Diana Goovaerts

A recent Innovative Systems survey of 132 rural operators found 82% have no clear or defined AI strategy and 49% have only limited or informal adoption of the technology.

Spectate or participate. Those are the options on the table for operators as the AI revolution rolls on, Alianza CEO Brian Beutler argued. And the choice could mean the difference between hitching up to a growth engine or being left behind as a dumb pipe—again. Alianza recently unveiled Crux, a new orchestration platform designed to enable operators to tap into the AI voice market.

Telecommunications firms have been touting AI as a cost saver, using it to justify thousands of layoffs. But while the humans are disappearing, the costs aren’t always following suit.

Regional fiber providers are being pulled deeper into the AI data center boom as data center campuses move off the beaten path. But DQE Communications CEO Mike Sicoli said the economics of building high-capacity fiber routes to hyperscale sites are getting more complicated—and the risk is landing increasingly on the telecommunications operator. Sicoli said hyperscalers initially understood they would need to shoulder much of the cost to get new fiber routes built.

Oracle is touting changes to its plans for a massive 1,400-acre, 2+GW data center campus in New Mexico as it awaits a key permit for the project, hoping its new plan will be enough to win over regulators despite extensive public backlash against the project. The campus in question is Stargate’s $165 billion Project Jupiter data center, one of a series of super-campuses OpenAI and its partners are seeking to build around the world.

Hindsight is 20/20. But you didn’t need a crystal ball in 2019 to know that the U.S. government’s decision to tap Dish Network (eventually, Dish Wireless) to become the country’s fourth wireless carrier wouldn’t pan out well. And the regulators who waved it on—both at the time and as cracks in the plan became more evident—need to be held accountable. I’d argue that we never should have even gotten to this point. Not even close.

Hyperscaler capex is poised to set records in 2026, as cloud giants scramble to build enough compute capacity to meet growing demand. Energy remains a key constraint—and point of public contention—but an upcoming regulatory decision is poised to offer either grief or relief. There are two key energy issues: power generation and years-long interconnection queues, and how large-load customers like data centers impact other users on the grid.

The AWS-3 auction kicked off with around 200 licenses formerly owned by EchoStar on the block. But with three rounds down, it appears that the auction anticipation—particularly around SpaceX’s involvement—has proved bigger than actual operator appetites. Bids totaled $59.3 million at the end of three rounds of bidding, with that number jumping only about $5 million from $54 million at the end of round two.

After a year of rebidding and guidance changes, the U.S. broadband industry breathed a sigh of relief when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced it had approved the vast majority of final state Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment proposals, opening the door for funding to flow.

Great Plains Communications has a lot going on. The company just inked a deal to acquire 40,000 passings from Fastwyre in Nebraska, marking its fifth purchase in the last eight years.