Shalini Ramachandran

Officials at multiple federal agencies have raised concerns about the safety and reliability of Elon Musk’s xAI artificial-intelligence tools in recent months, highlighting continuing disagreements within the U.S.

For the U.S. government, breaking up with Elon Musk is easier said than done. Just days after President Trump in early June raised the prospect of cutting ties with Musk’s businesses, the Trump administration initiated a review of SpaceX’s contracts with the federal government.

The Environmental Protection Agency sent letters requesting telecommunications companies to meet with the agency about their lead-sheathed phone cables, in a new phase of an investigation in the EPA’s efforts to protect the public from potential lead hazards.

For decades, AT&T, Verizon, and other firms dating back to the old Bell System have known that the lead in their networks was a possible health risk to their workers and had the potential to leach into the nearby environment. They knew their employees working with lead regularly had high amounts of the metal in their blood, studies from the 1970s and ’80s show.

Americans in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas get slower broadband speeds even though they generally pay similar monthly prices as their counterparts in wealthy and urban areas. The country’s biggest broadband provider charges more in markets without competition. Most people don’t have a choice. These are among the findings of an analysis of America’s internet bills.

The Federal Communications Commission’s nearly decade-old program, Measuring Broadband America, is the US government’s gauge of whether home internet-service providers are holding up their end of the bargain when they promise users certain speeds. Companies wield tremendous influence over the study and often employ tactics to boost their scores, according to interviews with more than two dozen industry executives, engineers and government officials.

The Wall Street Journal studied the internet use of 53 of our journalists across the country, over a period of months, in coordination with researchers at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. Our panelists used only a fraction of their available bandwidth to watch streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube, even simultaneously. Quality didn’t improve much with higher speeds. Picture clarity was about the same. Videos didn’t launch quicker.

Apparently, Comcast and Charter will announce a wireless partnership, agreeing not to make a material merger or acquisition in wireless without the other’s consent for one year.

That agreement could stoke Wall Street speculation among investors and analysts that the two largest U.S. cable companies together could decide to make a play for a carrier like T-Mobile US or Sprint. Neither company as a single entity could buy another wireless carrier for that time period as a result of that agreement without the other’s blessing or involvement.

Apparently, Verizon Communications is exploring a combination with Charter Communications that would unite two giants in search of growth in a rapidly consolidating media and telecom landscape, according to people familiar with the matter. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has made a preliminary approach to officials close to Charter, which has a market value of more than $80 billion. Verizon is working with advisers to study a potential transaction, the people said. There’s no guarantee a deal will materialize.

It is unclear whether Charter executives, including Chief Executive Tom Rutledge, would be open to a transaction. The effort could be complicated by Charter’s ownership structure, which includes cable tycoon John Malone and the Newhouse family. A combination would bring together Verizon’s more than 114 million wireless subscribers and what remains of its landline business with Charter’s cable network, which provides television to 17 million customers and broadband connections to 21 million. Verizon has a market capitalization of $194 billion and more than $100 billion in debt.

AT&T’s practice of exempting its streaming video services from data-usage caps is rankling competitors and shaping up as a major issue for regulators set to weigh the company’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner.

When AT&T rolls out its $35-a-month DirecTV Now online TV service, its wireless subscribers will be able to stream as much as they want without it counting toward their monthly data caps. But if the same customers binge on outside services like Netflix or Hulu, those bits will add up—potentially leading to surcharges. Streaming services are likely to press regulators to scrutinize the practice—known as “zero rating”—in their review of the AT&T-Time Warner deal, people familiar with the matter said. TV networks that have streaming apps, like CBS and ESPN, also may have a stake in the matter. Several companies are likely to argue that AT&T’s DirecTV Now approach is anticompetitive, and will push for conditions on the merger, the people say.

Some Federal Communications Commission staffers already view AT&T’s DirecTV Now exemption as an example of improper zero-rating, people familiar with the situation said, because it disadvantages AT&T’s streaming rivals. The agency is considering how to address zero-rating and whether to raise it as a merger issue, the people said. Other options the agency is weighing include industrywide guidelines on zero-rating.