Jeff Baumgartner

Comcast has sparked a plan to transform its cost structure and the overall business in a way that will save billions of dollars and enable Comcast to redirect those funds toward growth initiatives, CFO Jason Armstrong revealed at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. "We embarked earlier this month on the largest cost transformation in the company's history. This will be billions of dollars in costs," he said. "I frame it [as] more of a transformation. It's not a budget exercise.

Optimum Communications Chairman and CEO Dennis Mathew dropped a bit of news on Optimum's Q2 earnings call about the company's growing mobile business, noting that the operator recently expanded its multiyear Mobile Virtual Network Operator agreement with T-Mobile.

CONX, Charlie Ergen's special-purpose acquisition company, is taking a majority stake in MobileX, Peter Adderton's MVNO that runs on the Verizon mobile network, a recent Federal Communications Commission filing confirms.

Charter Communications and Cox Communications have completed a $34.5 billion merger that creates the world's largest cable operator, with about 70 million homes and businesses passed and roughly 38 million customers across 45 US states.

With plans underway to launch massive constellations of satellites to deliver broadband services and support orbital AI data centers and other applications and services, the space economy is enjoying a boom time. But this growing and evolving sector will also need to adhere to current and coming regulations.

Amazon Leo revealed more details about a proposed, global direct-to-device constellation that, it said, will comprise 5,105 low-Earth orbit satellites and complement the D2D satellites it will obtain via its acquisition of Globalstar.

SpaceX is targeting July 16 as the next possible test flight for Starship, a massive rocket that is critical to the eventual widespread launch and deployment of the larger and higher-capacity V3 Starlink satellites. If the test is successful, it could lead to orbital deployments of V3s. That will set up Starlink to beef up its broadband capacity and potentially expand its competitive scope.

AT&T's plans to shutter its power-hungry copper network in California moved ahead a step or two after the Federal Communications Commission ruled that the operator could start the conversion process for about 184,000 customers in the state. That process targets a subset of AT&T customers who are still using copper-based services in the state. Under the plan, those customers can keep their existing service until it is discontinued on or after June 1, 2027.

Copper network retirement in California has taken another litigious turn. In a suit against the Federal Communications Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is asking the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a federal court in San Francisco, to determine that the FCC's new rules aimed at expediting copper network shutdowns constitutes an overreach that violates federal law and conflicts with notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements.

The proposed combination of Ritter Communications and Great Plains Communications isn't being pitched as a cost-cutting exercise. Rightfiber, the name of the proposed combo, aims to grow through fiber network expansions and opportunistic, fiber-focused acquisitions. That's according to Heath Simpson, the current CEO of Ritter and the exec who will lead Rightfiber as CEO. Todd Foje, Great Plains' CEO, will become executive chairman of Rightfiber.