Fiber's biggest rumor and Washington's strangest security story shared a week. Reports on March 25 revealed AT&T in talks to acquire Lumen's consumer fiber business for around 5.5 billion dollars, previewing the deal that would land officially in May and confirming that the fiber consolidation race had a second bidder. The capital's attention, though, belonged to Signal: The Atlantic's editor-in-chief revealed he had been accidentally added to a group chat where senior officials discussed military strike plans, a breach that made consumer messaging apps a national security story and put encrypted communications policy under a spotlight. In the states, Utah became the first to require app stores to verify user ages, opening a new regulatory front for the mobile ecosystem.
The outgoing administration spent its final full week hardening the digital walls, and the courts turned off an app used by 170 million Americans. The FCC, in Chairwoman Rosenworcel's closing days, voted to declare that federal wiretap law obligates carriers to secure their networks, the agency's most direct regulatory answer yet to the Salt Typhoon intrusions, over Republican objections that guaranteed the ruling a short life. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the TikTok divest-or-ban law on January 17, and by the night of January 18 the app had gone dark for US users, the most consequential government action against a communications platform in the internet era, with service providers and app stores suddenly on the legal front line.