Consolidation Friday. On May 16 the FCC approved Verizon's 20 billion dollar acquisition of Frontier Communications, clearing the largest fiber deal in years after Verizon agreed to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, an unprecedented condition that signaled how this FCC will price its approvals. The same day, Charter and Cox announced a 34.5 billion dollar merger to create the country's largest cable operator by footprint, a defensive consolidation aimed squarely at the broadband share being taken by fiber and fixed wireless. And EchoStar formally answered the FCC's review letters, disclosing in securities filings that the inquiry was creating uncertainty around its obligations, the first tremor of the payment standoff to come.
Brussels completed the transatlantic pincer: eighteen days after the DMA took effect, the European Commission opened non-compliance investigations into Apple, Alphabet, and Meta — testing steering rules, self-preferencing, and the legality of 'pay or consent.' Amazon answered the AI alliance question with its wallet, completing a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, its largest venture bet ever. And the week closed with a Saturday bombshell: AT&T confirmed that a dataset covering 73 million current and former customers — Social Security numbers included — was circulating on the dark web, opening the year's defining carrier-security saga.
2024 opened with a rocket: SpaceX launched its first six direct-to-cell Starlink satellites — orbital cell towers designed to text ordinary phones through T-Mobile's spectrum — firing the starting gun on the satellite-to-phone race that would run all year. Apple started its year in the market's penalty box, sliding on a rare Barclays downgrade over soft iPhone demand — the first tremor in a quarter of China worries. And 23andMe rang in the new year by telling 6.9 million breach victims the incident was their own fault for reusing passwords, an instant case study in how not to handle disclosure.