Conexon Connect submits its 4Q 2025 Compliance Report associated with the gap in meeting its December 31, 2024, Rural Digital Opportunity Fund 40 percent interim milestone obligation for Study Area Code 459032 (Arizona). Pursuant to the Universal Service Administrative Company’s November 21, 2025, email to the Company, this letter addresses the Company’s efforts to close the Compliance Gap and explains how the Company will come into compliance. Because the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment and RDOF award areas are inextricably connected and include BEAD locations that are often on the other side of the street from Conexon Connect’s RDOFfunded locations, Conexon Connect delayed further RDOF deployment in Arizona until BEAD-related decisions were finalized by the state broadband office. Although Conexon Connect initially received notice of a preliminary BEAD award in Arizona, that award was rescinded on June 25, 2025, following release of the BEAD Program Restructuring Notice. Conexon Connect participated in the subsequent Benefit of the Bargain BEAD bidding process, but did not receive any BEAD funding in Arizona when final awards were announced on December 3, 2025. Upon gaining final clarity on BEAD award status, Conexon Connect resumed network deployment activity in Arizona during 4Q 2025. Approximately 10 miles of underground conduit and 13 miles of aerial fiber have been deployed. This infrastructure is pending activation upon delivery of a direct internet access circuit anticipated in early 2026. Additional preparatory actions taken by the Company to support rapid network deployment in early 2026 include construction of 2 new fiber huts and completion of more than 600 miles of make-ready engineering for fiber deployment on existing utility poles.

South Central Connect, a subsidiary of South Central Arkansas Electric Cooperative, is receiving Rural Digital Opportunity Fund funding to deploy 1 Gbps/500 Mbps service to 48 Census Block Groups in Arkansas. South Central Connect hereby notifies the Federal Communications Commission of its decision to default on 13 of its 48 RDOF CBGs in Arkansas. The escalating construction costs associated with South Central Connect’s ability to serve these 13 CBGs—all of which are located in either Garland, Montgomery or Nevada counties in Arkansas—have led South Central Connect to make this difficult decision. South Central Connect understands that by defaulting on the above CBGs, it will no longer be entitled to receive further RDOF funding in these 13 CBGs and that it may be subject to the applicable non-compliance rules. South Central Connect reserves and retains its rights to seek relief from any penalties, including waiver of the Commission’s rules, as well as any other relief as may be necessary

The Lake County (IL) Digital Equity Coalition is proud of the work it’s done getting vulnerable populations connected to the modern world, but uncertainty lies ahead for it and many programs as COVID-era federal funding draws to a close. The coalition is part of the broader Digital Growth Initiative, which came about when the Broadband and Digital Equity Action Plan was passed in December 2023 through the use of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. The push is meant to “bridge the digital divide,” Digital Equity Manager Keay Crandall said. The initiative has three key areas of work — affordability, access and adoption — with various projects falling under its umbrella. According to Crandall, the on-the-ground work is done through the Digital Navigator Program, which teaches people basic digital literacy and computer skills — such as setting up an email account or their online portal with their health care provider — through workshops, video calls and classes. Those who go through the training have the opportunity to receive their own laptop. Looking at their numbers, Crandall said the coalition has hit some “big milestones” in services and engagement with the community.

EchoStar provided a lot of drama in 2025, and it looks to be on a similar course as we kick off 2026. On one side are billionaires Elon Musk (still the world’s richest man) and Charlie Ergen (founder and now president and CEO of EchoStar), who want the government to approve the sale of EchoStar’s spectrum licenses to SpaceX. On the other side are wireless industry vendors of all shapes and sizes that want EchoStar and its subsidiary Dish Wireless to pay their bills, i.e., what they owe to these vendors for helping build a 5G wireless network that appears destined for decommissioning. In between are all kinds of stakeholders with skin in the game to some extent or another.

I tried out all the major chatbots for that experiment, and I discovered each had its own personality. Anthropic’s Claude was studious and a bit prickly. Google’s Gemini was all business. Open A.I.’s ChatGPT, by contrast, was friendly, fun and down for anything I threw its way. ChatGPT also had “voice mode,” which allowed it to chat aloud, in a natural humanlike cadence, with everyone in my family, including my young daughters. My takeaway from putting ChatGPT in charge of my household was that generative A.I. chatbots could be helpful, but that there were risks, including making us all sound and act similarly. (Any college professor who has gotten 30 papers written in identical ChatGPTese can relate.) But in the year since, I’ve found that A.I. can have much more extreme effects on people who form intense bonds with it. I’ve written about a woman who fell in love with ChatGPT and about others who have lost touch with reality after it endorsed their delusions. The results have sometimes been tragic. All the chatbots asked follow-up questions, as if they were curious about the person using them and wanted to keep the conversation going. Experts in a field known as human-computer interaction object to this approach. They say that making these systems act like humanlike entities, rather than as tools with no inner life, creates cognitive dissonance for users about what exactly they are interacting with and how much to trust it. 

Before President Trump returned to the White House in January, the titans of the tech industry went all out to win him over with inauguration donations and pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago. Yet upon taking office, President Trump vowed to continue a fight to break up Meta, imposed tariffs that would raise the costs of Apple’s supply chains and restricted the exports of artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia and other chip makers. It seemed that the tech industry’s efforts to woo the president would not pay off. Now, however, the biggest tech companies have gotten almost everything they wanted from President Trump. Since the summer, he has eliminated many limits on A.I. chip exports, fast-tracked the building of data centers that power A.I. development and pushed legislation that gave government approval to a type of cryptocurrency. President Trump signed an executive order to kill A.I. restrictions set by states and greenlighted sales of a more powerful Nvidia chip to America’s top rival, China. “The conservative party stands for the free market and not picking winners and losers,” said Isabel Sunderland, who works on technology policy at Issue One, a nonpartisan political advocacy group, “yet what we’ve seen so far in the Trump administration is an administration that has picked the tech industry to win in ways that is contrary to his own base.”