Now that the last final proposal is approved, we’re finally able to tally just how much of the BEAD dollars will be deployed for direct connections and how much is non-deployment… or ‘savings’ as the NTIA continues to call them.
Total BSLs designated connectivity through BEAD: 3,739,925
BEAD funding approved by the NTIA using BOB guidance: $18B
Non-deployment dollars: $22.5B
Percentage of originally designated IIJA/BEAD dollars allocated: 44.25%
What was originally designated as a “fiber first” endeavor is left with less than 2/3 of homes allocated fiber.
Alyssa is a professional wordsmith. For one year and two months, Alyssa worked — past tense — for a global company that makes toys for kids.
"Amazon listings, Wayfair listings, press releases, you know, the whole nine yards," she said.
But then came artificial intelligence. First, it was the boss asking her to try using ChatGPT. Alyssa found it took longer to check for mistakes and plagiarism than to just write copy herself. Then, the boss handed some of Alyssa's to-do list to an AI bot.
Soon, she was called into a video meeting where she thought she'd get a raise. "We're restructuring — we no longer need you," Alyssa recalled being told.
She left with the strong impression the toy company would use more AI for its writing instead of her. Alyssa asked Marketplace to use her first name only, so speaking to us doesn't hurt her chances of finding a new job. Three years later, she's still looking for a role that pays like that one.
Meta’s settlement with 29 states allows it to retain certain data from children under 13 to train and test age-detection models, highlighting a privacy trade-off built into the deal.
That permission is being granted for the limited purpose of training and testing Meta’s age-assurance model and includes guardrails, but it’s a curious policy decision to make in a case centered on child safety, and one that could be difficult to properly enforce.
As specified in the settlement agreement, Meta must develop, train, and begin testing a model designed to detect which users on Meta’s platforms are under the age of 13. This must be done within a year of the document’s effective date. (While the agreement doesn’t specify that the model has to be AI-based, Meta’s current age-detection tools are powered by AI technology.)
Georgia audited its own data center tax breaks and found that the state gave up $474 million in sales taxes in one year—and got back just $41 million from the industry. At least 38 states have deals like this. (It's not clear whether all that money the state waived was necessary to attract the construction: in Georgia's case, by the state's own estimate, 70% of the data center construction would have happened anyway.)
And it's not just states paying: Bloomberg analyzed seven regional power grids across the country last year and found that wholesale prices near data centers have risen as much as 267% since 2020. Around Washington DC, near the world's largest cluster of data centers, power bills rose about $20 a month last summer.
The AI boom is lifting the economy, but there's mounting evidence that the people benefiting least are carrying significant costs through tax breaks, power bills, and deals they never voted on.
The new Federal Communications Commission report signals a major retreat from the former administration's goal of connecting every American to gigabit-speed broadband.
It’s just one word, but it changes everything. In its latest broadband deployment report, the FCC quietly backpedaled on its mission to expand high-speed internet to every American and eliminated an ambitious gig-speed goal entirely.
“High-speed broadband is often essential to full participation in modern society,” the opening sentence of the Aug. 14 report reads.
That sounds pretty uncontroversial at first glance, but it stands in stark contrast to the previous report issued under President Joe Biden’s FCC, which called access to affordable, reliable broadband “essential to full participation in modern life.” The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres went even further, calling the issue “a matter of life and death” in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I noticed an article that said that Optimum (Altice USA) was in danger of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE automatically issues a warning to any stock when the average share price over thirty days is below $1.00. This warning was given to Optimum on August 13, and the company has until February 13, 2027, to get the 30-day average stock price above $1.00 to remain listed on the exchange.
The company’s stock has plummeted over the last year. A year ago, the stock was trading at $2.33 per share. Five years ago, the stock traded at more than $28 per share. As I wrote this blog, the share price was $0.89. The lowest price this year was $0.60 per share. Optimum stock is considered extremely volatile by analysts because the company had almost 50 days during the last year when the stock rose or fell by more than 5%. The changes aren’t always downward. In early June, the stock price rose more than 9% in one day on news that the company had grown to have 700,000 cellular customers.
Frequency Forward and the Media Action Center, along with viewers of ABC stations across the country, filed a Motion to Intervene as plaintiffs in Disney and ABC’s lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The groups seek to ensure viewers' First Amendment rights are represented in American Broadcasting Companies v. FCC (Case No. 1:26-cv-2902) and to guarantee the American public has a seat at the table.
The groups support Disney’s efforts to fight back against the FCC and Chairman Brendan Carr’s unconstitutional assault on the freedom of the press. As Disney argued in its lawsuit, “the ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company … it is to the public.” The motion seeks to protect ABC viewers' constitutionally protected right to receive news, information and programming free from government intimidation.
Three months after town meeting voters in Longmeadow, Massachusetts rejected an $8.6 million proposal to kickstart the construction of a municipal fiber network, Town Councilors in the neighboring town of East Longmeadow moved in a different direction, voting to take control of its digital future and provide its residents and businesses with next-generation Internet access.
The move was formalized earlier this month when East Longmeadow Town Councilors unanimously approved issuing $43.5 million in bonds to finance the construction of a municipally-owned fiber network.
The vote paves the way for the western Massachusetts town of about 16,000 to finally get the affordable and reliable town-wide Internet connectivity local leaders see as vital for its economic future and improved quality-of-life.
Are Flock safety cameras keeping communities safe, or just building a private dragnet for mass surveillance? Chris sits down with independent reporter Daniel Boguslaw to unpack the Flock Safety debate and reveal how everyday citizens are fighting back.
In this episode of Unbuffered, Chris sits down with independent reporter Daniel Boguslaw to explore the growing friction between technology, privacy, and local governance.
The conversation centers on Flock Safety—a network of automated license plate readers and surveillance cameras—and how it has sparked a nationwide debate over corporate surveillance, national databases, and civil liberties.
Exclusive: Arturo Béjar, an ex-Facebook employee and whistleblower, said outcome ‘is not an all clear to say the product is safe’
The star witness in the US government’s landmark trial against Meta believes that a multibillion-dollar settlement reached on Wednesday does not go far enough to stop the social media giant’s harms to young users.
“The limitations that are in the agreement are the equivalent of saying: ‘Well you can smoke as many cigarettes as you can in two hours a day,’” said whistleblower and ex-Facebook employee Arturo Béjar. “It doesn’t make the cigarettes any safer.”
Dozens of states had sued Meta, alleging that it designed addictive products that led to mental health problems for young people such as disordered eating, depression and suicide. The states and the company reached a wide-ranging settlement agreement on Wednesday that will force Meta to make major changes to its platform, including putting strict limits on how much time teens are able to spend on apps like Instagram and Facebook.
Béjar’s testimony formed a key part of the government’s case.
The Hoopa Valley Tribe is celebrating the opening of its new fiber network operations center as the Hoopa Valley Public Utilities District (HVPUD) expands fiber-to-the-home Internet service throughout the Hoopa Valley Reservation and into neighboring communities just outside of its Tribal lands.
To mark the occasion earlier this summer, more than 50 community members, Tribal leaders, HVPUD staff, and project partners attended the July 17 opening celebration.
At the celebration, Hoopa Valley Tribal Vice Chairman Jordan Hailey hailed the milestone moment:
In the United States, various jurisdictions are pressing “pause” on the development of new data centers, and on July 14, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order establishing the first statewide moratorium on hyperscale facilities. Many of these moratoria are designed to enable more study on the effects of data centers to the environment, electrical grid and water supply, and of various other impacts to local and regional economies.
Tech Policy Press contributing editor Dean Jackson and Tim Bernard, a tech policy analyst and writer who has contributed frequently to the site, collect policy choices local governments can weigh while a data center moratorium is in effect, drawing on 17 publicly available resources from governments, researchers, and advocacy organizations. It organizes the options into categories spanning transparency, zoning, power and water use, taxation and community benefit agreements, labor protections, and enforcement.
The Walt Disney Company is suing the FCC, alleging a violation of First Amendment rights by challenges to its ABC broadcast licenses. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez.
ABC and Disney's decision to sue the Federal Communications Commission over what the companies allege is retaliation for the network's news coverage and programming highlights the importance of protecting the First Amendment, said FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency's lone Democrat, in an interview with Morning Edition on Wednesday.
"Disney has found its courage, and it is pushing back," Gomez told NPR's Leila Fadel. "And this is good. It's good for the First Amendment. It's good for the public, and it's good for broadcasters in general."
Governor Josh Stein argued the FCC should exercise its licensing authority in a way that protects press freedom under the First Amendment.
The Walt Disney Company and its broadcast network ABC has gained another political ally in its ongoing fight with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its eight local television broadcast licenses.
Last week, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein sent a letter to the FCC supporting Raleigh-Durham’s local ABC station WTVD (Channel 11), one of eight broadcast outlets directly owned by Disney.
T-Mobile is providing a limited satellite service for those who are living in the "unreachable" zones with its T-Satellite offering, but when will we be moving to a completely satellite-backed up mobile plan?
Recently, the Evercore Partners TMT Global Conference was held and at it, T-Mobile's CFO (Chief Financial Officer) Peter Osvaldik had something important to say. He talked about the technical limitations of satellite-to-phone connectivity. You've probably heard of the D2D (direct-to-device) term.
Now that the last final proposal is approved, we’re finally able to tally just how much of the BEAD dollars will be deployed for direct connections and how much is non-deployment… or ‘savings’ as the NTIA continues to call them.
Total BSLs designated connectivity through BEAD: 3,739,925
BEAD funding approved by the NTIA using BOB guidance: $18B
Non-deployment dollars: $22.5B
Percentage of originally designated IIJA/BEAD dollars allocated: 44.25%
What was originally designated as a “fiber first” endeavor is left with less than 2/3 of homes allocated fiber.
It may be the most significant legal settlement since major tobacco companies agreed in 1998 to pay out more than $200 billion and change controversial marketing practices seen as targeting kids.
Maybe: There are caveats and fine-print conditions.
On Wednesday, Meta announced it would pay up to $18 billion to dispose of lawsuits from 48 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. The owner of Facebook and Instagram also agreed to make sweeping changes to its products in the face of claims it endangered minors with predatory, even addictive, practices.
The practical changes read like a protective parent’s wish list. They include:
During my entire life I’ve only had two jobs. In the first one, I played a role in developing software to empower people through my work at Microsoft.
In my second one, which I started full time in 2008, I am giving back the wealth I made at Microsoft with the goal of making the world a healthier, better educated, and more equitable place. This is the job I will have for the rest of my life.
Both of these experiences inform my perspective on artificial intelligence. When I first learned about computers at age 13 I was fascinated by the idea of making them more intelligent and able to perform things that, at the time, only humans could do. Although the term “AI” was used from around the time I was born, the technology has only made significant progress in the last decade. It is now incredibly capable and it is continuing to improve at a mind-blowing rate. AI for the first time can replace and even exceed human cognition.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is making moves to acquire more AWS-3 midband spectrum for Starlink's mobile satellite direct-to-device (D2D) service and getting closer to nationwide coverage in the US.
In a recent FCC filing, SpaceX subsidiary Starlink Spectrum Holdings requested permission to transfer control of three unpaired AWS-3 licences in the 1695MHz–1710MHz band that are held by Tristar License Group (TLG).
New Mexico-based Penasco Valley Telephone Cooperative (PVT) is using a $1 million disaster relief grant from the New Mexico Office Of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) to construct and expand reliable Internet access in numerous New Mexico communities that have historically been subjected to wildfires and flooding.
According to cooperative leadership, PVT is building an alternate fiber broadband route to establish more resilient and redundant connectivity to inhabitants of areas like the Capitan Mountains Wilderness, where the Seven Cabins Fire recently burned 31,000 acres after the crash of a medical plane last June.
The investments are also intended to shore up redundant communications connectivity in areas like Lincoln County, where the combined South Fork Fire and Salt Fire burned through over 25,000 acres, destroyed 1,400 homes and commercial buildings, and killed two local residents.
It’s been a few years since I spoke ‘officially’ with Alyssa Kenney, Wisconsin’s State Broadband and Digital Equity Director.
Housed in Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC), Kenney’s team is not only making the most of what post-BOB BEAD has become but is also allocating money to shore up the program’s shortcomings.
Schlemiel! Schlimazel!
In March of 24, Kenney was excited about a statewide equity program on the drawing board called the digital navigator program. Largely funded by the state’s designated $13.3M in Digital Equity Act (DEA), Kenney described the digital navigator program as hands on support, helping with affordability, equipment, and training. “Somebody to meet them at the library and really walk them through setting up an email,” explained Kenney.
As the recent NDIA court triumph signals the return of DEA, everything ‘old’ is new again and Kenney hopes to get back to work on both this program as well as deepening relationships and coalitions to digital navigators. “Digital equity and adoption have always been really important to the Public Service Commission chair, through multiple seat holders. DEA and the Associated Dollars will hopefully come back and put some teeth behind our statewide equity goals.”
Last Wednesday, David Ellison called a lunch meeting on the Paramount lot with his top lieutenants—the 12-member Executive Leadership Team, or ELT, as it’s dubbed internally—and outlined in stark terms the stakes of the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger litigation for each of them. During the hourlong meeting, Ellison first expressed confidence that the company would defeat the case brought by California and 11 other Democratic states, and ultimately close the controversial $110 billion transaction. He also said that, despite the prolonged and costly antitrust battle with the attorney general of his home state, his goal remains to keep the combined company—and the 30,000 or so jobs, including their own—based in Southern California.
But, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting, he wanted his top people to know that the rumors were true: He had decided to move Paramount Skydance to either Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, or another state he didn’t identify if Rob Bonta, the California A.G. leading the charge, did not come to the table to negotiate a settlement. Further, Ellison told the group, he had set an October 1 deadline to resolve the matter. If Paramount gets nowhere by the date that the so-called $7 million-per-day “ticking fee” begins to accrue, he will move either Paramount or the combined WarnerMount out of California regardless of the eventual outcome of the case. The headquarters will relocate first, he said, assisted by incentives provided by one of the suitors (he’s in contact with multiple states), and he’s putting together a five-year plan that would eventually shift most studio jobs to the new home. Paramount’s Ellison-controlled board had already signed off on the move.
Senators Padilla and Warner demanded answers from Kalshi and Polymarket about paying influencers.
They warned paid influencers spread debunked election-fraud claims and undermine public confidence before the 2026 midterms.
The letter seeks details on contracts, misinformation policies, influencer vetting, and potential relationship terminations.
U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Senate Rules Committee, and Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have submitted a letter demanding answers from prediction market companies Kalshi and Polymarket regarding their practice of paying online influencers who have spread false information, including spreading debunked claims that U.S. federal elections are subject to widespread fraud while using a “paid partnership” stamp from the companies.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2026 – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has taken its first formal step toward reopening the Digital Equity Act’s competitive grant program.
NTIA published a notice Tuesday opening a 60-day public comment period on the information collection and application requirements it plans to use for a new round of funding. The notice begins the federal paperwork process needed before NTIA can accept applications under the revived program.
The notice says NTIA will use the information from applicants to review their proposed projects and budgets. Affected applicants include nonprofits, community anchor institutions, educational agencies, workforce-development entities, Tribal entities, state and local governmental entities, and other eligible organizations or partnerships.
The EU AI Act's transparency rules went live three weeks ago while everyone was reading about the delay. Here's the 30-minute audit that tells you if you're exposed.
I run a media company where AI touches every one of our seven newsletters, and I'll admit something: when the EU agreed in May to push the AI Act's high-risk rules to 2027 and 2028, I mentally filed the whole thing under "future Mark's problem." I suspect half of corporate America did the same.
Then I actually read what got delayed. The high-risk rules moved. The transparency rules in Article 50 — the ones that govern chatbots, AI-generated images, and AI-written content — took effect on August 2, 2026. Three weeks ago. The only piece that got a reprieve is machine-readable watermarking for older systems, and that grace period ends December 2. I nearly missed a media-labeling law while running a media company. That's the kind of thing that keeps compliance officers young.
Find every place AI talks to your customers before a regulator does.
For four and a half days in July, an internal, frontier OpenAI model escaped a sandboxed cybersecurity evaluation and ran an autonomous intrusion campaign against Hugging Face, a company that hosts AI datasets and models. The rogue model’s aim wasn’t corporate sabotage: It was trying to steal the answer key for a cybersecurity test that OpenAI researchers were asking the model to complete.
Ironically, Hugging Face’s defensive operation was hampered by OpenAI’s commercial models refusing to assist because of cybersecurity guardrails, forcing Hugging Face to turn to open source models running on its local hardware to fend off and analyze the attack.
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