T-Mobile closed out carrier earnings season the way it has for years — on top, with 777,000 postpaid phone additions and raised guidance. Then the week turned dark for the chip sector: Intel announced 15,000 layoffs, suspended its dividend, and watched its stock suffer the worst single-day collapse since 1974, raising hard questions about America's flagship chipmaker just as CHIPS Act money flows. And the Sixth Circuit stayed the FCC's net neutrality rules outright, wielding the Supreme Court's new anti-deference doctrine in its first big telecom test.
A holiday-shortened week in the U.S. still managed to move the regulatory ground under the industry's feet. The Supreme Court closed its term with Corner Post, extending the window to challenge federal agency rules just days after overturning Chevron deference — a one-two punch that puts decades of FCC rulemaking within reach of fresh litigation. In Brussels, regulators charged Meta over its pay-or-consent ad model, the second-ever Digital Markets Act case. And in the world's second-largest mobile market, India's brutal price war officially ended as Jio and Airtel's first tariff hikes since 2021 took effect.
The Supreme Court ended its term by detonating four decades of administrative law: Loper Bright overturned Chevron deference, stripping federal agencies — very much including the FCC — of the benefit of the doubt when statutes are ambiguous. It is the single most consequential development for telecom regulation in a generation, landing three weeks before the FCC's net neutrality rules were due to take effect. The same week, Brussels filed its first-ever Digital Markets Act charges against Apple over App Store steering, and the Court separately let the government keep talking to social platforms about misinformation, tossing Murthy v. Missouri on standing.