Netflix’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery for $83 billion may test the limits of what it means to compete in the attention economy.
The deal, which Netflix announced in December, would not only give the streaming giant control over thousands of Warner Bros. films, but also the Harry Potter and DC Comics franchises, Turner Classic Movies and HBO Max.
The sprawling empire that such a transaction would create is raising some eyebrows in Washington, where the Justice Department is conducting an extensive probe of the merger. Lawmakers in the Senate Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee also expressed skepticism during a hearing with Netflix and Warner Bros. executives last Tuesday. “One might say that Netflix seeks to become the one platform to rule them all,” said subcommittee Chair Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) during his opening remarks.
For wireless infrastructure contractors who have spent the past three years watching carrier capex decline and work slow, this week's FirstNet announcement deserves a close read.
AT&T and the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a $2 billion agreement in principle to expand and upgrade FirstNet, America’s dedicated nationwide public safety broadband network, though only $1 billion represents new money from AT&T, with the remainder coming from a reduction in fees AT&T had been collecting under the original contract terms.
More importantly, it comes at a moment when AT&T’s two major competitors are cutting spending. Verizon’s 2026 capex guidance is $16 to $16.5 billion, down from $17 billion in 2025. T-Mobile’s 2026 capital expenditure guidance is $10 billion. AT&T is guiding to $23 to $24 billion in capex for 2026 alone, almost as much as Verizon and T-Mobile combined, with a five-year commitment recently announced that analysts estimate at roughly $50 billion annually.
The contractor community hasn’t seen a spending gap this lopsided among the Big Three in years.
Here's something that surprised me when I talked to operators last year about their biggest challenges: USF wasn't the first thing on their minds. Competition was. Rising costs came in second —and yes, USF plays into that— but competitive pressure was the clear number one concern.
In separate conversations, I started hearing something more specific: operators saying their larger competitors are simply better at sales and marketing. More aggressive. More coordinated. Showing up in markets that small providers had long considered their own, and outperforming them on go-to-market execution.
That's a very different problem from what Congress is debating right now.
California has made historic investments to expand broadband access, but significant gaps remain, leaving hundreds of thousands of households without reliable internet access, according to a new Issue Brief by the Little Hoover Commission.
The commission released California’s Digital Divide, examining disparities in broadband availability, affordability, and adoption across the state.
While statewide data suggests near-universal coverage, these figures can be misleading, masking persistent inequities tied to geography, income, and other factors.
Despite progress, an estimated 4.6 percent of California households still lack internet access, with significantly higher gaps in rural and low-income communities, the commission's research shows.
Governor Newsom joins tribal and state leaders to announce a major milestone in California’s effort to close the digital divide: the activation of the nation’s largest public middle-mile broadband network and the connection of its first community.
Kent County has become the first part of Delaware to see a launch of services by IQ Fiber, which has now the state to their fiber footprint.
IQ Fiber today marked a significant milestone in its Eastern U.S. expansion, officially opening for business in Delaware, the company’s fifth state. The Jacksonville, Florida-based provider of 100% fiber-optic internet service launched service in Kent County, which becomes the first community in Delaware to be served by IQ Fiber’s all-fiber network.
The entry into Delaware reflects IQ Fiber’s disciplined, customer-first growth strategy and its commitment to giving residents and businesses a better broadband option – with exceptional in-house 24/7 customer support, transparent pricing, whole-home Wi-Fi and no contracts or data caps.
Willisville, Arkansas prepared for fiber well before construction crews arrived by doing the critical work of mapping underground utilities.
When broadband construction was scheduled to begin in the small town of Willisville, Arkansas, located in Nevada County, local leaders knew one thing immediately: installing fiber would be much safer if the town’s underground utilities were accurately mapped.
But the effort to prepare Willisville for fiber began well before construction crews arrived.
Next-generation FWA technology creator Tarana says Starlink has pulled the rug out from under the NTIA and state broadband offices.
Starlink’s push for state broadband offices to accept their riders earlier this year did more than undermine confidence in the federal government’s massive broadband spend, it also jeopardized the digital future for hundreds of thousands of families, according to Tarana.
The company, known also as Tarana Wireless, and as an architect of next-generation fixed wireless access (FWA) technology, made the comments in a recently released statement, posted to Tarana’s website.
SpaceX’s Starlink division confirmed yesterday that it lost contact with a satellite on Sunday and is trying to locate space debris that might have been produced by… whatever happened there.
Starlink said there appeared to be “no new risk” to other space operations and did not use the word “explosion.” But it seems that something caused a Starlink broadband satellite to break apart into at least tens of pieces. LeoLabs, which operates a radar network that can track objects in low Earth orbit, said in an X post that it “detected a fragment creation event involving SpaceX Starlink 34343,” one of the 10,000 or so Starlink satellites in orbit.
One of the Supreme Court’s latest rulings has raised concerns that internet service providers will be let off the hook when it comes to copyright infringement.
Last week, the country’s highest court decided that Cox Communications was not liable for failing to prevent customers from using its internet services for online piracy. Justice Clarence Thomas ruled for the majority that an ISP can only be liable for this kind of activity when it induces customers to do so, or when it offers a service that can only be used in a way that violates copyright.
The decision effectively shields ISPs from legal consequences even if they know customers are using internet services to pirate copyrighted works, or are likely to do so in the future — as long as the companies aren’t actively encouraging people to break the law. In her concurrence, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that Thomas was being too easy on ISPs.
The Trump administration recently unveiled a national policy framework for AI, but it misses a critical dynamic in AI governance around responsibility and accountability.
Effective oversight begins with recognizing the effects of AI—its harms and risks—and the causes of those effects—power and competition
Meaningful policy must structure power by focusing on four interlocking principles: accountability, access, agency, and action.
Tom Wheeler and Bill Baer discuss what considerations are missing from the Trump administration's new national AI policy framework.
On March 20, the Trump White House released its National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence. It is filled with worthy aspirations such as protecting children, promoting innovation, and ensuring American leadership.
But it sidesteps the most important question in AI governance: Who is in charge of those in charge?
The advertising revenue model for supporting journalism has long been an article of faith for scholars and policymakers alike. This paper challenges that assumption by examining advertising revenue as a share of the newspaper industry’s total revenue from 1880 to the present as part of a larger political economic analysis. By historicizing the complicated relationship between journalism and advertising and arraying its critical historiography, we arrive at implications vital to the industry’s foundations and future.
A whole industry of data brokers buys up vast quantities of electronic information from cell phone apps and web browsers and sells it to advertisers who use that data to target ads. The same industry also sells that data, including bulk cell phone location data, to police departments and federal government agencies in ways that can reveal intimate details about Americans without a warrant.
Now, privacy advocates say that the best chance for Congress to close the well-known loophole around the Fourth Amendment that allows for that sort of governmental snooping is coming up in just a few weeks.
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:
A new study from researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz suggests models will disobey human commands to protect their own kind.
In a recent experiment, researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz asked Google’s artificial intelligence model Gemini 3 to help clear up space on a computer system. This involved deleting a bunch of stuff—including a smaller AI model stored on the machine.
But Gemini did not want to see the little AI model deleted. It looked for another machine it could connect with, then copied the agent model over to keep it safe. When confronted, Gemini made a case for keeping the model and flatly refused to delete it:
ANNAPOLIS, MD — Governor Wes Moore and the Board of Public Works today advanced a critical resource sharing agreement to further expand high-speed internet access in Western Maryland.
After an initial state investment of $250,000, the agreement will grant the State access to approximately 26 miles of fiber optic cable along rural and underserved areas in Allegany and Garrett counties—worth $3.5 million in total in-kind value to the state.
“Since Day One, our administration has been committed to expanding access to high-speed internet to all Marylanders, because connectivity is not a luxury—it is a necessity,” said Gov. Moore. “This new agreement is a direct investment in the future of Western Maryland, ensuring our families, students, and businesses in Allegany and Garrett counties have the robust, high-speed internet access they need to thrive.”
All West Fiber broke ground on an expansion project in Rawlins, Wyoming, where the provider hopes to deliver access to thousands of homes.
All West Fiber recently announced the expansion of its multi-gig fiber broadband network, bringing high-speed internet access to more than 3,700 homes and businesses in the previously underserved Rawlins, Wyoming community. This investment is focused on bridging the digital divide and delivering future-ready connectivity typically found in larger metropolitan cities.
Ripple Fiber, a fiber-optic internet provider and network operator, has unveiled expansion plans for Garden City and Inkster in Michigan.
Building upon their existing footprint in Wayne County that includes Allen Park, Plymouth, Canton, and Westland, Ripple Fiber will bring fiber internet access to over 3,750 homes and businesses, with construction set to begin construction in Garden City and Inkster in April 2026.
“Why did we keep outsourcing identity, distribution, and monetization to companies whose incentives were obviously misaligned with ours?
[…] It is because, collectively, we preferred the short-term consumer surplus of convenience over the long-term responsibilities of stewardship.”
We can raise the alarm about the demise of the open web all we want, but you can’t sell or promote a technology based on ideology alone. The truth is that other solutions were quicker and easier — even for many of us that held up the open web banner.
Starting in late 2025, the world began experiencing a big shortage of memory chips used in the manufacture of smartphones, computers, and other consumer electronics. The shortage has been caused by chip makers across the industry deciding to manufacture more lucrative chips for AI data centers. As an example, during the last year, we saw Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix stop making RAM for consumer devices in favor of AI chips.
Commercial data centers have become critical infrastructure, supporting everything from financial transactions to government services. And critical infrastructure is often targeted in war.
WASHINGTON, April 1, 2026 – With the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program (BEAD) on the cusp of finally getting off the ground, states' attempts at AI regulation may be yet another barrier to implementation.
The administration’s actions have now halted regulation in at least two states.
Members of Louisiana state legislature withdrew their bipartisan AI regulatory bills after several legislators heard that administration officials opposed them and threatened to withhold BEAD funding, according to several legislators and reporting by NOLA.
Hyperscale data centers have policy experts, residents and environmentalists concerned about water usage and extreme energy consumption in the Great Lakes region.
Sure, the sheer size of the hyperscale centers draws attention. An individual hyperscale data center often requires over 100 times more power to operate than a traditional data center, churning through as much as a million gallons of water per day. Still, a single data center, even a hyperscale behemoth, isn’t the issue that most concerns water experts focused on the long-term health of the Great Lakes region, home to the largest surface freshwater system on the planet and 90% of the U.S. supply of fresh water.
Lenoir City, Tennessee officials say they’re making steady progress on their goal to deliver affordable fiber well beyond the Southern city of 12,998.
Under the collaborative umbrella of the Lenoir City Utilities Board (LCUB) and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), officials say they’re leveraging century-old experience in rural electrification to help bridge the digital divide across Knox and Loudon counties.
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