A consolidation and infrastructure week. Comcast began lab and field trials of an AI edge platform built on Nvidia GPUs across its roughly 200 edge compute locations, with Charter announcing a similar partnership, a sign the cable industry intends to monetize its physical footprint for AI workloads, not just broadband. New York regulators conditionally approved the Charter and Cox transaction on March 20, leaving California as the last state standing between the companies and a combination that would create the country's largest ISP. And the FCC marked one year of its Council on National Security while granting GCI a waiver tied to replacing covered equipment in Alaska, a reminder that the security review machinery is now a permanent feature of US telecom policy.
Barcelona set the industry's agenda, and the agenda was AI. Mobile World Congress 2025 drew more than 109,000 attendees to a show dominated by one question: how operators turn artificial intelligence from a cost line into a revenue line, with AI-powered networks, agentic devices, and telco AI alliances crowding every keynote. Beneath the AI noise, the show's quieter throughlines mattered more for the balance sheet: direct-to-device satellite moved from demo to product across multiple booths, and network API monetization inched toward commercial reality. Back home, Washington's wireless docket kept churning through spectrum, robocall, and undersea cable proceedings, a reminder that while Barcelona talks about the future, the FCC allocates it.