Fierce
California doubles down on the Verizon/Frontier deal over DEI
Verizon may have scored federal approval of its $20 billion Frontier acquisition, but the coast is far from clear stateside. California is scrutinizing the operator for ending its diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The California Public Utilities Commission this week began conducting hearings to seek input on whether the Verizon/Frontier deal serves the public interest.
Senate confirms Olivia Trusty for FCC
By a 53-45 vote, the Senate confirmed Olivia Trusty to be the third commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the only Democrat to vote in her favor. Trusty was a longtime staffer for Sen.
Telephone companies won’t have a chance with AI unless they deal with legacy infrastructure ASAP
The 1996 presidential campaign for Bill Clinton used the mantra “It’s the economy, stupid” to keep the campaign focused. In the case of telecom, and not to be disrespectful to our readers, you could say "It's the legacy infrastructure, stupid." A big focus for operators right now is to clean up their technical debt so they can pounce on the opportunities in AI. Joe Cumello, SVP and general manager of Ciena’s Blue Planet, stressed the importance for service providers to clean up their inventory systems in preparation for agentic AI.
EchoStar's Ergen reportedly met with President Trump. Here's the latest
Shares of EchoStar were up more than 45 percent after a report surfaced that President Trump intervened in the dramatic conflict involving EchoStar Chairman Charlie Ergen and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr. According to Bloomberg, Ergen met with President Trump on June 12, a day after a long-awaited meeting with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
Fiber vendors will keep on moving despite new BEAD rules
Fiber has officially taken the backseat now that the federal government rewrote the rules to the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. But the changes don’t mean much to the equipment vendors that have already moved on to greener pastures.
EchoStar is in a bleak place right now
In an astonishing turn of events, a former Republican Federal Communications Commission commissioner slammed fellow Republican and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for making a “dangerous mistake” in threatening to take away EchoStar’s spectrum licenses. “The FCC threatens such severe sanctions that they put EchoStar’s financial viability in question and threaten to kill the company,” newly ex-FCC commissioner Nathan Simington wrote in an opinion piece.
AT&T CFO: No pressing need for spectrum right now
AT&T doesn’t immediately need more spectrum, but it’s always on the lookout for additional airwaves to meet future demands, AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches. However, it’s the part about not needing spectrum right this minute that AT&T’s rivals in the cable industry seized upon, maintaining that he’s saying the “quiet part out loud,” contradicting arguments that AT&T and its fellow wireless carriers are making in Washington (DC) about the dire need for more spectrum, stat. Desroches said that when he took the CFO role at AT&T almost five years ago, the company was concerned abo
Mobile Experts: T-Mobile fiber growth is a boost to its FWA
More fiber infrastructure could be a boon to T-Mobile’s still-growing fixed wireless access (FWA) business. “T-Mobile’s access to fiber will increase their ability to provide FWA,” said Mobile Experts Principal Joe Madden. Not only is fiber good for the backhaul fixed wireless requires, but T-Mobile can still deploy FWA in cases where it’d be too expensive to run fiber all the way to the home. “It’s the last 100 feet from the curb to the house that creates more than 80% of the cost for a fiber-to-the-home service,” he explained.
EchoStar: Don’t pull the rug out from under us
EchoStar is in a fight for its life, and its latest salvo used Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s own words to explain why the agency should not backtrack after the company spent billions of dollars deploying a 5G network using spectrum the FCC authorized it to use. Then-Commissioner Carr in June 2023 appeared before a House subcommittee hearing where he was asked about calls for the FCC to reverse spectrum allocation decisions.