Consumers' Research is a nonprofit consumer-education organization. Its members and the individual consumers with whom it works pay a "Federal Universal Service Charge" as a separate line item on their phone bills. That charge is a tax. It is now, by the Federal Communications Commission's own proposal, 42 percent of interstate telecommunications revenues for the fourth quarter of 2026—the highest contribution factor in the history of the Fund. The High-Cost program is the principal reason. It consumes the majority of Universal Service Fund outlays. Those dollars are collected from consumers nationwide and paid to carriers to deploy and operate networks in “high-cost" areas. This funding may once have filled a gap. But it does not when the Commission's own Notice shows that unsubsidized terrestrial competitors already offer 100/20 Mbps broadband to 58 percent of locations in the relevant study areas, including a 46 percent overlap with locations that receive High-Cost support, and that of the remaining locations without unsubsidized terrestrial 100/20 Mbps service, more than 99 percent are already shown on the National Broadband Map as served at those speeds by unsubsidized satellite broadband providers.

Spectrum announced completion of its multi-year rural construction initiative to expand its fiber broadband network, making Spectrum Internet services available to more than 1,300 homes and small businesses in Somerset County (MD). The expansion encompassed more than 133 miles of construction. Combined with state and County contributions totaling more than $10.3 million, total project investment, including more than $2.1 million from Spectrum, is more than $12.5 million.

President Donald Trump announced that he would name four top administration officials to a “Super Intelligence Force” that will coordinate the federal government’s response to artificial intelligence. President Trump said Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, and Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering, will lead the task force. The task force is expected to coordinate the government’s engagement with various stakeholders in a growing debate over the risks of AI, including consumers, public interest groups, tech companies, and infrastructure providers. “The Super Intelligence Force is tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence, which many say is bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and the Internet, and will protect the interests, and improve the lives, of all Americans,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Wikipedia is starting to feel the effects of the AI-driven shift in how people find information, with page views falling 8 percent in the latest year, said new Wikimedia Foundation CEO Bernadette Meehan. Wikipedia is a crucial source of information for AI models, but those same models increasingly allow people to get Wikipedia-derived information without ever visiting the site—potentially threatening the ecosystem that keeps the online encyclopedia running. While the drop wasn't unexpected, "that doesn't mean that we're sort of starry-eyed about it and not concerned about it," Meehan said. The problem is that even though generative AI systems rely heavily on Wikipedia's vast trove of human-created information, some companies won't pay for it, she said.