WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2025 – A Maine legislative committee voted Tuesday to advance a revised version of a bill that initially sought to eliminate the state’s broadband authority.
The state’s Energy, Utilities and Technology committee considered LD 1975, sponsored by Rep. Jack Ducharme, R-Madison, which as introduced would phase out the Maine Connect Authority and the ConnectMaine Fund. Instead, the committee moved forward with a “strike-and-replace” version requiring additional planning, reports and recommendations before any such action could take effect.
At the heart of the debate are two modest communications surcharges that fund the ConnectMaine Fund, the state’s primary source of support for broadband planning, rural deployment, and digital literacy and device access initiatives.
Some days, you read the headlines and think some stories aren’t related. Today isn’t one of those days.
After looking at some industry news, group chats, and regulatory developments, a clear pattern starts to emerge. There’s a lot happening right now in the satellite and spectrum world. On their own, each development is interesting. Taken together, they started to paint a much bigger picture, one that’s still coming into focus, but already raises important questions for the telecom industry.
Brian Albrecht is chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, a global research think tank that promotes the use of economic theory to inform public policy debates. Albrecht has written extensively on the economic implications of recent antitrust cases against Googleand Meta, and the emerging dynamics of the AI market. He talks to DFD about the perils of focusing too much on software, and how the law of supply and demand can help us make sense of the future.
Until Wednesday, and for more than 20 years, I was a loyal subscriber to The Washington Post. Not anymore.
My vexations with and criticisms of the paper go back even further, but I kept paying for the Post out of a sense of civic obligation and because, even in a diminished form, it still had reporters all over the world and at my local city council meetings, too.
I didn’t join the 250,000 readers who jumped ship after owner Jeff Bezos spiked a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris or razed the Op-Ed pages. I rationalized that reading the Post was part of my job. Plus I relied on their gang of meteorologists, and there were so many good reporters still working in the newsroom. And they once ran a really cute photo of my dog.
But Bezos and his hatchet men are determined to destroy this flawed but essential institution. And while my tiny and belated protest won’t put a dent in Bezos’s next mega-yacht, it makes me slightly less complicit in what he’s doing to this newspaper, this community and this democracy.
Vienna, Maine, recently launched its own municipal fiber network, finally bringing affordable next-generation broadband access to the small town’s 600 residents.
As soon as service was made available, 240 of the town's 400 plus households immediately signed up for service, and the town’s focus has shifted to demonstrating the value of fast affordable access to remaining locals that regional incumbents are trying to lure away with temporary promotional offers.
The Vienna Broadband Authority recently told the Bangor Daily News it needs 270 consistent subscriber households to maintain financial viability, so they’ve taken to demonstrating high speed connectivity at the local firehouse in order to pique the public interest.
Since we last reported on final proposal approvals, four have been NTIA-blessed and headed to NIST. Today, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee were approved with New Mexico approved last week.
Only one notable change from draft to final approved i
Today, the Federal Communications Commission issued a first-of-its-kind order resulting from its new process for expedited review of pole attachment complaints in order to speed the deployment of broadband services to American households and businesses.
Using the Commission's Accelerated Docket process, the agency's Rapid Broadband Assessment Team (RBAT)—composed of staff from the Enforcement and Wireline Competition Bureaus—oversaw the development of a record that encompassed both parties' legal arguments.
Based on that record, the Commission adopted an order within 60 days of the complaint’s filing. The Commission's action helps resolve a dispute that had slowed down and would have added deployment costs for BEAD-funded projects in Virginia.
NEW YORK -- Elon Musk vowed this week to upend another industry just as he did with cars and rockets — and once again he's taking on long odds.
The world's richest man said he wants to put as many as a million satellites into orbit to form vast, solar-powered data centers in space — a move to allow expanded use of artificial intelligence and chatbots without triggering blackouts and sending utility bills soaring.
To finance that effort, Musk combined SpaceX with his AI business on Monday and plans a big initial public offering of the combined company.
MONTGOMERY, Ind. - Feb. 5, 2026 - PRLog -- RTC Communications, a leading, member-owned, communications and technology provider based in the southwest region of Indiana, is proud to share project updates for the Indiana Next Level Connect (NLC) IV Grant internet expansion. This recent grant opportunity provided necessary funding to expand fiber internet in areas of eastern Daviess County and western Martin County surrounding the West Boggs Lake area.
For years, residents in the West Boggs area have asked RTC Communications to bring fiber to their community, and the right opportunity came through the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA) and its NLC program.
Just as Everett Parker established the public's right to be heard in the 1960s, we are making the legal argument today that the FCC must listen to the people.
At a time when local and reliable sources of news and information are more important—and more scarce—than ever, the need to block massive media mergers is more urgent.
In a chaotic world where children are snatched from streets, ICE moves with impunity, and Black journalists are arrested for reporting the news, local journalism should be the critical infrastructure that helps our communities understand these events and holds authority to account.
We cannot hold leaders responsible if we don’t know what happens at city council meetings or which local agencies have secret agreements with federal law enforcement. Did your elected members of Congress vote for or against the President’s agenda? Did they speak out when Alex Pretti or Renee Good was shot? How about Silverio Villegas González or Keith Porter Jr?
The same forces that are unhinging government actions from the law are working to undermine the few remaining rules, focusing local TV broadcasters on the only people that really matter: the people in the towns and cities that they serve. The Trump administration is likely to greenlight one of the biggest proposed mergers in recent history in violation of current law.
The proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of TEGNA by Nexstar would be another step toward a fully unaccountable, remote news operation disconnected from the people it serves.
Christopher Grady was the 12th vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — America’s second highest-ranking military officer — between 2021 to 2025. He was the acting chairman from February through April of last year, and has since retired and joined the AI enterprise platform company Domino Data Lab as an independent board member. While at Domino, he will help lead the company’s efforts to introduce AI into government defense operations. Grady talks to DFD about why he decided to pivot to the AI industry, and the risks of integrating the technology into warfare.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Why did you want to get involved in the AI industry after your military career?
This program honors Native nations and entities for their excellence in providing sustainable digital inclusion solutions that address their community and nation’s connectivity, digital skills, and device access. Digital inclusion and equity are essential to a Native nation’s educational, health, economic, cultural, and social needs. Each nation and community is overcoming monumental barriers and finding unique solutions with passionate staff and supportive leadership.
Even taken individually, the expected outlay by Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft could break a decade-long record for such spending by any single corporation, per Bloomberg.
Job seekers are sending out hundreds of applications. Here's why they're not hearing back.
The unemployment rate has been climbing over the past few years, but historically, it isn't that high… Even so, some people have been talking about having a really, really rough time finding work.
Brittany Luse is joined by Wailin Wong, co-host of NPR's Indicator podcast, and Nitish Pahwa, staff writer for business and tech at Slate, to get into why the decent macroeconomic numbers aren't adding up for job seekers and why the market might be stuck in an "AI doom loop."
February 8 is the thirtieth anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The legislation brought sweeping changes to the industry and was the impetus for me to start my consulting company in 1997. This blog includes some of my thoughts about the impact of the Act. The Act was both overdue and premature. It was…
In recent years, the time to connect a data center to the power grid has grown significantly. In response, many data center developers are choosing to build their own power plants and avoid the grid—or connect later.
In what we believe is the most comprehensive analysis of this trend to date, we identified 46 data centers with a combined capacity of 56 GW that plan to build their own power "behind-the-meter." That represents roughly 30% of all planned data center capacity in the United States, according to Cleanview's project tracker.
In the last year, this trend has gone from niche to mainstream. 90% of the projects we identified—representing approximately 50 GW—were announced in 2025 alone. A year ago, behind-the-meter data center power was a curiosity, embodied by xAI's controversial decision to truck mobile generators into Memphis. Now it's an increasingly common development strategy.
Lumen completed the sale of its mass markets business to AT&T, reducing its debt and improving financial flexibility
The company announced $2.5 billion in new Private Connectivity Fabric (PCF) deals in Q4 2025
Lumen is now focused on enabling enterprise customers’ AI strategies and digital transformation initiatives
Lumen Technologies yesterday reported its Q4 and year-end 2025 earnings, just after closing the sale of its mass markets business to AT&T.
CEO Kate Johnson said during an earnings call the close of the AT&T transaction marks a defining moment for Lumen, which emerges as a simpler, more focused company serving enterprise customers and helping them in the AI era.
Deepfake fraud has gone “industrial”, an analysis published by AI experts has said.
Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams – leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus – are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident Database.
It catalogued more than a dozen recent examples of “impersonation for profit”, including a deepfake video of Western Australia’s premier, Robert Cook, hawking an investment scheme, and deepfake doctors promoting skin creams.
These examples are part of a trend in which scammers are using widely available AI tools to perpetuate increasingly targeted heists.
Elon Musk's pie-in-the-sky plan to launch a massive orbital datacenter satellite constellation has taken a rapid step closer to reality with the Federal Communications Commission advancing SpaceX's application for public comment, technical feasibility be damned.
The FCC is taking public comments - now’s your chance to tell them this plan is bonkers.
ABC, owned by The Walt Disney Company, took Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air indefinitely amid pressure from the FCC. Headlines say Jimmy Kimmel was “suspended,” with some even speculating if he was “fired” or “canceled.”
At the same time, Nexstar’s merger with Tegna (pending FCC approval) could make them the country’s largest local TV owner—giving them majority control of U.S. households.
Although Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t technically fired, the corporate interests and FCC regulations behind the scenes make the situation far more complex.
Here’s how these stories connect, and what they reveal about the future of television, mergers, and media ownership.
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, Nexstar Media Group announced that it had filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission seeking agency approval to acquire Tegna, Inc.’s broadcast licenses in a proposed $6.2 billion deal first reported in August.
The $6.2 billion deal would also violate the FCC’s few remaining local-ownership limits in nearly 30 markets. In some, it would leave Nexstar in control of three of the top-four-ranked stations.
Bezos was feted as the savior of the Washington Post in 2013, now he's reviled for mass layoffs. But it's also Google who helped crush the paper. Liberal elites are starting to learn about oligarchy.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5, 2026 – House lawmakers from both parties appeared supportive Wednesday of a draft bill to reauthorize the First Responder Network Authority.
The draft, led by Reps. Neal Dunn, F-Fla., and Jennifer McClellan, D-Va., would reauthorize the FirstNet Authority through September 2037 and put the agency under more direct control from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
