The telecom industry continued moving beyond traditional voice and data service during the week of July 6. AT&T expanded its enterprise portfolio through a partnership with Everbridge and completed a low-latency mobility trial with Ericsson and MediaTek, while Verizon became the U.S. connectivity provider for newly manufactured BMW Group vehicles through KDDI's global platform. Telefónica selected Thales to strengthen its IoT eSIM capabilities, Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson deployed private 5G at the Port of Hamburg, and EchoStar's leadership change signaled a deeper strategic transition. The common thread: connectivity is increasingly packaged as part of a broader business solution rather than sold as a standalone service.
The proposed acquisition of SFR by Bouygues Telecom, Iliad and Orange was the largest development of the week — a €20.35 billion transaction that would divide SFR's assets among its three primary competitors and reduce France's mobile market from four national operators to three. In the United States, Optimum announced its mobile business surpassed 700,000 lines through its MVNO arrangement with T-Mobile, and AT&T launched a $3 Unlimited Day Pass for eligible cellular-enabled iPads — available even when the customer's primary phone service is with another carrier. Additional developments included continued defaults under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and AXON Networks' acquisition of Greenwave Systems, adding software-defined mobile core and Network-as-a-Service capabilities to AXON's automation platform.
Spectrum policy took center stage this week. On February 18 the FCC unanimously adopted a Report and Order opening all ten megahertz of the 900 MHz band to broadband, handing utilities and critical infrastructure operators a dedicated home for private wireless networks. A day earlier, OpenVault's quarterly broadband report quantified something providers have long suspected: when subscribers get faster upstream speeds, they use them, with upstream consumption jumping 21.7 percent year over year and average household usage passing 767 gigabytes. And in the prepaid trenches, Boost Mobile refreshed its device lineup with the 2026 moto g family starting at $19.99, a reminder that the value segment fight is won and lost on affordable hardware. Together the week's stories show an industry widening its lanes: more spectrum for private networks, more upstream for home broadband, and cheaper 5G devices for the prepaid market.
The year opened with satellite connectivity dominating both the regulatory docket and the show floor. On January 9, the FCC authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional Gen2 Starlink satellites, doubling the approved constellation to 15,000 and granting access to new Ku, Ka, V, and W band frequencies. Days earlier at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, direct-to-device connectivity was everywhere, with Skylo named a CES Innovation Awards honoree for bringing two-way satellite emergency messaging to smartwatches, no phone required. Back in Washington, the FCC circulated a draft order on January 8 that would open the 6 GHz band to a new class of high-power geofenced unlicensed devices, a move with real consequences for Wi-Fi offload and IoT deployments.
A quieter week on the surface, but the signals underneath were about where enterprise connectivity money is flowing. Ericsson told RCR Wireless on December 9 that it now counts private 5G deployments across hundreds of enterprise customers, with roughly 95 percent using capabilities only 5G can deliver, a pointed contrast with rivals retreating from the segment. On December 10, Fierce Network announced the winners of its 2025 Innovation Awards, a useful map of where the industry thinks the next competitive edges sit. And on December 11 the FCC released the tentative agenda for its December 18 open meeting, headlined by a Third Report and Order tightening the rules that give VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers, the agency's latest move against robocall infrastructure.