The week before the election, four storylines that would define 2025 all surfaced at once. A Sixth Circuit panel heard oral arguments on the FCC's net neutrality rules and pressed hard on whether the agency had the statutory authority at all — foreshadowing January's decision to strike them down. Comcast used its earnings call to float spinning off its cable networks, the first domino in the great linear-TV unbundling. Apple committed $1.5 billion to Globalstar, converting iPhone satellite features from a supplier contract into semi-ownership of a constellation. And Charter's 545,000 new mobile lines showed cable's MVNO machine still compounding inside the big carriers' own networks.
Salt Typhoon went from national-security story to election story: reporting on Friday revealed the Chinese hackers had targeted phones used by Donald Trump, JD Vance, and people associated with the Harris campaign — placing the carrier breach at the center of American politics eleven days before the vote. Against that backdrop, earnings week played out almost quaintly: T-Mobile posted industry-leading growth and raised guidance across the board, while Verizon held serve on wireless service revenue while absorbing $1.7 billion in severance charges and doubling down on fixed wireless as its growth engine.
Vendor earnings told a tale of one market: Ericsson rode a 55% North America surge — powered by its landmark AT&T deal — back to fat margins, while Nokia posted its own gross-margin recovery on shrinking sales and kept waiting for the US spending wave to reach it. Meanwhile the quiet dismantling of UScellular continued, with Verizon writing a $1 billion check for 850 MHz and AWS spectrum the T-Mobile deal left behind. The week's throughline: capital is flowing again in US wireless — into radios and into spectrum — but it is flowing to fewer, bigger players.
The industry absorbed two shocks in a single week. The Wall Street Journal's revelation that China-linked hackers penetrated AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen — apparently through the very systems built to serve court-ordered wiretaps — turned into a full Washington firestorm, with House Energy and Commerce leaders demanding answers from all three carriers by week's end. Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida days after Helene devastated the Southeast, and for the first time at scale, the FCC let T-Mobile and SpaceX switch on satellite texting for every compatible phone in the storm zone regardless of carrier. One story exposed the network's oldest vulnerability; the other previewed its newest safety net.