Telecom Intelligence: Week of April 27, 2026
The busiest week of the spring, and one of the most telling. Verizon reported its first positive first quarter for postpaid phone additions since 2013, a genuine turning point for a carrier that spent a decade bleeding subscribers every spring. T-Mobile answered a day later with double-digit revenue growth and raised guidance, proof that the industry's growth engine has not slowed even as its rivals recover. Then on April 30 the FCC held an open meeting heavy with consequence, unanimously adopting a Report and Order that replaces decades-old satellite spectrum sharing limits with a modern coordination framework, and advancing a proposal to push Chinese state carriers out of US data centers and network interconnection. Competition is heating up and the regulatory ground is shifting at the same time.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of February 2, 2026
The week opened with AT&T closing its $5.75 billion purchase of Lumen's Mass Markets fiber business, a deal that adds more than one million fiber subscribers and four million passings in metros like Denver, Seattle, and Salt Lake City. The strategic message was blunt: the acquired network sits at roughly 25 percent penetration against AT&T's own 40 percent, so the work now shifts from building fiber to selling it. Midweek, Qualcomm posted record fiscal first quarter revenue of $12.3 billion but watched its stock slide as much as 10 percent after warning that a global memory shortage would squeeze the phones its chips go into. And all week, the three national carriers raced to finish one of the largest venue network builds ever attempted, turning Levi's Stadium into a proving ground ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl LX, with the same infrastructure set to serve the World Cup this summer.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of January 26, 2026
Earnings week told one story from three directions: the connection to the home and the connection in the pocket are now a single business. AT&T opened on January 28 with fourth quarter results built on converged fiber and 5G customers, posting $33.5 billion in revenue and its best year of consumer broadband growth in a decade. Verizon answered on January 30 with more than one million total mobility and broadband net additions, its best quarter since 2019, in its first report since closing the Frontier deal. Between them, Juniper Research published a January 27 study forecasting eSIM connections will grow 30 percent in 2026 to 1.5 billion, with the GSMA's SGP.32 standard unlocking the IoT wave. The scoreboard for US telecom has officially changed, and everyone is now reporting to it.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of January 19, 2026
A landmark close, a regulatory earthquake in Europe, and the first big vendor scorecard of the year. On January 20, Verizon completed its roughly $20 billion acquisition of Frontier Communications, instantly expanding its fiber reach to nearly 30 million homes and businesses across 31 states. The same day in Brussels, the European Commission published its Cybersecurity Act 2 proposal, which for the first time would give the EU a binding framework to phase out high-risk suppliers from telecom networks and 17 other critical sectors, a move widely read as targeting Huawei and ZTE. And on January 23, Ericsson closed out 2025 with fourth quarter organic sales growth of 6 percent and its strongest margins in years, evidence that network spending has stabilized even as the RAN market stays flat.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of January 12, 2026
This week the MVNO economy got a growth forecast and the biggest fiber deal in America got a closing date. Juniper Research published a study on January 12 projecting global MVNO subscribers will climb from 333 million in 2026 to 438 million by 2030, crediting MVNO-in-a-Box platforms for letting enterprises launch mobile services without building telecom stacks. The same day, Keysight and Samsung demonstrated a standards-based 5G non-terrestrial network link in the new n252 band, a milestone for making direct-to-cell a native part of the 5G standard rather than a proprietary bolt-on. And on January 15, Verizon and Frontier announced they had cleared the final regulatory hurdle, setting January 20 as the closing date for the roughly $20 billion acquisition.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of December 15, 2025
The satellite layer of the US network got its commercial charter this week. On December 16 the FCC granted SpaceX and T-Mobile a landmark supplemental coverage from space license, moving direct-to-cell service from experimental authority to a fully commercial framework. The same day, Verizon and Array Digital Infrastructure announced a multi-year partnership giving Verizon streamlined access to Array's portfolio of more than 4,400 towers to accelerate its 5G buildout. And on December 18 the FCC held its final open meeting of the year, adopting a Third Report and Order that tightens VoIP providers' access to phone numbers in its campaign against robocalls, and deleting around 35 obsolete rules from the books.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of November 17, 2025
The busiest week of the month packed a switching offensive, a historic layoff, and the starting gun for the next big spectrum auction into three days. On November 19, T-Mobile unveiled Switching Made Easy at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, a 15-minute switching experience built around its AI-powered Easy Switch tool aimed squarely at AT&T and Verizon customers. On November 20, Verizon confirmed the rumors, with CEO Dan Schulman telling employees the company would cut more than 13,000 jobs, about 13 percent of its workforce. And at its November 20 open meeting the FCC adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to make as much as 180 megahertz of Upper C-band spectrum available for commercial wireless, feeding a congressionally mandated auction due by July 2027.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of November 10, 2025
A week when two of the industry's biggest structures started to move. On November 13, Reuters reported that Verizon's new CEO Dan Schulman was preparing to cut roughly 15,000 jobs, the largest layoff in the company's history, as part of a restructuring aimed at reversing subscriber losses. The same day, Amazon retired the Project Kuiper name and rebranded its satellite constellation as Amazon Leo, unveiling a lineup of customer terminals as it shifts from launch project to commercial service. And on November 15, EchoStar completed its retreat from network ownership, shutting down its own 5G network and moving all Boost Mobile traffic onto AT&T under a hybrid arrangement, ending the four-network era in US wireless.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of October 27, 2025
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.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of October 6, 2025
The week Verizon hit reset. On October 6 the company abruptly named former PayPal chief Dan Schulman as CEO, replacing Hans Vestberg effective immediately, a board-driven change aimed at reversing subscriber losses at the largest US carrier by revenue. Two days later, AST SpaceMobile announced a definitive commercial agreement with Verizon to deliver space-based cellular service to Verizon customers starting in 2026, using Verizon's 850 MHz spectrum. All of it played out against a federal government shutdown that began October 1 and closed most of the FCC, furloughing the bulk of its staff and freezing filings, databases, and routine approvals across the industry.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of September 15, 2025
Launch week. Apple released iOS 26 on September 15, bringing its redesigned software to existing iPhones days before new hardware arrived. On September 18 Verizon published its latest network quality claims, citing 35 consecutive J.D. Power awards as it defended its best-network positioning amid subscriber losses and mounting pressure on its premium story. And on September 19 the iPhone 17 lineup and iPhone Air reached stores in more than 60 countries, converting the week's record preorders into the industry's biggest annual switching event.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of July 21, 2025
Satellite-to-phone service stopped being a beta this week. On July 23 T-Mobile commercially launched T-Satellite, its Starlink-powered direct-to-cell service, making the US the first major market with broadly available satellite messaging built into a carrier plan, and opened it to rival carriers' customers for ten dollars a month. One day later, Starlink suffered a rare global outage lasting more than two hours, a jarring reminder that the space layer has single points of failure. The same week delivered second quarter earnings from all three national carriers, with T-Mobile posting its best-ever Q2 postpaid growth, Verizon raising full-year guidance, and AT&T beating on wireless while fiber softness drew scrutiny.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of May 12, 2025
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.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of April 21, 2025
Earnings week drew the industry's new battle lines in ink. Verizon opened April 22 with record first-quarter EBITDA but a stinging loss of 289,000 postpaid phone subscribers, the price of its pricing discipline in a promotion-soaked market. T-Mobile closed the week reporting its best first quarter ever for postpaid additions, then spent its earnings call unveiling new Experience plans with a five-year price guarantee, weaponizing price certainty against rivals raising rates. In between, AT&T delivered steady wireless and fiber growth and became the first carrier to quantify tariff exposure in its guidance, telling investors it could absorb expected device cost increases without changing its outlook.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of March 31, 2025
T-Mobile became a fiber company, Verizon bet on certainty, and then the world's trade order changed. On April 1 T-Mobile and EQT closed their joint venture acquiring Lumos, giving the wireless growth leader its first owned fiber footprint and a template for capital-light broadband expansion. On April 3 Verizon answered the industry's churn wars with a three-year price lock and free phone guarantee across its plans, betting that certainty is the retention product customers actually want. Between them, on April 2, the administration's Liberation Day announcement imposed a 10 percent baseline tariff on virtually all imports with far higher reciprocal rates on China and dozens of other countries, upending the cost math for every device, router, and network component the industry moves.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of March 10, 2025
Deregulation got a battle cry. On March 12 FCC Chairman Brendan Carr opened a docket bluntly titled Delete, Delete, Delete, inviting the public to nominate any Commission rule for elimination and signaling the most aggressive deregulatory push in the agency's modern history. The market week belonged to Verizon's candor: at a March 11 investor conference the carrier warned that first-quarter subscriber growth would be soft amid a brutal promotional environment, knocking its shares down more than 7 percent and dragging the whole telecom sector with them. And Crown Castle completed its retreat to a pure tower company, agreeing March 13 to sell its fiber and small cells businesses to Zayo and EQT for a combined 8.5 billion dollars.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of February 24, 2025
The satellite race answered back, and the spectrum pipeline formally opened. Verizon completed its first satellite-to-cellular video call using AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird satellites on February 24, a direct riposte to T-Mobile's Starlink Super Bowl moment and proof the AST camp can do more than text. At its February 27 meeting the FCC adopted the upper C-band Notice of Inquiry and AWS-3 auction procedures, converting agenda promises into live proceedings and starting the clock on the next mid-band supply wave. And EchoStar closed the books on a difficult 2024, reporting Boost Mobile subscriber progress amid shrinking revenue and the debt overhang that would define its dramatic year ahead.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of December 30, 2024
The year changed and so did two decades of regulatory architecture. On January 2 the Sixth Circuit struck down the FCC's net neutrality rules outright, ruling in the first major post-Chevron test that the agency never had the authority to classify broadband as a telecom service, and ending a twenty-year seesaw unless Congress writes it into law. Days earlier, AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen declared their networks clear of Salt Typhoon, statements that landed awkwardly against a White House count that was still climbing. And Vodafone closed the books on its European retreat, completing the 8 billion euro sale of Vodafone Italia to Swisscom on New Year's Eve.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of November 11, 2024
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.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of October 21, 2024
Salt Typhoon went from national-security story to election story: reporting on Friday revealed the Chinese hackers had targeted phones used by Donald Trump, JD Vance, and people associated with the Harris campaign — placing the carrier breach at the center of American politics eleven days before the vote. Against that backdrop, earnings week played out almost quaintly: T-Mobile posted industry-leading growth and raised guidance across the board, while Verizon held serve on wireless service revenue while absorbing $1.7 billion in severance charges and doubling down on fixed wireless as its growth engine.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of October 14, 2024
Vendor earnings told a tale of one market: Ericsson rode a 55% North America surge — powered by its landmark AT&T deal — back to fat margins, while Nokia posted its own gross-margin recovery on shrinking sales and kept waiting for the US spending wave to reach it. Meanwhile the quiet dismantling of UScellular continued, with Verizon writing a $1 billion check for 850 MHz and AWS spectrum the T-Mobile deal left behind. The week's throughline: capital is flowing again in US wireless — into radios and into spectrum — but it is flowing to fewer, bigger players.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of October 7, 2024
The industry absorbed two shocks in a single week. The Wall Street Journal's revelation that China-linked hackers penetrated AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen — apparently through the very systems built to serve court-ordered wiretaps — turned into a full Washington firestorm, with House Energy and Commerce leaders demanding answers from all three carriers by week's end. Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida days after Helene devastated the Southeast, and for the first time at scale, the FCC let T-Mobile and SpaceX switch on satellite texting for every compatible phone in the storm zone regardless of carrier. One story exposed the network's oldest vulnerability; the other previewed its newest safety net.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of September 30, 2024
Monday, September 30 packed a quarter's worth of news into one day. A nationwide Verizon outage left over 100,000 customers — many staring at 'SOS' on their iPhones — and drew an immediate FCC investigation. AT&T finally severed its television era, selling its remaining 70% of DirecTV to TPG for $7.6 billion, hours before DirecTV announced it would absorb EchoStar's Dish TV and Sling — consolidating a shrinking satellite-TV industry into one company. T-Mobile bought peace with the FCC over years of data breaches for $31.5 million, half earmarked for security upgrades. And Verizon quietly monetized more of its physical empire, handing 6,339 towers to Vertical Bridge for $3.3 billion.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of September 9, 2024
Device week doubled as a preview of the industry's two next battlegrounds. Apple introduced the iPhone 16 line as its first hardware 'built for Apple Intelligence' — betting the upgrade cycle on AI features that would arrive in stages — while Huawei answered within hours, unveiling a $2,800 tri-fold phone that sold out its pre-order list in China and flaunted how far the sanctioned giant has clawed back. And far above the phones, AST SpaceMobile put its first five commercial BlueBird satellites into orbit — the largest commercial communications arrays ever flown, and the first pieces of a carrier-partnered answer to Starlink's direct-to-cell push.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of September 2, 2024
Verizon opened the fall by writing the quarter's defining check: $20 billion in cash for Frontier Communications and its fiber footprint across 25 states — the clearest statement yet that the biggest carriers now see owning the wire into the home as inseparable from winning the phone in the pocket. The week's other dramas were about leverage of a different kind: Brazil's X ban put Starlink's licenses in a regulator's crosshairs and showed how quickly satellite internet becomes a geopolitical bargaining chip, while 17,000 striking AT&T Southeast workers reminded the industry that networks still get built and fixed by people.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of August 26, 2024
August closed with the state flexing on the network stack from two directions. Brazil's Supreme Court ordered X suspended nationwide after Musk refused to appoint a legal representative — and reached for Starlink's assets to enforce it, entangling a satellite network in a social-media fight. In Washington, the FCC finalized the framework for its $9 billion 5G Fund, redirecting rural subsidy money toward mobile broadband in the places carriers won't build on their own. And Verizon quietly opened a new front in the satellite race, launching direct-to-device text messaging with Skylo — making satellite connectivity a live consumer feature on all three national carriers' roadmaps.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of July 22, 2024
Earnings season put the big carriers' diverging playbooks on display: Verizon missed on revenue as customers held phones longer, while AT&T beat on postpaid adds and leaned hard into its fiber-plus-wireless bundle. But the week's most strategic moves happened off the income statement — T-Mobile committed roughly $4.9 billion to a joint venture with KKR to acquire fiber builder Metronet, its second fiber JV in three months, and Microsoft named Lumen its network partner for AI data-center capacity, an early marker of the AI-fiber trade that would define August.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of April 22, 2024
The most consequential policy week of the telecom year: President Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban law on Wednesday, and the FCC voted on Thursday to restore net neutrality — reclassifying broadband as a Title II service and reopening the decade's defining regulatory fight. Verizon opened carrier earnings season the same Monday, losing fewer wireless subscribers than feared as broadband — fixed wireless above all — carried the quarter. In one five-day stretch, Washington redrew the rules for the internet's most popular app and the pipes it travels on.