BT will receive a payment of $625 million from Verizon as the two companies combine their subscale international businesses.

Allison Kirkby's approach to the international assets of BT, the UK telco she runs, has been rather like that of Chris Patten to Hong Kong as its last British governor – execute an orderly retreat without (hopefully) causing anyone too much upset.

After taking charge of BT in February 2024, Kirkby soon made clear she saw the UK as her strategic priority and was likely to offload any units targeting overseas business. They were combined into BT International, a new entity chiseled out of BT's other parts and offered to prospective partners like an anemic bride. Today, BT announced its marriage to an equivalent part of Verizon.

Broadband Clusters reports  on a powerful way that the federal government has had to help schools get broadband to those who are less likely to have access at home...

Every year, the federal government helps schools and libraries pay their internet bills through a program called E-Rate, part of the Universal Service Fund. In 2024, it approved $2.76 billion in discounts for 21,102 institutions across the country: 18,507 schools and school districts, and 2,595 libraries. This study matches every funded institution to Census data for the communities around it, to examine who the program serves and what those neighborhoods look like.

Each week I curate 5 links from the data center sector that I find particularly interesting, with my commentary on why they merit your attention.

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5 Notable Data Center Links

• The State of the AI Economy - In a detailed research piece titled “The State of the AI Economy,” analyst Azeem Azhar ‘s Exponential View Substack reports that quarterly AI revenues have begun to exceed depreciation costs on investments in servers and chips. Bloomberg (subscription) called the finding “a tipping point, showing that the hundreds of billions of dollars tech companies are spending on it may be economically sustainable.” If that trend holds, it could begin to ease concerns about the extraordinary hyperscale spending on GPUs and data centers. Although revenue is growing quickly, the cost side of the equation may be a moving target...

Facebook's silencing of a whistleblower ( Sarah Wynn-Williams, center above) shines a light on a private justice system and a "post-state" future where tech bros write the rules. Or as we call them, "laws".

Carole Cadwalladr (seated right above)wrote:

A note on who I am: I’m an investigative journalist who’s spent a decade reporting on the collision of technology and democracy including exposing the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal for the Guardian and the New York Times. Two years ago, I called the alliance of Trump, Silicon Valley and a global axis of autocracy: a tech bro oligarchy, aka the Broligarchy. Please help me continue to expose it.

In 1995, Newt Gingrich killed the ability of the left to project power. It hasn't recovered. Plus, Trump picks a new antitrust chief, the end of cheap electronics, and the AI bubble wobble...

Right now, Russ Vought, Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, is operating creatively and effectively to do deeply malevolent things. He thought very hard about how to run budgets to organize the government. But there’s basically no analogue on the left, little capacity to govern. And that’s why Mamdani, despite a mandate for significant change, can’t go as far as he otherwise might. What I want to do is trace where this gap came from, and pose some suggestions on how to address it.

There is, as usual, a history here. Someone with great foresight killed the left’s ability to govern, a long time ago.

In 1995, the Republican Party took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Led by Newt Gingrich and a small group of right-wing politicians who called themselves “Jihadists,” these men sought to revamp a legislative chamber held by the Democrats since 1949. Though the Reagan era had been conservative, no one in America had experienced an outright House Republican majority for forty-six years.

Gingrich was an intellectual, as were some of his colleagues. When he first was elected in 1978 as part of what was known as the “New Right,” every young Republican candidate was obsessively reading Robert Bork’s The Antitrust Paradox. In 1995, his goal wasn’t just to pass legislation, but to fundamentally re-gear Congress so it could no longer serve as the brains for the Democratic Party, as it had for the last half century. That was an institutional task, and he set about restructuring the institutions.

The National Design Studio, staffed by Doge veterans, installed visitor-tracking software on vital federal websites.

An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law.

The National Design Studio (NDS) was established by a Donald Trump executive order last August, and is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans.

A Guardian investigation has found the office has apparently been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites, including those connecting Americans with prescription drugs, children’s savings accounts, passports and voter registration. The investigation corroborates and advances earlier reporting by the Drey Dossier, a YouTube investigative outlet.

The KIDS Act, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have struck a deal on a bill they say will help keep children and teens safe online. The KIDS Act could pass on the House floor as soon as next week; if enacted, it would fundamentally change the way everyone — not just kids — accesses the internet.

At stake is your ability to use many social media platforms without revealing your identity. 

Media Action Center is a group of of concerned residents throughout the U.S. led by former Emmy-winning broadcaster turned media reformer Sue Wilson.

We have successfully influenced policy at the Federal Communications Commission and at local TV and Radio stations throughout the country for more than a decade to ensure We the People are truly served by the publicly owned airwaves.

MAC has joined a current Petition to Deny the broadcast licenses of DISNEY ABC at the FCC to ensure We the People have a seat at our Public Interest table. We have also commented to answer the FCC's question, "Is the View Bonafide News?" (See below.)

MAC earlier filed a successful Petition to Deny Entercom's license to broadcast on radio station KDND for killing a woman in a radio water drinking stunt; that forced Entercom to give up its $13.5 million license, and in 2000, educated the Supreme Court in FCC v Prometheus Radio on how multiple TV station with one corporate owner merely duplicate news stories on all its stations, a methodology currently being used in legal cases surrounding the Nexstar/TEGNA merger.

June 26, 2026 - The filing makes the organizations formal parties to the proceeding, granting them standing to participate in the case and appeal future FCC decisions.

Two public interest advocacy groups have filed a formal petition to deny in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) ongoing proceeding involving ABC’s eight local television broadcast licenses, seeking to become formal parties in the matter with the hopes of ending in the investigation without an unfavorable decision against ABC.

The filing made by the Media Action Center and Frequency Forward takes an unusual position:

The area of satellite direct-to-device (D2D) communications is one of much change and uncertainty. At one extreme, the SNOs might all go out of business, or at least exit the D2D business – the track record in this space of Iridium and others is that so far all have gone bankrupt. At the other, they might become the owner of most mobile communications customers, demoting MNOs into wholesale providers of traffic. Both are entirely possible. With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, there has perhaps never been a time of less certainty in the communications world.

There are so many questions:

• What will the revenue be?
• Will it be enough to make any satellite network operators (SNOs) profitable?
• What level of services will be available?
• Will it be “2G equivalent” or full mobile broadband?
• Will SpaceX dominate or can the likes of AST compete?
• etc.

The Lifeline program helps low-income families stay connected. So, of course, the Trump FCC hates it.

When the sordid history of Brendan Carr’s FCC is written, you can be sure it will include the boldface names — the fights picked with Jimmy Kimmel and The View, his pressure on 60 Minutes and his cartoon avatar drowning in used kitty litter. They’ll note his sycophantic performances for Donald Trump and Elon Musk and his right-wing podcast rants.

But the rot and damage go much deeper: obliterating the agency’s independence, launching racist attacks on diversity programs, unconstitutional government censorship, and waiving through merger after merger. In Carr’s latest pitiless scheme, he’s making it even harder for the poorest among us to access basic communications.

In our news wrap Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional privacy protections apply to cellphone location data, the San Francisco Archdiocese agreed to pay $395 million to sexual abuse survivors.

The justices ruled today that constitutional privacy protections apply to cell phone location data. At issue was the police use of what's known as geofence warrants to locate all devices near the scene of a crime back in 2019. The court ruled that, even when location information is shared with companies like Google and Apple, people don't forfeit their expectations of privacy.

The case was widely viewed as a test for how privacy would be protected in this digital age.

The country is dependent on the global giants that call Dublin home. Irish ministers can’t be trusted to chair vital European digital sovereignty talks, says Irish civil liberties campaigner Johnny Ryan.

On the face of it, Ireland behaves like a good European by being a staunch advocate of human rights and a beacon of progressivism on the western edge of the continent. But there is one vital area in which its record is less than perfect – one that should cause concern when the Irish government takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the EU on 1 July. The EU’s tech and AI rulebook will be renegotiated during the same period, but the Irish state and economy have been captured by big tech. Ireland is so compromised that as president of the Council of the EU, it should recuse itself from all tech and digital sovereignty negotiations.

The last time Ireland held the EU presidency was in 2013, during negotiations on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A leaked Facebook memo describes a 2013 meeting where the company’s executives met Ireland’s then prime minister to complain about the proposed data privacy rules. They left understanding they had Enda Kenny’s assurance that Ireland would use its “significant influence” as EU Council president to deliver what Facebook called a “positive outcome”. The executives also attended “a dinner hosted by senior Irish politicians to work through the various ways that the Irish could be helpful”.

A conversation with Alisa Valentin, broadband policy director at Public Knowledge, and Claudia Ruiz, senior civil rights policy advisor at UnidosUS.

Access to affordable, reliable high-speed internet is a prerequisite for nearly every part of modern life, from finding work and finishing schoolwork to seeing a doctor or staying in touch with family. Yet millions of American households remain stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide.

That's the starting point for "The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation," a report released in May from Public Knowledge, UnidosUS, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. Rather than beginning in Washington policy circles, this report centers the lived experiences of low- and moderate-income households to find out what's actually standing in their way and what should be done about it.

Carr cites screen time concerns, is accused of trying to be "the nation’s parent."

The Federal Communications Commission was roundly criticized today for proposing to scale back or eliminate E-Rate, a $2 billion-a-year Universal Service program that provides discounts for telecom services and equipment in schools and libraries.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said E-Rate should be changed because students are getting too much screen time. He led a 2-1 vote to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes changes and asks the public to comment on them.

Restrictions on single-firm conduct would allow individual would-be monopolists to be sued under state law. That would include Silicon Valley–based tech firms like Google, Apple, and Meta.

A bill to update the antitrust laws in the nation’s most populous state faces a critical legislative hearing this week. At a time when California is among the states being relied upon as a substitute for proper antitrust enforcement, which is moribund at the federal level thanks to Trump administration corruption, advocates say the state must have a full suite of tools to succeed.

Monied interests are working diligently to stop the bill, but it gained important momentum late last week when a key senator signed on. The office of state Sen. Ben Allen, who is running for statewide office to become California’s insurance commissioner, told the Prospect that “the Senator is very likely going to be supporting the bill.” Allen was one of a handful of Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats whose position on the bill was uncertain as of last week.

Digital Equity Grant Lawsuit Update.

In April, a D.C. federal judge declined to pause litigation over the Administration's cancellation of the $2.75 billion Digital Equity grants aimed at increasing digital literacy and digital skill training. The suit was filed by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. The Court found that the case covered distinct issues from the related Climate United Fund v. Citibank case and should proceed on its own merits.

A month ago, the administration asked the Court to dismiss the case. However, a DOJ attorney told the Court last week that the government would withdraw from the case and let the grants proceed if all preferences for race are removed from the grant rules...

Daniel Sanchez Estrada’s 30-year sentence for moving a box of pamphlets is likely just the start for criminalizing possession of information.

The Trump administration attacking the right to publish or report information is a given at this point. The president has threatened journalists for everything from questioning the wisdom of his failed war with Iran to touching the peeled lining of his renovated reflecting pool. 

Tantrums like those may now feel routine, but this week marked a new front in Trump’s war on information: Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for transporting a box of zines he didn’t even write. He’s one of eight defendants sentenced on Tuesday to a combined 450 years — the first prison sentences against so-called “antifa” handed down under the framework of NSPM-7, President Donald Trump’s sweeping “counterterrorism” memorandum to clamp down on dissent from the left.

In this episode of LMC Cast, host Matt Sullivan sits down with Mike Wassenaar, President and CEO of the Alliance for Community Media (ACM), to discuss the importance of community media in today’s digital landscape.

As the leader of a national organization advocating for community media, Mike shares valuable insights on how local media centers empower communities, support free speech, and enhance civic engagement across the country.

Tune in for an engaging conversation about the challenges and opportunities facing community media and why it remains a vital resource for public discourse.

Ezee Fiber has opened a new regional operations facility in Troy, Michigan, establishing a dedicated hub for its growing broadband

network in the state as the company accelerates investment in high-speed fiber infrastructure and local workforce development.

The 30,000-square-foot facility includes office space, a warehouse and an outdoor storage yard and will serve exclusively as the operational center for Ezee Fiber’s Michigan business. The company said the site will support network construction, customer installations, maintenance operations and community engagement efforts as it expands fiber internet access across the state.

The announcement was made during Ezee Fiber’s Michigan VIP Day, an event that brought together elected officials, community leaders and local media to provide a detailed look at the company’s construction practices, permitting processes, customer service approach and community outreach initiatives.

Fact Sheet (draft item, June 4, 2026) Tentatively scheduled for consideration at the FCC’s June 25, 2026 Open Meeting; under consideration and subject to change.

This FCC Fact Sheet describes a draft Second Report and Order and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would significantly expand the Commission’s regulatory framework for undersea communications infrastructure while attempting to accelerate deployment timelines for new cable systems. The proceeding builds on the FCC’s 2025 Submarine Cable First Report and Order and reflects growing concern about the strategic importance of subsea connectivity for AI infrastructure, cloud computing, global Internet traffic, and national security.