Fiber's biggest rumor and Washington's strangest security story shared a week. Reports on March 25 revealed AT&T in talks to acquire Lumen's consumer fiber business for around 5.5 billion dollars, previewing the deal that would land officially in May and confirming that the fiber consolidation race had a second bidder. The capital's attention, though, belonged to Signal: The Atlantic's editor-in-chief revealed he had been accidentally added to a group chat where senior officials discussed military strike plans, a breach that made consumer messaging apps a national security story and put encrypted communications policy under a spotlight. In the states, Utah became the first to require app stores to verify user ages, opening a new regulatory front for the mobile ecosystem.
The satellite era got a signup page. T-Mobile opened beta registration for its Starlink direct-to-cell service on December 16, inviting ordinary customers to test satellite texting on the phones already in their pockets, while the same day in Brussels the SpaceRISE consortium signed the 10.6 billion euro concession to build IRIS2, Europe's sovereign answer to the constellations it does not control. Two days later CISA told the government's most targeted people to stop trusting carrier voice and SMS altogether and move to end-to-end encrypted apps, the bluntest official verdict yet on the Salt Typhoon aftermath. And SoftBank's Masayoshi Son stood next to the president-elect and pledged 100 billion dollars for American AI infrastructure, the kind of number that eventually lands on networks.