Iain Morris

To the apparent surprise of Eric Schmidt and AI's other evangelists, the next generation of white-collar workers isn't warmly receptive to the message that AI will replace all white-collar jobs and destroy their prospective livelihoods in the next few years, give or take. Who'd have thought?

Clad in a Zootopia apron emblazoned with "I'm good," the dance bot had seemingly rebelled, banging its fiberglass fists on a customer's table. Before food and drink erupted, a semi-amused waitress tried to drag it away by the collar with its arms still swinging, as hard to restrain as a toddler mid-tantrum. An off button was either inaccessible or simply didn't exist.

Warnings about a US fiber crunch that could slow down broadband deployment have intensified since the summer. In August, Incab America, a Texan maker of fiber-optic cable, notified customers that "a significant fiber shortage is emerging" in a statement signed by Mike Riddle, its president, who blamed data centers for "sucking up all the fiber production capacity." The situation reminded him of 2000, when lead times lengthened to a year. They have now risen to the same level.

Charlie Ergen is reputed to be a mean card player. For years, EchoStar's inscrutable founder was the subject of intense speculation about what he would do with his huge holdings of spectrum, the invisible vehicle for any wireless signal. The answer became apparent when Ergen staked some of his frequency cards on the construction of a fourth US mobile network based on open radio access network technology, touted as a low-cost alternative to a traditional deployment. Or did it?

A fiery debate has erupted in the halls of telecommunications about traffic—the gigabyte rather than vehicular variety. On one side are the mountaineers, who argue data volumes will continue to climb as usage grows and more advanced applications take off. On the other are the dissenting levelers. Led by William Webb, an independent consultant and former Ofcom executive who has written several books on the topic, they foresee a plateauing of consumption as smartphone customers struggle to cram more gigabytes into the day.

Long-time observers of AT&T and Verizon may be wondering how low they can go on headcount. In mid-September, Verizon made the telecom news with a securities filing that warned around 4,800 jobs would be cut by March next year at a severance cost of about $1.8 billion. Without any hiring to offset those cuts, this would leave it with fewer than 100,000 employees for the first time this millennium.

The top three telecommunications companies in the US are shrinking quickly. Across the industry, telecommunications companies are shedding employees as quickly as they can as they automate their networks, outsource tasks to other companies and do less when it comes to customer service.