After launching Hulu on Disney Plus in March for US subscribers, the ESPN hub addition is landing on the streaming service in December, the company shared in its third-quarter executive summary on Wednesday. CEO Bob Iger initially announced the news about adding ESPN content to Disney Plus during Walt Disney Co.'s second-quarter earnings call in May."By the end of this calendar year, we will be adding an ESPN tile to Disney Plus, giving all US subscribers access to select live games and studio programming w ...

Waymo is expanding its autonomous ride-hailing service into the San Francisco Peninsula, as well as more parts of Los Angeles, the company said Tuesday. It's adding 10 square miles around San Francisco and 16 square miles around LA. Riders in Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma can start hailing rides through Waymo starting Tuesday, and riders in Marina del Rey, Mar Vista, Playa Vista and more areas of Hollywood, Chinatown and Westwood will have access starting Wednesday. Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent ...

Core Insights - The NBA has finalized new media rights deals worth a total of $77 billion over 11 years, with Comcast's NBC and Peacock, and Amazon's Prime Video joining Disney's ABC and ESPN as partners starting in the 2025-26 season [1][5][11] - TNT is expected to lose its NBA broadcasting rights, with the NBA declining Warner Bros. Discovery's proposal to match Amazon's offer [6][10] Group 1: New Media Rights Deals - NBC and Peacock will air 100 regular season games annually, with over half on NBC, and will also broadcast the NBA All-Star game and approximately 28 playoff games in the first two rounds [8] - Disney's ABC and ESPN will cover 80 regular season games each year, including all five Christmas Day games, and will telecast approximately 18 playoff games in the first two rounds [9] - Amazon Prime Video will stream 66 regular season games, including an opening week doubleheader and select playoff games, and will partner with the NBA for global access to NBA League Pass [10] Group 2: Financial Commitments - Disney is expected to pay $2.62 billion annually for its media rights package, while NBC will pay $2.45 billion, and Amazon is projected to spend $1.8 billion [11]

Speculation of an Apple-made 5G modem has persisted for years. After several reports and a bevy of rumors, one of the last big pieces of news on this front was a 2023 deal between Apple and Qualcomm to get the latter's 5G modems for three more years.While that agreement exists, Apple may be once again looking to start its transition to its own wireless chips as soon as next year. According to a new post on X from noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, we could see two new iPhones in 2025 sport 5G Apple modems: t ...

Core Insights - T-Mobile is expanding its wireless offerings through a $4.4 billion acquisition of US Cellular and plans to spend an additional $4.9 billion to acquire Metronet, a fiber internet provider [1] - The joint venture with KKR will enable T-Mobile to serve Metronet's 2 million customers across 17 states, with expectations to grow to approximately 6.5 million customers by 2030 [1] - Regulatory scrutiny is anticipated regarding the US Cellular acquisition, with concerns raised by U.S. Democratic senators about potential impacts on pricing and market choices [2] Company Developments - T-Mobile's acquisition strategy includes previous purchases of Mint Mobile, Ultra Mobile, and Plum, indicating a strong focus on expansion since 2022 [2] - The company faces competition in the fiber internet market from major players such as AT&T, Google Fiber, Frontier, Verizon's FIOS, and Quantum Fiber [2] Industry Context - Crown Castle Fiber, a significant player in fiber infrastructure, is reportedly in discussions regarding the sale of its assets, indicating potential shifts in the fiber market landscape [3]

Netflix is continuing to sunset its Basic ad-free option for customers, extending the process to existing subscribers in the US and France. The streaming giant announced the move in a letter to shareholders on Thursday and discussed it during its second-quarter earnings call. Affected customers in the US -- legacy users who haven't canceled their Basic ad-free subscriptions -- will begin to see emails encouraging them to select a new plan.The announcement about sunsetting this subscription plan is not new. ...

The world woke up to technological chaos on Friday morning due to Microsoft suffering a massive, ongoing global IT outage, which is hitting airports, airlines, banks and broadcasters around the world. The problem appears to be with Microsoft 365 services and apps, which many companies and organizations rely on as part of their critical internet infrastructure. Perhaps most concerning of all, many states across the US have reported that their emergency 911 lines are down.Microsoft said on X that it was aware ...

Meta's upcoming multimodal AI models won't be available in EU countries due to the bloc's strict regulations, the company confirmed on Thursday. The tech giant's next model is expected to work across text, video, audio and images to enable next-level chatbots, content generation, translation and much more. But not for people living in the European Union. "We will release a multimodal Llama model over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment, ...

Meta is changing the labels it applies to social media posts suspected to have been generated in some way with artificial intelligence tools. The Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp parent company said its new label will display "AI Info" alongside a post, where it used to say "Made with AI."It's making these changes in part because Meta's detection systems were labeling images with minor modifications as having been "Made with AI," causing some artists to criticize the approach. In one high-profile e ...

When Apple announced its artificial intelligence push with Apple Intelligence last month, company executives said it would be limited to recently made Mac computers and the iPhone 15 Pro. Now, Apple is reportedly working to bring its AI technology to its Vision Pro headset too.A report from Bloomberg Sunday detailed a couple of reasons why Apple has not announced plans to bring its AI technology to its newly released headset. Among them, Bloomberg cited user interface challenges making the technology "look ...