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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.