Yelp won't tell you whether the room you're considering is safe in a fire or toxic though. Regulation still serves a very important purpose.

Not to let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy, but there was a fairly widespread outage around the same time that may well have been the reason, since they did say they were disabling it due service problems with their upstream provider.

There's no one answer here. Sometimes a cert will get you past an HR screen for a job you want, in which case it pays for itself no matter the cost (though once you're past entry level, the jobs you probably really want come from people you know, not recruiters you impress). Sometimes a cert will help your employer land a contract, or get a better partner status (=discount) with a vendor, in which case it pays for itself (as long as the company pays or you get a cut). Sometimes it's a good motivator to force yourself to learn something you've been meaning to get around to trying, even if you'd be embarrassed to put the cert on your CV. Sometimes, you think one of the above applies and it doesn't. Sometimes you think one of the above applies, but you can't be sure. The rest of the time, it's not worth it.

Except that if a third party can be compelled to provide access to the data, then the cryptography is not working. That LEAs are attempting that compulsion could be a good sign that it's working, but it also opens the door for them to attempt to compel the third parties (the hardware suppliers and software implementors) to implement backdoors. And so the cycle continues.

CeroWRT could be worth a try. It's focused on traffic management, and has had good reviews in terms of handling throughput intelligently.
Hardware support is a bit limited though (it's beta and somewhat of a development/research platform, so they're not aiming for multi-platform support).