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.
TikTok and ByteDance sued the federal government to block the divest-or-ban law, teeing up the biggest First Amendment fight in tech since the encryption wars and putting the fate of a 170-million-user platform in the D.C. Circuit's hands. Apple, meanwhile, shipped the M4 chip in a new iPad Pro — debuting its most AI-ready silicon in a tablet, months before the iPhone would get its own AI story. And Arm Holdings, the company whose designs sit inside virtually every smartphone on earth, beat earnings but spooked the market with soft guidance — a reminder that the AI boom hasn't yet reached the handset chip cycle.
The most consequential policy week of the telecom year: President Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban law on Wednesday, and the FCC voted on Thursday to restore net neutrality — reclassifying broadband as a Title II service and reopening the decade's defining regulatory fight. Verizon opened carrier earnings season the same Monday, losing fewer wireless subscribers than feared as broadband — fixed wireless above all — carried the quarter. In one five-day stretch, Washington redrew the rules for the internet's most popular app and the pipes it travels on.
The House passed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill 352-65 — a bipartisan margin almost nothing achieves in Washington — sending the fate of 170 million American users toward a hesitant Senate. The same Wednesday, the European Parliament gave final approval to the AI Act, the world's first comprehensive AI law, starting a multi-year compliance clock for every model provider touching the EU. And the FCC quietly redefined broadband itself, raising the national benchmark from 25/3 to 100/20 Mbps — instantly reclassifying millions of connections as inadequate and redrawing the map that federal funding follows.