Sen Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) told local news that she doesn’t expect her state’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment plan to change drastically under new program rules. Previously a staunch opponent of rebidding, she said she was “fine” with satellite providers getting another chance to bid for homes and businesses the state had awarded to fiber internet service providers. “My understanding is from our West Virginia leadership at the Broadband Council that our plan meshes fairly well with what the new guidance is,” she told Wheeling (WV)-based outlet The Intelligencer. “I think certain points will have to be sent back out to be rebid to see if some of the satellite companies want to bid in that area. I mean, I’m fine with that.” On June 6, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration handed down new rules for the $42.45 billion BEAD program, rescinding Biden-era approvals and requiring all states to field an additional round of grant applications with a new scoring rubric. West Virginia had finished its spending plan and gone entirely with fiber, something the Trump administration has been opposed to because it can have a higher deployment cost.

The 1996 presidential campaign for Bill Clinton used the mantra “It’s the economy, stupid” to keep the campaign focused. In the case of telecom, and not to be disrespectful to our readers, you could say "It's the legacy infrastructure, stupid." A big focus for operators right now is to clean up their technical debt so they can pounce on the opportunities in AI. Joe Cumello, SVP and general manager of Ciena’s Blue Planet, stressed the importance for service providers to clean up their inventory systems in preparation for agentic AI. Cumello said, “We have an expression at Blue Planet: You can’t AI what you can’t see. People are realizing when they apply an agent against bad data they get a bad outcome. ”Scott Robohn, co-founder of the Network Automation Forum, said,  “If any telcos want to employ AI and train AI on their data, you need high integrity in the data you feed any model.” One of the highest profile companies that has announced a concerted effort to clean up its technical debt is Lumen Technologies, which announced in January 2025 that it had hired the vendor OneVizion to clean up and organize its internal systems. Cumello said Blue Planet is also working with Lumen on its inventory cleanup effort.

The Trump Organization announced it is launching a new mobile phone business: Trump Mobile. It’s the latest new business the Trump Organization is getting into during President Trump’s second term in the White House, a dynamic that has raised various ethical concerns from his critics. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, announced the new initiative along with his brother Eric Trump, on the 10th anniversary of their father’s first announcing he was running for president, from Trump Tower in New York City. Trump Jr. said the business group felt the mobile phone industry was another era in which there had been “lackluster performance” and in which there could be an opportunity to provide tech to an audience that is “underserved.” While President Trump’s children are running his business, the entry into the mobile business with distinct links to the White House is likely to come under criticism from those who consider his family to be excessively monetizing his time in office.