Tag Archives: Verizon

Comcast to Spin Off Entertainment

Comcast recently announced plans to spin off its entertainment businesses. The newly created NBCUniversal will include the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, Bravo, Peacock, the European media business Sky, along with theme parks and other businesses. The Peacock subsidiary has been actively buying rights to sporting events. Comcast had begun the spinoff of entertainment subsidiaries early this year when it spun off cable networks, including MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, E!, Syfy, Oxygen, the Golf Channels, and digital brands like Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes into the Versant Media Group. A Comcast shareholder will get a share of each new business. Comcast says it will retain a 19.9% share in NBCUniversal for at least a year.

The post-split Comcast will retain the core broadband, cellular, and cable TV business lines. The company will also retain Comcast Spectator, which owns the Xfinity Arena in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Flyers, and the FreeWheel tech ad business. The public announcement said that the company no longer sees any synergies or financial benefits from operating two distinct lines of business. Wall Street instantly applauded the move with an upward bump in the Comcast stock price.

This should allow Comcast to concentrate on the increasingly competitive communications business. The company has been steadily losing broadband customers every quarter since 2023. It’s seeing competition from fiber overbuilding, FWA cellular, and even satellite. The cable TV business has continued its long, downhill slide. Comcast has seen significant growth in the cellular business and is approaching 10 million cellular customers.

The news instantly set off speculation about how both of the new businesses are attractive M&A targets now that they are separate. I saw speculation that Netflix, Amazon, and Disney/Paramount/Fox ought to be interested in NBCUniversal. I saw instant speculation that SpaceX, Charter, or one of the big cellular companies would be interested in a standalone Comcast.

I could never understand the presumed benefits of combining ISPs and media companies. When Comcast purchased the entertainment businesses, the reason given at the time was to take advantage of the content. But I never understood this since an ISP already delivers all kinds of content.

The other attempts in the industry to combine an ISP with content were big failures. The biggest failure of all was AT&T’s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner in 2018. Within a few years, in 2022, AT&T spun off Warner Media to Discovery for $43 billion. This bad deal was bad for AT&T in many ways. CEO Randall Stephenson, a champion of the merger, stepped down in 2020. AT&T’s stock took a huge hit during the time that it owned Time Warner, and AT&T had to slash its dividend in half.

Verizon also took a shot at buying content. The company purchased AOL in 2015 for $4.4 billion, a price that startled the market. The company then purchased Yahoo in 2017 for $4.48 billion. Verizon repackaged the two companies into a new subsidiary called Oath, which was later renamed Verizon Media. Verizon eventually sold Verizon Media to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Before that sale, Verizon had separately sold HuffPost, Tumblr, and MapQuest.

The Comcast sale means there are no ISPs left with big content businesses. Combining the disparate businesses never made sense since Verizon’s purchase of AOL, and hopefully, the Comcast spin-off ends this failed experiment.

The Spectrum Auction Winners

After a four-year hiatus, the FCC recently held a spectrum auction of 200 licenses for AWS-3 spectrum in the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz, and 2155-2180 MHz bands. The last FCC auction was in 2022 for 2.5 GHz spectrum. The FCC lost the ability to hold spectrum auctions when its Congressional authority lapsed and was not renewed. This spectrum was touted by the FCC as being 5G-grade. The license areas included in the auction covered over 100 million people across 48 states and two US territories, and included major markets like New York, Chicago, Boston, Tampa, and Charlotte. The FCC announced before the auction that much of the proceeds will be used to continue to fund the rip-and-replace of Chinese electronics from Huawei and ZTE.

The winning bidders collectively bid more than $3.57 billion. The winners are as follows, from largest to smallest:

  • Verizon Wireless: $3,162,445,000 for 82 licenses in 82 markets
  • T-Mobile: $277,787,000 for 102 licenses in 102 markets
  • AT&T: $120,774,000 for 10 licenses in 10 markets
  • SpaceX: $8,490,200 for two licenses in two markets
  • Blue Ridge Wireless II LLC: $2,090,000 for one license in one market
  • Conundrum Wireless, LLC: $1,228,000 for two licenses in one market
  • Citizens Band License Company, LLC: $75,000 for one license in one market

Not surprisingly, 99.7% of the spectrum was claimed by the three big cellular carriers, with Verizon snagging 88.5% of the awards. Folks might be surprised to see SpaceX as the fourth-largest winner. The company is looking for spectrum to enhance its direct-to-cell mobile services. Analysts speculated that this auction was a trial run for the company to learn about the auction process since the company has already agreed to buy $2.6 billion in spectrum in the AWS-3, AWS-4, and H-blocks from EchoStar.

Verizon was using the auction to fill holes in its spectrum portfolio and spent almost $2 billion of its winning bids in New York, Chicago, and Boston. AT&T’s biggest focus was for Charlotte. T-Mobile dropped out of all of the expensive markets, but still won the most licenses spread across small metropolitan areas.

ike many actions by the federal government these days, there is also an interesting backstory to this auction. The spectrum that was included in this auction originally came from EchoStar (originally Dish Networks). Two companies, SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless, originally purchased the spectrum in the 2014 AWS-3 auction for $3.3 billion. When the FCC learned that Dish was the secret backer of the two companies, the FCC voided the awards. The FCC ruled that when this spectrum was eventually reauctioned, that Dish would owe the FCC any shortfall if the new auction raises anything less than $2.9 billion.

Roger Entner of Recon Analytics says that EchoStar bid up the current auction to save itself from having to pay for any shortfall in the auction. EchoStar entered the recent auction with almost as many bid credits as Verizon. Entner claims that EchoStar was in the auction for no other purpose than bidding up the price, and in doing so, increased the proceeds of the auction from $2 billion to the final $3.57 billion. He says that EchoStar stayed in the auction until the auction reached the threshold where the company was off the hook for paying for the shortfall. In the next two rounds, the company dropped out of every market except for two licenses it got stuck with in Guam. The company is no longer in the cellular business, and Entner expects it will sell this spectrum at a discount to a local cellular provider or just ride out the build-out shot clock until the FCC is forced to reclaim the spectrum.

It’s going to be interesting to see if the three big carriers take any action against EchoStar for driving up the prices. I don’t have the slightest idea if EchoStar did anything illegal, but its bidding actions were certainly shady.

Extreme Market Segmentation

Linda Hardesty of Fierce Network recently quoted Verizon’s new CEO Dan Shulman as saying that the company is looking at market segmentation. He said that instead of pricing for a few market segments that Verizon might be considering hundreds of thousands of segments. ‘

Hardesty said this stunned her, because nobody has ever talked seriously about market segmentation to that extent before. What Verizon is thinking about doing is to develop multitudes of products and prices to fit small market niches, or even individuals.

This is not entirely a new idea. A few years ago, the public advocate from the California Public Service Commission conducted a detailed study and looked at broadband rates offered by Charter and other big ISPS across Los Angeles and a few other larger markets. They found that Charter prices varied by neighborhood, and surprisingly, the highest prices were in the poorest neighborhoods. Charter mostly did this through promotional and special rates, but there was a clear delineation of rates by the incomes of neighborhoods.

When Verizon talks about segmenting into hundreds of thousands of segments, they are talking about going far beyond what Charter was doing in California. Verizon is talking about profiling customers and making pricing offers specific to each customer.

You might wonder how they can do this. It’s well known that there are companies like Acxiom, Experian, and Epsilon that have created a detailed profile on families and individuals. These profiles are highly detailed and combine information about earnings and financial status, lifestyle, and buying habits. Verizon can combine this with what they know about every customer to be able to offer them the price or package they think will sell. This doesn’t just mean defining low rates, and ISPs might us the profiling to charge more to people they think will pay it.

It’s likely that any attempt to do this is going to be aided by AI. One of the axioms of the telecom industry over the years has been to keep pricing simple to make life easier for the customer service and billing process. But with AI tied to billing systems and customer service that may no longer be needed.

Shulman is oversimplifying when he says that Verizon will be expanding from four segments today, because the company surely has more than that. They company has offered varying special prices to land new customers and negotiates rates to keep existing customers, and probably has dozens of slightly different rates, if not more. But that’s a far cry from separating the market into hundreds of thousands of market segments.

There can only be two reasons why Verizon would do this. Hardesty suggests it’s to make more money by creating multiple tiers of customers, including a tier for those willing to pay premium rates for concierge service.

But I think there is an alternate possibility, which is to reduce churn. Cellular competition, in particular, has gotten fierce and the three big cellular carriers see about 1% of postpaid customers churn each month and 3-4% of prepaid customers. This high level of churn is what drives the gigantic advertising budget of each carrier, and perhaps tailoring custom plans to match the individual customer preference might increase loyalty, reduce churn, and reduce costs.

If Verizon implements this, I’m sure the rest of the industry will be watching closely. If extreme market segmentation is successful, then AT&T and T-Mobile will have to follow to keep even in the competition game. But if it’s unsuccessful, the other carriers will gleefully watch Verizon struggle. It’s going to be an interesting experiment to watch if the company really goes for it.

How Good is Rural Cellular Coverage – Part II

Yesterday’s blog looked at AT&T cellular coverage in a typical rural county in Illinois and included the following map. The map shows where AT&T can provide 5G coverage in a moving vehicle in the dark areas, and where somebody standing stationary outdoors could get a 5G signal in the lighter colored areas.

Let’s look at the maps for the other two major carriers in the same areas. The first map below is T-Mobile, and the second is Verizon.

These maps show typical coverage. The two carriers support 5G in moving vehicles in and close to towns and cities. The light colored areas are where somebody standing outdoors can likely get a 5G signal. An indoor cellular coverage map would likely not be a lot larger than the dark areas.

Taken altogether, these maps show a typical rural story of cellular coverage. Cell carriers rarely share towers, and each carrier is on different towers and has different coverage. All three carriers have areas where they have no 5G coverage, and somebody subscribed to any one carrier in this county would find a lot of dead zones. All three carriers have little or no coverage in the northwest sector. These maps show something that every rural delivery driver knows – to work in rural America means carrying multiple cellphones subscribed to different carriers.

When Chairman Carr says that 96.8% of households have 5G coverage, we have to put that into perspective. Over 80% of Americans live in cities and suburbs and likely have good cell coverage. Another substantial percentage live in smaller towns that happen to have at least one cell tower. In this particular county, 60% of people live in incorporated towns and villages, meaning there are a lot of rural residents.

What’s the point of these two blogs? The FCC considers this County to have good 5G coverage. That assumption comes largely from looking at the combined coverage of the three carriers shown for somebody standing stationary outdoors. The light colored areas of the three maps combined cover most of the county.

If the FCC ever decides to finally launch the 5G Fund for Rural America, this county will likely not be a candidate for a grant to build new cell towers. That’s unfortunate, because I estimate that 30% of the residents of this county would say they have poor cellular coverage. They will say that they don’t have good coverage indoors, and no matter which carrier they subscribe to, they hit dead spots when they drive around the county. The FCC’s assertion that 96.8% of homes have good 5G coverage can be supported by the FCC maps – but those maps don’t show the reality of the way that people judge cellular coverage.

Millimeter Wave Broadband

For those who follow everything about broadband speeds, Ookla published a recent article talking about the deployment of millimeter wave spectrum in U.S. cellular networks. You might remember the big burst of marketing in 2000 when Verizon commercials bragged about gigabit speeds on cellphones. These fast speeds were enabled by millimeter wave spectrum that had been deployed at the time in a handful of urban business districts. At the time, Verizon told investors that millimeter wave was going to be the future of cellular, and that cellular broadband was going to be able to compete head-on with cable and fiber networks. They had plans on the drawing board to deploy the technology deep in neighborhoods.

As a reminder, millimeter wave spectrum uses much higher frequencies than are normally used for cellular service. Before the Verizon marketing blitz, the company had purchased a lot of 28 GHz spectrum from Straight Path and XO Communications. That’s a significantly higher frequency than the mid-range spectrum (1 – 4 GHz) used for cellular service. It’s called millimeter wave spectrum because the radio waves for 28 GHz are extremely short. AT&T also dipped its toe into millimeter wave spectrum with the acquisition of 29 GHz spectrum.

The Ookla article points out that many of Verizon’s millimeter wave spectrum deployments are still in use, and the use of millimeter wave spectrum is growing. Ookla cites statistics compiled by its RootMetrics effort, where the company sends people to take random cellular speed tests in markets around the country. When those in-person tests are combined with the normal Ookla speed tests conducted by the public, the Ookla article shows that in the second half of 2025, that 2.2% of Verizon cellular speed tests used millimeter wave technology, while 0.2% of AT&T used the higher spectrum. T-Mobile had virtually no millimeter wave usage.

The report demonstrates the issues with using millimeter wave spectrum. The technology can deliver gigabit speed, but the effective distance from a transmitter is very short. RootMetrics found millimeter wave speed test connections mostly within 500 feet of a transmitter, even though the spectrum can theoretically carry for a half mile. That short distance limits the use of the spectrum to high traffic areas where the extra spectrum can help relieve pressure on the other cellular spectrum bands. In case you’re wondering, most high-end cellphones manufactured since about 2001 include the ability to receive the millimeter wave spectrum. Most of the rest of the world, other than South Korea, never activated millimeter wave spectrum in networks or cellphones.

Interestingly, this report also tells a similar story about C-Band spectrum (3.7 – 4.2 GHz). Most RootMetrics speed tests for connection using C-Band were found within a half mile from a tower, although the spectrum can theoretically carry for two miles. This is good proof that, while cellular speeds are improving, the fastest speeds are found relatively close to towers. The older spectrum bands used for cellular, like 700 MHz and 900 MHz, carry for many miles, but carry far less bandwidth.

The Ookla report goes into detail about the coverage found in a few markets. For example, the  report includes a map of millimeter wave just south of downtown Denver that shows small pockets of good coverage next to areas with poor coverage, again demonstrating the distance limitations on the technology. The report is well worth reading.

Customer Reactions to Outages

On January 14th of this year, Verizon had a major cellular network outage that lasted up to ten hours and that impacted more than 1.5 million wireless customers. Not all Verizon customers lost service, but the impact was felt across the country. Recon Analytics conducted a survey of 1,702 small, medium, and large Verizon business customers to understand their reaction to the outage. I can’t recall having ever seen a public survey of this type related to a single event. The results tell a sobering story for all ISPs and carriers.

The biggest impact was felt by the large businesses, and 44% of them said they were impacted by the outage. That makes sense they tend to operate in multiple locations, across multiple states, with a lot of employees that can be impacted by a day-long outage. 33% of medium-sized businesses were impacted, and 21% of small businesses. On the flip side, only 3% of large businesses were not aware of the outage, while 7% of midsize and 12% of small businesses hadn’t heard about the outage.

For all sizes of businesses, about two-thirds said the outage didn’t change their opinion of Verizon. That’s a scary statistic for anybody who sells to businesses, because it means one-third changed their opinion. About 5-6 % of all these customers said they were much more negative about Verizon, with 32-35% said they were somewhat more negative.

When asked if they were more likely after the outage to shop around for an alternative to Verizon, small businesses were the most forgiving, with 28% saying they were more likely to shop around, while 50% of midsize companies, and 59% of large businesses said they were likely to look for alternatives. Anybody who has worked is sales and marketing knows that there is a big difference between somebody who will consider changing service and somebody who will definitely change service.

But still, the survey results have to be worrisome for Verizon. The Verizon business sales team had been pushing the story for years that the reason to Verizon is because the service is reliable. An outage that lasted throughout a workday is the opposite of reliable.

While this survey concerned a long cellular outage, it’s something ISPs should also be aware of. Not only business customers, but also residential customers now believe that cellphone and broadband coverage should always be on, and never off. My friend Travis, who owned US Broadband, tells the story of how he had a ten minute outage in the middle of the night in Minneapolis, after years with no outages, and his negative Google reviews went through the roof.

It’s virtually impossible to never have a network outage, at least in some portion of a network. The Verizon outage of ten hours was particularly negative for the public, especially after the company eventually said the cause of the outage was some unspecified software issue. We don’t expect big companies to have software problems they can’t resolve quickly.

This outage raises the issue of what ISPs and carriers should do after an outage. First is probably having an internet definition of what constitutes an important outage – is it an outage that lasts ten minutes, an hour, or half a day? Should an ISP pretend short outages didn’t happen, or should they fully explain outages to every customer who was impacted?

The FCC’s Ability to Levy Fines

Today’s blog takes a deeper dive into the upcoming case at the Supreme Court concerning appeals by AT&T and Verizon over fines levied by the FCC. The original appeals followed an FCC finding that all three major U.S. cellular carriers were liable for violating customer privacy by selling access to customer location data. This data showed every place that a customer visited during the day, something that should make every cell customer uncomfortable. The FCC fined AT&T $50 million, T-Mobile  $80 million, and Verizon $47 million, with smaller fines against a few other carriers. The case at the Supreme Court looks specifically at the FCC’s ability to levy fines against the carriers for violating consumer privacy rights.

AT&T and Verizon appealed the FCC fines. Both companies were emboldened by two recent Supreme Court rulings that weakened the FCC’s authority. The first was Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, which said that courts don’t have to defer to expertise at federal agencies when deciding lawsuits. The second case was SEC v. Jaresky, which said that federal agencies should give defendants a chance to have a trial by jury in a federal court rather than levying fines.

As usually happens with cases that make it to the Supreme Court, lower courts issued conflicting opinions about the FCC fines. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the fines levied against AT&T, while the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FCC’s fines against Verizon.

One of the more interesting things about both appeals was that the carriers did not deny their bad actions – they had clearly allowed access to customer location data. Both appeals relied on the Supreme Court ruling in SEC v. Jaresky and argued that the FCC should have offered the carriers the chance to take the cases to court and hold a jury trial as an alternative to the FCC fines.

It’s clear that the carriers are trying to weaken or break the FCC’s ability to levy fines and are willing to go through this process as a way to avoid future fines. I find it unbelievable that the carriers would have chosen to take this specific case to a jury if they had been given that option. It’s impossible to seat a jury of people who don’t use cellphones, and I would wager that a jury would be unhappy that a carrier would sell the data to track them 24/7. It’s easy to imagine that a jury would assess damages much larger than the FCC fines if these cases had instead gone straight to court.

It will be interesting to see what the carriers do if they win this case. Winning doesn’t take them off the hook for selling customer data, and the cases would likely be remanded back to the FCC to give the carriers the option for a jury trial. As silly as it sounds, I’m dubious that, even with a second chance, the carriers would choose the jury trial. Again, the real goal of the carriers in this case is to weaken the FCC’s options in future disputes.

It will be unfortunate if the Supreme Court sides with the carriers and hobbles the FCC’s ability to levy fines. The FCC typically fines regulated companies for two reasons, for failing to comply with FCC rules or for abusing the general public. The first type of fines is generally relatively small and the big fines are saved for companies engaged in abuse and fraud of the public. In a recent action, the FCC fined Telnyx LLC for allowing foreign scam robocalls into the U.S. telephone network.

Protecting the public is one of the major roles of a regulatory agency. A policy shift that makes it difficult or impossible to hold large corporations accountable for abuses against the public would be a terrible outcome.

Some Thoughts on Convergence

An article in Light Reading reported that the largest cable companies captured about one-third of the net cellular customer additions in the fourth quarter of 2025. This statistic combines the cellular sales of Charter, Comcast, and Optimum. The overall cable industry statistics would be even higher if it included sales from Cox and Mediacom, which are privately held.

Industry analysts are using the word convergence as shorthand for competition that bundles cell service with broadband. Convergence is the newest strategy that replaces the traditional bundling strategy of selling a package of broadband, cable TV, and voice.

Industry press over the last year is full of articles that wonder about the ultimate success of the strategy. Cable companies seem to have the upper hand in a convergence bundle since they collectively pass roughly 122 million homes. I’ve read a few analysts who argue that the big telcos like AT&T and Verizon are at a disadvantage since they pass a lot fewer homes with fiber.

But I think these analysts are missing something. There are three players in the convergence battle, and each is using a different tactic:

  • Cable companies are finding success with the convergence bundle by combining full-price broadband with inexpensive cellular service. The main goal of the cable companies is to reduce broadband churn, and a customer loses their cable company cell service if they drop broadband.
  • The fiber parts of the telcos don’t seem to be pushing the convergence package to the same extent. They are mostly still betting that people like fiber a lot more than cable broadband. However, AT&T just announced a fiber/cellular bundle with gigabit and one cellphone for $90 and two cellphones $120.
  • The third competitors are the FWA cellular companies. They are bundling full-price cell service with inexpensive broadband. At least for now, they seem to be winning the convergence battle. In the fourth quarter of last year, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon added over 1 million net FWA customers while the rest of the industry barely grew.

I know it seems odd to be counting the FWA competitors as different than the fiber telcos, since they are largely the same companies. But anybody who follows these companies understands there is not a lot of bleed-over between the wireline and the cellular parts of the businesses. The FWA division of the telcos are willing to compete for a fiber customer from their own sister companies.

It’s becoming clear that affordability is a major issue for a huge number of households. As long as that stays in the forefront, it seems like many households will lean towards the convergence plan that gives them a significant discount. I doubt that customers care if the discount comes from a lower price for broadband or cellular.

I think the cable companies are on to something with their focus on reducing churn. I talked to a few people in the last year who wanted to leave Charter and move to fiber broadband but didn’t want to lose their cheap cell service – and didn’t want to go through the hassle of replacing both services at the same time. The cable companies were really good at the triple play bundle in the 2010s, and a huge number of households felt they were held captive by the bundle. Are we headed back to that same place, but this time with multiple bundle options that force customers to buy both services from the same company?

Perhaps led by the recent new plan from AT&T, perhaps the fiber telcos are ready to jump into the convergence battle. I have wondered for years why they didn’t lead the market in this effort, and I guess it was due to internal battles over which division swallowed the bundling discount.

A Rural Cellular Story

I was looking through the FCC cellular map in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where I live. For those not fully familiar with the FCC broadband maps, the agency publishes two maps: the more familiar one that shows broadband coverage and a second that shows cellular coverage. You can toggle between the two maps at the FCC’s map website.

It struck me while looking at the details in the maps that rural cellular coverage is changing, and not in a good way. I started by looking at a small section of the county that is on the outer fringe of where the Asheville outer suburbs turn rural. According to the FCC cellular map, the area I selected has the following cellular coverage:

These two tables tell me the following:

  • AT&T and Verizon have some 4G coverage. But the Verizon coverage is likely very weak since they don’t claim it will work in a moving vehicle. While AT&T claims its 4G coverage will work in a moving vehicle, it’s curious that AT&T doesn’t have 5G. This tells me that the AT&T signal is also likely weak since it is outside the 5G coverage area.
  • The only carrier claiming relatively solid 5G (35/3 Mbps) is Project Genesis, which is EchoStar. The company has exited the facility-based cellular business and is in the process of dismantling cell sites.
  • T-Mobile claims both 4G and 5G for outdoor cellular coverage, but doesn’t claim it can work in a moving vehicle, meaning the coverage is also probably weak.
  • The last carrier listed is UScellular, which claims 7/1 speeds on 5G, but doesn’t claim to be able to provide coverage in vehicles. UScellular was purchased by T-Mobile, and the rumor is that any UScellular towers that already duplicate T-Mobile coverage are likely to be decommissioned.

The bottom line is that this particular neighborhood has weak cell coverage. The only carrier that claimed to be able to deliver 5G to a moving vehicle is now out of business.

I picked this neighborhood at random, but I think I would find the same story in most of the areas on the fringe of the metropolitan area. The coverage in areas that are completely rural is worse. The story I gleaned from this neighborhood is troublesome for several reasons.

  • The folks who live here don’t have a lot of options. The only carrier that might work in the way people need cellular to work is AT&T, but this neighborhood is outside the AT&T 5G coverage, and the 4G coverage is likely weak.
  • It looks like decent coverage was finally becoming available from EchoStar, but that’s now gone.
  • The speeds shown in the table are for outdoor coverage, and speeds inside homes are typically half of outdoor speeds.
  • When you look at the details in the FCC cellular map you quickly understand how the advertised national footprints of the big carriers are exaggerated.
  • The bad news is that the FCC considers this neighborhood to be served by cellular. That means if the FCC finally launches the 5G Fund for Rural America, this neighborhood will not be considered for funding to add a new cell tower.

Broadband Shorts March 2026

The following are a few topics I found interesting but which are two short to need a full blog.

Acquisitions Changing the Broadband Landscape. We’ve recently seen the closing of a number of major mergers and sales that are changing the broadband landscape.

  • On January 20, the sale of Frontier to Verizon closed. This $20 billion blockbuster sale brought 2.2 million fiber subscribers and eight million passings. Long-time followers of the industry are somewhat amused to see Verizon buy back millions of passings it sold to Frontier in the past.
  • On February 2, AT&T closed the sale of over 1 million fiber customers from Lumen, which brought four million fiber passings. This included customers in major markets like Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, and Phoenix.
  • On March 10, the sale of Starry to Verizon closed. While bringing only 100,000 customers, the acquisition also brings Starry’s proprietary technology that uses 28/39 GHz millimeter wave spectrum to deliver wireless broadband, mostly to MDUs. The speculation is that Verizon will use the technology to expand to MDUs outside of its fiber footprint.
  • The huge merger between Charter and Cox Communications is still pending. The merger recently got approved by the FCC and still needs approval from several states. Cox would bring around 6 million broadband customers and 12 million passing to Charter, making the combined company the largest ISP in the country.
  • GFiber just announced a merger with Astound Broadband that would spin GFiber from Google Alphabet.

Action in the NDIA Suit. The U.S. Department of Justice sought to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) that challenged the administration’s refusal to disperse the grant funding approved by Congress from the Digital Equity Act. These grants were aimed at tackling digital inclusion efforts that included bringing broadband devices to those that need them, training people how to use computers and broadband, and training for broadband-related jobs. The NDIA suit was first filed in early October 2025. I note the DOJ motion since the agency has had a low success rate in defending executive actions that killed various other federal grants. I think there is still a chance that this funding will eventually be awarded as intended.

AI Fueling Surge in Deepfake Spam. Hiya, a service that provides apps to block spam calls, released its State of the Call 2026 report, which says that AI is fueling an increase in spam calls. A survey of over 12,000 consumers across the  U.S., UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain showed a rise of deepfake calls, which use AI to mimic voices that are familiar to those being called. One in four Americans said they received a deepfake voice call in the last year. Americans said by nearly 2-to-1 that spammers are winning the battle over the FCC, which is trying to squelch spam calls.

AT&T Partnership with Amazon. AT&T, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Amazon Leo announced a broadband collaboration this week that integrates AT&T into the AI and cloud capabilities of AWS. AT&T will become the preferred vendor to provide connectivity to AWS data centers. Amazon LEO has an existing arrangement with Verizon to bring fiber to ground stations, and it will be interesting over time to see if that business shifts to AT&T.

AT&T will partner with Amazon Leo to provide satellite broadband connectivity to some AT&T broadband customers. This is an interesting solution that could help AT&T more easily walk away from rural copper networks. AT&T also wants to bring satellite backup broadband to AT&T business customers.