The emergency extension was passed under suspension of the rules after the Senate rejected an earlier proposal from the House.

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a bill to extend a spying authority of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for 45 days as congressional debate on the controversial measure continues.

Both chambers of Congress raced to pass the short-term measure earlier Thursday after the Senate declined to take up a House-passed bill to extend the deadline until 2029.

The House passed the “clean” extension, without reforms, which punts the deadline from April 30 to June 12, in a 261–111 vote. It was passed under a suspension of the rules, meaning it relied on Democratic support to pass. However, opposition to the measure was also bipartisan, with 26 Republicans joining 85 Democrats in casting a “No” vote.

The measure’s passage and signature into law came just hours before the critical—but contentious—power was due to expire.

For a decade, the “efficiency” playbook for Tier-1 operators has remained remarkably unimaginative. As the industry stares down a Q1 2026 Opex-to-sales ratio hovering between 76% and 81%, the knee-jerk reaction from boards remains the same: aggressive headcount reduction and vendor price squeezing.

However, the math no longer supports this strategy as a path to hyperscaler-level margins. Layoffs provide a one-time margin “sugar high” but do nothing to address the network's structural weight. Squeezing vendors, who are already operating on thinning margins, stifles the very R&D needed to automate the legacy mess. If telcos want to bridge the 15-25 percentage point gap with hyperscalers, they must pivot from “trimming the fat” to “re-engineering the skeleton.”

The U.S. fiber story has moved beyond the hype phase. By April 2026, it will have become a capital-intensive rebuild of the fixed access layer, with economics that look far less clean than the coverage numbers suggest.

On the surface, the industry has delivered. Fiber now reaches more than 60% of households, and total passings exceed 100 million. But beneath that scale sits a structural tension. Around 16% of these locations are in overbuild zones where two or more fiber networks compete for the same household. In high-income suburbs, three infrastructures often coexist on the same street: cable upgrades to DOCSIS 4.0, a Tier 1 telco deploying fiber, and a regional AltNet seeking to gain market share. The industry has shifted from broad geographic expansion to street-level competition.

David Ellison’s Washington event honoring the Trump White House is raising concerns inside CBS News, as a major Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger draws scrutiny from lawmakers like Cory Booker.

Something is shifting at CBS News. And not everyone inside the building likes where the wind is blowing.

David Ellison — the Paramount boss trying to pull off a major merger with Warner Bros. Discovery — is heading to Washington this week. For a party.

An “intimate gathering,” as the invitation puts it.

It’s set for Thursday at the United States Institute of Peace, recently renamed by the State Department to slap Donald Trump’s name on it. The timing lines up neatly with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend. The stated purpose? A celebration of the First Amendment.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt a Report and Order designed to accelerate the removal of the country’s remaining copper phone lines while simultaneously eliminating traditional legacy phone service and transitioning the entire national phone network to an IP-based network. 

The vast majority of telephone connections today are IP-based and use either mobile service or cable or fiber lines that bundle broadband with voice service. But millions of Americans living in rural areas, as well as the millions of elderly people or people with disabilities or that rely on specialized medical equipment – who also still rely on traditional legacy copper lines – may get left behind. Additionally, as the record in this proceeding shows, deactivation of legacy phone service and removal of copper lines can cause disruption to 911 services, even for  those already using IP technology.

To accelerate the transition, the Order relaxes or eliminates multiple safeguards put in place by previous administrations to ensure that no American or small business with phone service loses access to 911 or other critical voice services.

We are reaping the fruit of the industry’s cowardice.

For more than a year, most major media companies have stood by or aggressively acquiesced as President Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr pressured them through lawsuits and baseless investigations. Radio coverage of ICE raids? Investigated. A comedian’s joke? Investigated. Fair hiring for people of color? Reframed as racist.

CBS installed a monitor. ABC paid out a settlement to the President. Nexstar and Sinclair pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air on their local stations. To get what they wanted from the FCC, each company submitted or stayed quiet.

Every time a company bowed to Carr, he went further. Now he is not just pressuring media powerhouses; he is targeting families and children, casting their existence as a danger to others. In the last few days, Carr has gone after the most vulnerable and the most powerful in quick succession.

Without independent oversight, the National Science Foundation is “fully at the behest of the White House.”

Since the start of his second term last year, President Donald Trump has sought to weaken the federal foundations underpinning American science, slashing or stalling research funding, firing or pushing out thousands of scientists, canceling grants for ideological reasons and shuttering research facilities across the country.

But even against that bleak backdrop, the administration’s firing of all 22 current members of the National Science Board last week stands out as “one of the darkest moments” of the past year and a half, said Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist and biogeographer at the University of Maine. 

“It was incredibly chilling, and my stomach just dropped to my feet when I saw that the entire board had been fired,” Gill said. “Because now this last bastion of accountability and transparency and scientific expertise has been dismantled overnight.” 

I’m writing this blog in recognition of the 60th anniversary of Merit, a non-profit network operating in Michigan. There aren’t many network entities that can trace their beginning back to 1966 when Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University formed the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad (MERIT) with the goal of networking the universities together. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation that was matched by the Michigan Legislature, Merit successfully networked the mainframe computers at the three universities in 1971.

Merit played a role in the early development of the commercial Internet. In 1987, Merit partnered with IBM, MCI, and the Michigan Strategic Fund to create and manage NSFNet, a venture funded by the National Science Foundation to connect universities to a series of five supercomputers. 

This is the 15th installment of The TechEd Revolution.

The pressure to respond to AI is reshaping how universities engage with partners.

Students increasingly expect intelligent, adaptive experiences. Faculty are experimenting with new tools in real time. Technology providers are rapidly evolving their offerings, often faster than institutions can fully evaluate or integrate them.

In this environment, partnerships are no longer peripheral. They are becoming central to how universities build, scale, and sustain innovation.

In the TechEd era, these partnerships span a broad ecosystem: technology providers, peer institutions, industry collaborators, and community organizations. Each plays a distinct role in shaping how learning, research, and services are designed and delivered.

Democrats are are starting to make proposals for what they will do if they take control of Congress. Bans on surveillance pricing, restructuring corporate America, and utility reforms are on deck.

We’re about six months away from the midterm election, when voters get to make their voice heard on whether they approve of the current administration agenda. And so far, it doesn’t look good for Donald Trump and the GOP. On Wednesday, Trump hit his second term low in the polling averages, with 39% of Americans approving of his job and 57.7% disapproving, which is, as Nate Silver noted, “right around where his net approval was at the end of his first term, in the aftermath of January 6th.”

There’s more. Since the middle of 2025, Democrats have over-performed in virtually every special election. And there are likely more severe shocks coming from the Iran war, even as consumers give the economy some of the lowest marks on record. Given these trends, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats are almost certain to win back the House, and perhaps the Senate.

What are they likely to do with their newfound power?

The SHLB Coalition, CoSN, ALA, and AASA respond to the FCC's vote to establish a new competitive bidding portal for the E-Rate program, raising concerns about added burden on schools and libraries nationwide.

The vote came despite broad opposition from schools, libraries, service providers, and education leaders. In the weeks leading up to the vote, SHLB led more than 80 organizations in sending a sign-on letter to the FCC urging the agency not to proceed with the portal, and it held a series of meetings with senior FCC officials. The coalition argued that the proposed portal is overly burdensome and could ultimately deter schools, libraries, and service providers from participating in the nation's largest federal educational technology program.

When America’s wireless workers and infrastructure firms signed up to build EchoStar’s 5G network, they weren’t taking a bet on Charlie Ergen. They were answering a call from Washington. | Tower crews showed up when Washington asked them to. Washington can make sure they aren’t the one paying for its change of heart.

When America’s wireless workers and infrastructure firms signed up to build EchoStar’s 5G network, they weren’t taking a bet on Charlie Ergen. They were answering a call from Washington.

DISH as a nationwide, facilities-based wireless carrier was the regulatory price of the Department of Justice (DoJ) under the first Trump administration, approving T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint in 2019 — the largest wireless merger in history. And DISH’s open radio access network (ORAN) was meant to help counter Huawei’s dominance and rebuild American telecom equipment manufacturing.

Over the past few years, however, DISH apparently decided that speculating on spectrum was more profitable and desirable than fulfilling these national imperatives — and the company’s binding buildout commitments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Understandably, the FCC has signaled a willingness to let DISH sell its spectrum assets to companies that will actually use them. But in the process of cashing out, DISH wants to stiff the workers and companies that built its network and operated in good faith toward national goals.

How we stopped Trump from sneaking through new surveillance powers, and what’s next.

Unlike me, you probably weren’t glued to C-SPAN after 1 a.m. on Friday morning when the House rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s attempts to extend the government’s spying powers without any critical reforms to protect Americans’ privacy.

This legislative fight is about the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is supposed to target communications of foreign adversaries but has long been abused to target U.S. activists, journalists and elected officials. These “backdoor” searches let the government spy on people without a warrant.

The Speaker attempted to use the cover of night to take away people’s constitutionally protected rights and let the president further weaponize the government against his perceived “enemies.” But despite intense pressure from Republican leadership and the White House — led by Trump henchman Stephen Miller — it didn’t work.

For now …

The Q1 2026 Financial Telco e-reporting cycle reconfirms a brutal truth: for the global Tier-1 carrier, revenue is stalled. While data consumption is at an all-time high, the financial architecture of the traditional “pipe” has hit a hard ceiling. In the West, growth is now a zero-sum game of churn management tethered to flat GDP.

But the leaderboard is not entirely stagnant.

T-Mobile US, Reliance Jio, Bharti (F), and e& managed to break the 2% gravity trap, achieving double-digit growth by structurally decoupling from the connectivity trap. This is a radiography of the outliers currently outrunning the utility curve while the rest of the industry remains stuck in a race to the bottom.

This week, the four biggest spenders on AI released their earnings within two minutes of each other. There's an unsettling reason for that. Plus, Michigan goes after private equity in youth sports.

Lots in the news, as usual. The big event was the liquidation of Spirit Airlines, which shows that pressure from the Iran war is going to rearrange our weak institutions. I wrote about that yesterday. Lots of other stuff is happening, a slew of big mergers, Amazon got sanctioned by a judge for destroying evidence, and the Michigan Attorney General is going after private equity in youth sports.

But before getting to the whole round-up, I want to make a few observations on why I think the stock market is being manipulated. I had an interesting conversation with a Wall Street analyst, and he pointed out something unsettling. This week, four of the most important companies in the stock market - Google Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft released earnings. All four companies delivered their numbers not just on the same day, but, as Bloomberg noted, “within the span of two minutes.” That, my contact said, is very weird.

Here’s why. 

It wasn't Biden antitrust enforcers. It was Donald Trump's Iran War, JetBlue, the big four trunk airlines, and behind all of that, deregulation. And this story has happened hundreds of times.

Build American AI, a nonprofit linked to a super PAC bankrolled by executives at OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz, is funding a campaign to spread pro-AI messaging and stoke fears about China.

In an Instagram video posted on April 1, lifestyle influencer Melissa Strahle poses outdoors before an American flag as soft instrumental music plays. “AI lets me focus on what matters most,” she tells her 1.4 million followers. “We need to invest in American-made AI to ensure America leads the way in innovation and job creation.”

Strahle labeled the post an advertisement, but she didn’t disclose what organization had paid for it. It turns out the funding came from Build American AI, a dark-money group tied to Leading the Future, a $100 million super PAC supported by, and in some cases directly funded by, tech figures affiliated with companies like OpenAI and Palantir.

SpaceX is not spending $20 billion on a constellation just to act as a courtesy backup for the “unconnected 4%.” They are building a global “Flying Tower” infrastructure designed to turn parts of terrestrial networks into legacy utilities. By inviting these orbital platforms into the heart of their service offerings today, Telcos are effectively installing the hardware of their greatest long-term competitor inside their most valuable customer accounts.

Trial continues after heated back-and-forth during OpenAI’s cross-examination of the Tesla CEO.

Elon Musk’s court case against Sam Altman continued on Thursday, after a day of contentious exchanges during OpenAI’s cross-examination of the Tesla CEO. Musk faced more combative questioning throughout the morning, in a glimpse of what may await other prominent witnesses set to take the stand.

Witness testimony and evidence has revealed formerly private emails, text messages and diary entries surrounding the formation of OpenAI, giving a behind-the-scenes look at how the tech behemoth was created. Many of the tech industry’s most powerful players are named as witnesses and will give their accounts on the origins of Musk and Altman’s bitter feud. Altman will testify later in the trial, which will last three weeks.

A new class of AI data center is emerging to fill a gap the hyperscalers can't. Rural broadband operators may be better positioned than they think.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately at the intersection of two industries that haven’t historically overlapped: rural telecommunications and digital infrastructure.

The more I look at what’s happening in AI and data centers, the more I believe rural broadband operators are closer to a meaningful opportunity than most realize.

Let me walk you through what I’m seeing and why it’s worth paying attention to.