened network broadcast licenses over coverage critical of the administration’s conduct of the war. Echoing Carr’s threats the next day: the president himself.

‘Be a Marine’

The Trump administration is not alone in its disdain for a free press: Israel has long been notorious for restricting press access from areas where it is conducting military operations.

Leaders of the theocratic Iranian regime are even worse; the country is cited by press freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders as “one of the world’s most repressive countries in terms of press freedom.”

But the United States has historically distinguished itself by making freedom its calling card, even – or perhaps especially – in wartime.

“The news may be good, or bad. We shall tell you the truth,” Voice of America, a U.S. government-launched radio network, promised – in German – in its very first broadcast to Nazi Germany in 1942.

Now, however, the Trump administration, is busy trying to undermine the editorial independence of Voice of America, which broadcasts news to countries that don’t have a free press.

Pentagon reporters are continuing to find ways to get around the propaganda. NPR’s Tom Bowman told me that he takes inspiration from a pep talk he overheard a military source deliver to another reporter crestfallen over the lack of access.

“Quit whining and be a Marine,” the official said. “Go over, under or around the obstacle. Find a way to do it.”

Most reporters and their organizations are doing just that, finding sources outside the administration, like the ones in Congress who told The Hill how much money the war is costing taxpayers per day. And they’re continuing to get information from sources on the inside, like the ones who told The Wall Street Journal that Trump’s military advisers warned him that Iran might block the Gulf of Hormuz, but that he opted for war anyway.

So far, neither Hegseth’s obstacle course nor threats from the White House and the FCC have stopped the press from reporting stories or asking questions that the administration would rather not see or hear.

But restrictions on press freedom have a corrosive effect. We already have seen how Trump, using lawsuits and licensing threats, has used his power to make corporate media owners think twice about pursuing news he doesn’t like.

Seasoned Pentagon reporters will still find ways to get to sources they already have. But Hegseth’s tactic of blocking press access to the military keeps reporters from developing new sources and keeps new reporters from building the relationships they need to become seasoned Pentagon reporters.

Americans have long been able to understand the triumphs and tribulations of American troops at war, and to make intelligent decisions about whether they approve of a war’s cost, because a free press has been able to tell the story – good or bad. That tradition is now at risk.

Kathy Kiely is Professor and Lee Hills Chair of Free Press Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia

Filed Under: defense department, dod, journalism, pete hegseth, propaganda