Why would a company spend $1 billion to build a city where no one will live? Because, presumably, a lot of other organizations will pay to test their technology there.

Washington, DC-based telecommunications and defense equipment vendor Pegasus Systems devoted a reported $1 billion to build the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (or CITE for short) in rural New Mexico. The idea is to build the equivalent of a medium-sized city, defined as big enough for about 35,000 people, but with no actual population. That way, companies with potentially dangerous technologies can test their prototypes in an actual urban environment without worrying about inflicting injury or death on innocent bystanders. This will naturally lend itself to researching connected car technology – Wired's Jeep hack from last year comes to mind – although the project's website lists several other fields of study, many of which would involve the Internet of Things. The project's website lists federal labs and university research institutions among the kinds of customers it aims to serve, but Pegasus managing director Robert Brumley told Fortune in October "the facility is open to anybody who wants to test."  

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In a brief aside during a Senate testimony on overall national security this week, U.S. director of national intelligence James Clapper justified the privacy and security advocates who have warned of the implications of the Internet of Things (IoT) since before it was a buzzword.

"In the future, intelligence services might use the [Internet of Things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials," Clapper said, according to The Guardian.

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In very convenient timing for Netflix, whose planned expansion to 130 new countries will require a crackdown on people who use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to view content that is restricted in their region due to copyright, PayPal has announced that it will stop processing payments to VPN services, BGR reported today.

The reported announcement comes just a few days after one VPN service, UnoTelly in Canada, informed its users that PayPal had ceased processing payments for its customers on copyright grounds. UnoTelly called the decision an attack on "services that enable open and unrestricted Internet access." However, an Ars Technica article pointed out that UnoTelly's site claims its SmartDNS service "removes geo-blocks imposed by streaming sites and allows you to watch geo-restricted channels regardless of where you live."

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Carolina Panthers (and NFL All-Pro) linebacker Thomas Davis vowed nearly two weeks ago that he wouldn't let a broken arm and subsequent surgery keep him from playing in his first Super Bowl.

It seemed unlikely at the time, but with Super Bowl 50 just a few days away, Davis has turned to 3D printing technology to help get him and the right arm he broke in the last game he played onto the field. 3-D Elite and Whiteclouds designed and 3D printed a custom sleeve to support the metal plate and 12 screws currently holding Davis's arm together.

Whiteclouds

The companies made clear that the sleeve will be the first piece of 3D-printed equipment to be used on the field during an NFL game, but more broadly, it will probably be the best-known use of 3D printing since the first 3D-printed gun fired its first shot in May 2013.

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Sigfox, a French networking company whose technology is already supporting large Internet of Things (IoT) deployments in several countries in Europe, has its sights set on the U.S. market.

The company hasn't been shy about its plans for U.S. expansion in 2016. By the end of the first quarter, Sigfox claims its networks will be up and running in 10 U.S. cities: San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and Austin, Texas.

So, how does the company plan to accomplish this? And how can it succeed in establishing a nationwide network for the IoT?

What is Sigfox?

Sigfox deploys Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) that work in concert with hardware that manufacturers can integrate into their products. In terms of compatibility, the network takes a similar approach to traditional GSM networks. Any device with integrated Sigfox hardware can connect to the internet – in regions where a Sigfox network has been deployed – without any external hardware, like a Wi-Fi or Zigbee router. But, in another sense, the Sigfox network is entirely different than traditional GSM networks, in that it can only transmit small amounts of data, at just 100 bits per second.

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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is clearly excited. 

In a one-on-one interview with Consumer Technology Association president and CEO Gary Shapiro at CES in Las Vegas today, Wheeler spoke colorfully about the upcoming spectrum auction, promising a "spectrum extravaganza" and hinting at a more wide-reaching auction than some have predicted

In March, the FCC is expected to launch the first rounds of a complex nationwide auction in which wireless carriers can bid to acquire spectrum owned by TV broadcasting stations, which would bolster their networks to help meet demand for mobile broadband. With the exception of Sprint, which has announced that it will not bid for spectrum (it acquired a large stock of spectrum in its 2012 acquisition of Clearwire), the auction is expected to attract many wireless service providers and even other companies like Google that have a vested interest in acquiring spectrum.

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A panel of fiber broadband experts speaking at CES 2016 in Las Vegas this week said the Internet of Things (IoT) will not only benefit from fiber-optic broadband, it will require it.

Katie Espeseth, vice president of new products for EPB – the Electronic Power Board in Chattanooga, Tennessee, responsible for building and maintaining one of the country's most famous fiber-optic networks – explained that the country's first gigabit-speed municipal broadband network was built to support an IoT application.

Tasked with maintaining power supply to the city, the EPB sought to deploy a series of supercomputers that would constantly monitor the power grid throughout the city. This called for an always-on, gigabit-speed internet service.

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The stakes are high in the auto industry right now. New technologies, from connected cars to autonomous driving capabilities, create the potential for a revolution in the industry, but also pose challenges that could result in disaster if they are deployed before either the technology or the drivers are ready.

Jill Ingrassia, managing director of government relations and traffic safety advocacy for AAA, spoke during a panel at CES today about the potential for in-car technology to help address the epidemic of auto-related fatalities in the U.S., which reached a new low in 2014 but still amount to about an average of one auto-related death every 15 minutes. 

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