A quieter week on the surface, but one with real signals underneath. Charter's Spectrum Mobile launched a $10 per month Second Line that lets customers run a separate work number on the phone they already carry, the latest proof that cable is competing in wireless on product creativity, not just price. On the regulatory side, the FCC extended and expanded waivers that keep already-authorized foreign-made drones and routers eligible for software and firmware updates, a pragmatic move that acknowledges cutting off security patches would do more harm than the ban itself. And in a sign of the summer ahead, the FCC designated a broadcast auxiliary spectrum coordinator for the FIFA World Cup, kicking off one of the largest special-event spectrum operations the US has ever staged.
The month closed with the two remaining scorecards and a regulator squeezing in its meeting despite the shutdown. On October 28 the FCC held its Space Month open meeting, voting on items to streamline satellite and earth station rules and adopting a further notice proposing to pare back broadband consumer label requirements. On October 29 Verizon reported third quarter earnings in Dan Schulman's first appearance as CEO, where he reiterated guidance and promised a candid reset focused on returning the carrier to customer growth. And on October 31 Charter reported 493,000 new Spectrum Mobile lines, bringing cable's quiet wireless machine to 11.4 million lines at Charter alone.
The rumor became official. The FBI and CISA jointly confirmed that hackers tied to the Chinese government have compromised networks at multiple U.S. telecom companies, stealing call records and intercepting communications around court-ordered wiretap systems, and by Friday the Wall Street Journal had added T-Mobile to the list of names. Against that backdrop the deal machine kept turning: Frontier shareholders blessed Verizon's $20 billion fiber acquisition, and Charter moved to absorb Liberty Broadband and simplify the ownership of America's second-largest cable company.
The week before the election, four storylines that would define 2025 all surfaced at once. A Sixth Circuit panel heard oral arguments on the FCC's net neutrality rules and pressed hard on whether the agency had the statutory authority at all — foreshadowing January's decision to strike them down. Comcast used its earnings call to float spinning off its cable networks, the first domino in the great linear-TV unbundling. Apple committed $1.5 billion to Globalstar, converting iPhone satellite features from a supplier contract into semi-ownership of a constellation. And Charter's 545,000 new mobile lines showed cable's MVNO machine still compounding inside the big carriers' own networks.