from the affordable-fiber-optics-is-woke dept

Earlier this year the Trump administration decided to illegally dismantle the 2021 Digital Equity Act, which was intended to help push internet access into long-neglected parts of the U.S. The Act took very vague aim at digital redlining, or the longstanding practice by telecom giants of refusing to upgrade (or at times even timely repair) broadband service in minority and low-income neighborhoods.

Big ISPs like AT&T have long been caught not only refusing to upgrade or repair broadband access in minority areas of cities like Detroit and Cleveland, but charging minority neighborhoods more money for slower service than their less diverse, more affluent counterparts.

Here’s the thing: the Digital Equity Act barely mentions race; it simply included some vague language stating that deployments and broadband grants must be even and non-discriminatory. The law identified minority status as one of eight nonexclusive indicators of barriers to digital access, while separately prohibiting discrimination in programs receiving funds.

As it has done with numerous other programs of this kind aimed at lowering broadband bills, the Trump administration clumsily — and quite illegally — tried to dismantle the whole law last year, insisting it was somehow racist against white people.

Last week, the DC District Court issued a ruling that allowed the Act to survive, but stripped out the already modest race-based components of the law, declaring them unconstitutional.

Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, which had done a lot of good studies on broadband redlining, celebrated the decidedly mixed bag:

“We are proud to have pushed to keep the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program alive. This crucial program provides communities across the country not just with access or technology, but the skills, confidence, and pathways necessary to fully participate and thrive in our digital age. We fundamentally object to the government’s position that empowering Black and Brown communities is unconstitutional.“

So the competitive grant program at the heart of the law will continue, but there’s no real consensus on what that will look like or how helpful it will be under a federal government too racist and corrupt to function in the public interest. And there’s not much left to address the very real issue of broadband digital discrimination, which runs parallel with racial discrimination in other U.S. infrastructure sectors like energy.

The Infrastructure Act not only featured $42.5 billion to expand broadband access, it featured a lot of included (and adjacent) legislation intending to address racism in broadband and broadband affordability more generally. Most of that’s been brutally stripped away by the Trump administration, which is instead funneling billions of dollars to Elon Musk for costly Starlink service, then declaring the problem solved.

It’s a lovely bundle of corruption, racism, and regulatory/court capture all thrown into a stew by a bunch of zealots keen to pretend they’re engaging in policy reform and serious legal analysis.

Filed Under: broadband, digital discrimination, digital equite act, fiber, illegal, racism, redlining, ruling, telecom

AI AND ML

History’s biggest infrastructure build-out is pushing up hardware and software prices, analyst says

Spending on AI infrastructure is pushing tech sector expenditure to historic levels,  and enterprise customers are already footing the bill through higher software and hardware prices.

John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, told The Register that tech companies’ own technology spending already amounted to around $1 trillion and was set to grow by 34.7 percent in 2026.

The colossal splurge is driving global sales, leading Gartner to raise its 2026 estimates to $6.37 trillion, a surge of 14.2 percent year-on-year. That’s up from April‘s forecast of $6.31 trillion and February’s $6.15 trillion.

Lovelock said overall growth was accelerating, although tech spending was moving at three different speeds. Devices, which include consumer purchases as well as business laptops, are set to grow by 9.8 percent. However, a significant chunk of that increase comes from higher prices as memory and chips become more expensive. Services and telecoms had lower growth, at 5.3 percent and 4.4 percent respectively.

Infrastructure as a service – one segment of cloud computing – is on pace to grow by 29.3 percent this year to reach $287 billion. In 2025, the market grew by 25.3 percent, Gartner said.

Much of the acceleration is being driven by technology companies equipping datacenters to provide capacity for the expected AI boom. Gartner’s spending figures exclude the buildings themselves and their cooling systems.

Lovelock told us: “The AI infrastructure build-out is the largest infrastructure project humanity has ever undertaken. Bigger than the US highways, bigger than European rail, bigger than the Great Wall of China, and the International Space Station combined.

“That’s how big this sucker is. It is transformational in that sense. We are shifting from a world where we spend on information technology to a world where we’re going to spend on intelligence technology. And right now, you can have your head in the sand and try and avoid that reality, but it’s coming.”

As enterprise software companies embed AI into their products and partner with foundation model builders such as OpenAI and Anthropic, organizations buying IT are concerned about price increases.

“CIOs are extremely concerned about price increases coming at them from all of their vendors, and they are pushing back hard in every area where they can. But the only place that they’re being successful is in the IT services area, where when a service provider adds AI to their product offering, the service provider is rewarded with a lower price point from their customers,” Lovelock said.

There were also unanswered questions about whether the market can sustain the increases, or whether higher prices are a defensive move by vendors trying to protect their market share. For example, by adding AI model Gemini to a search engine, it could be argued Google is defending its dominant position in the market from the threat of AI, as opposed to gaining new revenue.

There is also the problem of users trying to manage AI costs in response to price increases from model builders, several of whom have switched from capped subscription to usage-based billing.

Lower-cost models are coming onto the market from China, while developers are looking to use open source models where appropriate to curb their use of proprietary foundation models.

Whether the price crunch will leave the tech industry able to continue paying for its AI infrastructure building program is “the big open question,” Lovelock said. “But it’s not being investigated well or answered incredibly well.” ®

PATCHES

One bug disabled the security service on restart, another blocked installation on hardened RHEL systems

Not content with broken Windows updates, Microsoft has disclosed two problems with Defender for Endpoint on Linux – one that could disable the security service after a reboot, and another that prevents updates on FIPS-enabled Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9.

The more serious problem affected versions 101.26042.0000 through 101.26042.0009 across all supported Linux operating systems. After an upgrade or reinstall followed by a reboot, “the Defender service might be disabled on some devices,” according to Microsoft.

“If you use Defender for Servers (Plan 1 or 2) with Defender for Cloud and have the MDE [Microsoft Defender Endpoint] integration enabled, automatic updates for the MDE.Linux extension are enabled by default, which means your machines could have received an affected version automatically,” it explained.

“If an affected version was installed, the issue might impact active protection on rebooted devices until remediation steps are taken.”

Microsoft did not specify what caused Defender to become disabled, but anything that could knock out endpoint protection will give administrators sweaty palms.

A separate problem affected RHEL 8 and 9 systems running in FIPS mode: the 101.26042.x update could fail to install, leaving devices on their previous version. FIPS refers to US Federal Information Processing Standards, which in this context impose requirements on the cryptography used by government and other regulated systems.

Although Microsoft’s alert did not mention an available update, its release notes direct users affected by the disabled-service bug to build 101.26042.0011. The separate FIPS installation problem is fixed in version 101.26052.0011 and later.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux protects server workloads on-premises and in the cloud. According to Microsoft, “it helps you prevent, detect, investigate, and respond to advanced threats with unified visibility through the Microsoft Defender portal.”

Other endpoint security platforms are available, but where an organization has gone all-in with Microsoft, the unified management offered by Defender for Endpoint on Linux can be difficult to resist.

Microsoft has an unfortunate habit of shipping broken updates for its flagship operating system, Windows. An update that breaks software specifically designed to protect a device takes things to another level, particularly given the relentless rise in attacks and the need to both fend them off and monitor activity. Hence the appeal of unified visibility through the Microsoft Defender portal.

However, an update that could leave Defender disabled after a reboot – while also refusing to install on some security-hardened systems – is less than ideal. ®

Compare Our Picks

Others We Tested

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Riccar Gem Handheld Vacuum With Tools for $70: This model is very similar to the Simplicity corded model above, and although it’s portable and handheld, this big boy needs to be plugged in for power. I like how basic it is: It just has a top switch for on/off, and a button on top to release the dust canister, which is at the front of this model rather than behind. Once disengaged, you just need to pull up the semi-spherical fabric mesh filter and dump out debris. Unfortunately, lots of fur and dust get stuck to the filter, so you’ll need to make sure you wipe it with a semi-damp cloth to clean. It comes with several attachments, including a bendy hose, long crevice nozzle with detachable brush, upholstery brush, and dusting brush. Instead of twisting or snapping, each attachment fits snugly into the opening, making it easier for those with fine-motor issues. I liked that the long, flexible hose reached easily into tight spaces like between my counter and fridge and behind my automatic litter box. The corded machine is loud and gets hot quickly due to its sheer power. While I don’t think this is the best handheld vac for everyone, it’s a solid option with lots of power.

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Tineco Go Mini Cordless Hand Vacuum for $200: A lightweight vacuum that’s fairly straightforward and charges through the end of the handle, the Tineco Go must charge for five to six hours before use, which gets you 10 to 20 minutes of use time. The main things I wanted to focus on cleaning in my everyday life were cat litter and pet hair. This vacuum spit out roughly 80 percent of the litter I tried sucking up, and the pet hair just sort of rolled around on the carpet rather than being sucked back into the vac. (I’m not sure if it was the angle or shape of the mouth that aided in both of those problems.) The suction wasn’t as powerful as others tested, and it tended to work best on hard surfaces. This vac wasn’t bad, per se, but others on this list at similar price points worked a lot more effectively on a lot more various surfaces (with multiple head attachments) than this was seemingly capable of.

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Bissell AeroSlim Handheld Vacuum for $45: Not the most powerful I’ve tested, but it’s lightweight and super easy to maneuver. It comes with a multi-accessory tool that combines a long, slim crevice tool with a moveable brush (the brush moves up and down on the tool depending on need), but you can also just use the vac without the slim attachment for more general surface cleaning. The tiny 0.1-liter front of the vac twists off to empty, and a small dual filter can also be removed for cleaning/replacement. When testing, I wasn’t able to successfully pick up bigger items like wood shards or litter, and only picked up a fraction of pet hair as some of the more powerful models with a roll brush, but I wasn’t expecting it to—that’s not this cutie’s job. It’s light, simple, and easy to use—making it a great lightweight portable option (just don’t expect it to handle bigger messes).

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Hoto AutoCare Air Duster & Vacuum for $60: Looking for a lightweight (0.78 pounds) vacuum that can also blow debris/dust, inflate and deflate, and vacuum-seal? The Hoto may be a fit. It has tons of attachments: a pointed crevice nozzle, dust brush, dust cup nozzle, air nozzle, and swim ring nozzle. It can hold a little over 3 ounces, has 20,000 Pa suction, and each attachment easily twists off and on. I found that the grooming brush head tended to push around fur/hair rather than sucking it up. Like many gadgets we test here at WIRED, this one fell into the pitfall of trying to do a lot of things, rather than doing any one thing really well. This is a great deal for a device with so many capabilities (if that’s what you need), but if you’re just looking for a really great handheld vacuum, there are others that are more effective.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

Black and Decker Dustbuster Flex for $74: WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell thought this cordless handheld vacuum was great for cars and hard-to-reach spots because of its 4-foot hose. It has a crevice tool and pet hair brush attachments for a variety of messes, and runs on a 20-volt lithium-ion battery that delivers high suction power. Plus, it has a handy charging mount that the accessories clip into. However, we aren’t fans of the short 15-minute battery life.

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Q&M Dental Group is eyeing 300 clinics with a S$146M expansion plan

If you’ve walked around Singapore long enough, you’ve probably seen one: a neighbourhood dental clinic with bright green lettering and a giant tooth logo.

Chances are, you never thought much about it. But behind those familiar storefronts sits a SGX-listed company worth over S$500 million, operating 110 clinics across Singapore and now pursuing acquisitions in Australia, Thailand, China, and even of another local rival.

That company is Q&M Dental Group—and after nearly three decades of quietly dominating Singapore’s heartlands, it’s now betting big on becoming a regional dental giant.

Built for the heartlands

Q&M was established at Bukit Batok in Nov 1996 by Dr Ng Chin Siau, an NUS dental surgery graduate who had worked as a Dental Officer with the Ministry of Health before joining a private clinic at Bukit Batok—and eventually buying it over after selling his three-room Clementi flat for S$180,000. 

From the outset, Dr Ng had little interest in building a premium dental brand. Instead, he focused on something far more scalable: providing affordable dental care to everyday Singaporeans.

That philosophy was even reflected in the company’s original Chinese name, “全民” (Quan Min), meaning “for all the people.”

Demand grew quickly and outpaced what one dentist could handle.

By 1998, fellow dentist Dr Ng Jet Wei had joined the practice. A year later, together with Dr Chong Kai Guan, the trio had opened another four clinics. By 2000, Q&M was already operating 10 clinics with 20 dentists.

Rather than chasing prime shopping malls or affluent districts, Q&M planted its clinics where Singaporeans actually lived—in HDB estates, neighbourhood centres, and suburban malls.

The strategy was simple: keep prices accessible, expand steadily, and acquire smaller dental practices whose dentists and patient bases came as part of the deal.

Along the way, Q&M also built supporting businesses, including its own dental laboratory to produce crowns, bridges, and dentures in-house, giving it greater control over costs and operations.

By the time the company listed on the SGX Mainboard in 2009, it already had a proven expansion playbook. The IPO simply gave it the capital to execute it at a much larger scale.

Building the Q&M empire

In the years that followed the IPO, Q&M expanded aggressively through acquisitions, and revenue climbed from roughly S$60 million to S$155 million by 2016. 

By then, its outlet count had grown to 76 clinics across Asia—a number that would nearly double over the following decade.

This brought Q&M Dental Group’s market capitalisation to S$557.6 million that year.

Q&M’s growth has not been limited to opening more outlets. Alongside the clinic network, the group has built a set of adjacent capabilities that reinforce the core business.

In 2019, it launched the Q&M College of Dentistry at City Square Mall—Singapore’s first private postgraduate diploma programme in clinical dentistry, designed to train general dentists with an expanded range of advanced skills. The college earned a full four-year EduTrust certification from Feb 2026, allowing it to enrol international students. 

This is a crucial move with Singapore’s dentist supply constraint. Singapore’s only domestic dental school graduates around 50 to 60 dentists per year, and foreign-trained dentists must pass a rigorous licensing exam before practising. Any competitor trying to build a rival chain faces the same thin talent pool. 

Q&M’s training college gives it a head start in sourcing and retaining the practitioners it needs to keep opening clinics, a structural advantage that competitors cannot easily replicate.

When COVID-19 hit, Q&M pivoted part of its operations, acquiring Acumen Diagnostics to distribute test kits and run laboratory PCR testing in 2021—a business that briefly became a significant revenue contributor before demand evaporated as the pandemic receded.

As pandemic revenues evaporated, results retreated sharply in 2022 and 2023. But the core dental business proved its resilience: core healthcare EBITDA held steady at around S$37 to S$40 million throughout, even as the group-level numbers were distorted. By FY2025, the group had returned to profit, recording a16% growth.

In 2023, it opened a Free Dental Clinic at Chai Chee Road, offering essential dental treatment at no cost to underprivileged patients. While charitable in nature, the initiative also reinforces Q&M’s standing in the communities where its business is most deeply rooted.

More recently, Q&M has turned its attention to technology.

In 2024, the group invested in EM2AI, a dental technology firm developing AI-powered diagnostic and treatment-planning tools, including a cloud-based practice management system called EM2Clinic.

The tools are designed to reduce the administrative burden on dentists and standardise clinical workflows, which is useful as Q&M grows toward a network where consistency across hundreds of clinics matters more than before.

Why scale matters

With 110 clinics, Q&M operates roughly 8% of Singapore’s nearly 1,300 licensed dental clinics. According to the company, it also serves around one-third of all patients who visit private dental groups.

That scale creates advantages that go beyond simply having more outlets.

As Singapore’s largest private dental chain, Q&M has greater bargaining power with landlords and suppliers, while its size also allows it to spread fixed costs across a much larger network.

Government healthcare policies could further strengthen that position.

The enhanced Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) subsidies introduced in Oct 2025 expanded coverage for restorative dental procedures and extended eligibility to 1.7 million cardholders. As the country’s largest CHAS-accredited private dental chain, Q&M stands to benefit more than smaller competitors. Analysts estimated the changes lifted the group’s revenue by around 3% in the second half of FY2025.

More support is also on the way. From mid-2026, seniors will be able to use up to S$400 a year from Flexi-MediSave for dental treatment at CHAS clinics. The policy aligns neatly with Singapore’s ageing population, with one in four residents expected to be aged 65 or older by 2030. As dental needs typically increase with age—and many seniors live in the heartland estates where Q&M has built its network—the demographic trend could provide another long-term tailwind for the group.

Meanwhile, Q&M continues to consolidate its position. In Mar, the group announced plans to fully acquire an unnamed Singapore dental chain, backed by a profit guarantee of up to S$34 million over five years. The deal would further strengthen its presence in its home market even as it looks overseas for growth.

Now betting big on the region

For most of its history, Q&M’s overseas ambitions effectively stopped at the Causeway.

Over the years, the group steadily expanded its presence in Malaysia, where it now operates 38 dental clinics alongside a dental supplies and equipment distribution business. Beyond that, however, its growth remained largely concentrated in Singapore.

That is now changing.

In recent months, Q&M has unveiled plans to enter three markets almost simultaneously, marking the group’s most ambitious expansion programme to date

The biggest move is Australia. In Jul 2026, Q&M signed binding agreements to acquire Experteeth Group for A$119.64 million (S$107.83 million). The deal would add 40 clinics and around 120 dentists across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory, making it Q&M’s largest acquisition ever and its first entry into a market outside Asia.

In Thailand, it signed a deal to acquire a group of 30-plus clinics focused on cosmetic and aesthetic dentistry, a sector closely tied to the country’s medical tourism industry. 

In total, the acquisitions in both countries will amount to a combined US$113.2 million (S$146.26 million) investment to build a pan-Asian dental company. 

China forms the third pillar of Q&M’s expansion strategy. The group also owns Chinese dental operator Aoxin Q&M, which it has now fully consolidated as a subsidiary. It plans to use the business as a platform to acquire dental chains in southern China, expanding beyond Aoxin’s traditional base in the country’s northeast.

If all three acquisitions close, Q&M’s footprint could grow from over 160 dental outlets today to more than 300 within two years.

Not every growth initiative, however, has gone according to plan.

In Apr 2025, the group also proposed a secondary listing on Bursa Malaysia, which would have given Malaysian investors direct access to the stock and strengthened Q&M’s capital markets presence in its second-largest operating market. The plan was later shelved, with the company citing prevailing market conditions.

What could go wrong?

Three concurrent acquisitions in markets Q&M has limited or no experience operating in are an ambitious programme for a management team whose track record has been built almost entirely in Singapore and Malaysia. 

China is the cautionary tale here. Q&M first entered China back in 2013, and later spun that business off as a separately listed company, Aoxin Q&M, in 2017. Aoxin broke even for its first couple of years, then racked up losses for several years running—around RMB142 million (S$27.09 million) in total losses from 2020 to 2024—as it battled COVID-19 shutdowns and China’s strict lockdown policies.

It only turned a profit again in 2025, roughly six years after the losses began.

Now Q&M has folded Aoxin fully into its own accounts, and in doing so has added S$77.0 million of goodwill to its balance sheet—essentially the premium it’s paying on the bet that these businesses will earn enough in future to justify the price.

If they don’t, that goodwill may eventually need to be written down, hitting profits the same way it did for Aoxin’s own past investments. Australia and Thailand are brand-new markets for Q&M with no comparable track record to lean on, so if that expansion underperforms, the money put into it may not pay off.

Dental practices are also relationship-driven businesses, where patients follow their dentist, not the brand. When a chain acquires a clinic, the real asset is the practitioners inside it. 

If key dentists leave post-acquisition and take their patient books with them, the acquired revenue can evaporate quickly. 

Q&M has tried to address this through 15-year service agreements and long lock-up equity arrangements with acquired dentists, but such structures have never been tested at the scale Q&M is now attempting across four markets simultaneously.

Then there is the Johor-Singapore dynamic complicating profits further. The Rapid Transit System Link scheduled to open in Dec 2026, will cut the Woodlands North to Bukit Chagar crossing to around five minutes—at a fare of roughly S$5 to S$7.

Singaporeans already save 50 to 65% on identical dental procedures by crossing the Causeway, with more than 100,000 estimated to make the trip annually. A single dental implant costs S$4,500 to S$6,500 in Singapore versus S$1,200 to S$2,000 in Johor Bahru. 

When the RTS removes the main friction, being the border queue, from that equation, the maths for price-sensitive patients shifts meaningfully. 

Q&M’s 38 Malaysian clinics, including in Johor, might mean some of that outflow stays within the group. But how much of Q&M’s dental revenue holds up once the crossing becomes as easy as taking the MRT is a question nobody can fully answer yet.

From a single clinic in Bukit Batok to a listed group eyeing four countries simultaneously, Q&M’s story is, in many ways, a study in patience. Three decades of unglamorous, heartland dentistry have built toward a moment where the company is finally ready to bet big on becoming Singapore’s dominant private dental chain in the region. Whether the bet pays off will be the next chapter.

• Learn more about Q&M Dental Group here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Also Read: ⁠The price of going regional: Raffles Medical’s S$600M bet is still struggling to pay off

Featured Image Credit: National University of Singapore, Velocity @ Novena Square

Chrome‘s Reading Mode just got a new button tucked inside its settings menu. Google is quietly testing a translate option for the feature on Chrome Canary, the browser’s experimental testing channel where new ideas show up long before they’re ready for everyday use.

What does this new translate button actually do?

The option was first spotted by @Leopeva64, who shared a video demo on X highlighting the new button tucked inside Reading Mode’s dropdown menu. It exists alongside the controls for theme, font, images, and links, though it doesn’t actually do anything yet. Once this feature is live, clicking it would translate whatever page or PDF you’re reading into your preferred language, without leaving Reading Mode.