Thursday, June 18, 2026
Headlines Daily Digest
Headlines will return MONDAY, June 22. Enjoy the holiday.
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NTIA Announces Two New Funding Opportunities to Expand Broadband Connectivity on Tribal Lands
Broadband Funding
States
Wireless
AI
Industry News
Stories From Abroad
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the Department of Commerce announced two new notices of funding opportunity: one for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and one for the Native Entities Grant Program, the native entity set-aside under the Digital Equity Act. Together, these NOFOs will make $790 million available to Tribal and Native communities to advance broadband connectivity on Tribal lands, promote infrastructure availability, and support other related activities. The application window opens June 17, 2026, and closes September 17, 2026. NTIA expects to make awards on a rolling basis beginning in Spring 2027. Additional information is available on NTIA's BroadbandUSA website, including the TBCP fact sheet and NEGP fact sheet.
California state regulators say AT&T lied to the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to shut off its old copper phone network without providing an adequate replacement. “AT&T asserts that California seeks to prohibit or hinder wireline carriers from discontinuing copper facilities and investing in fiber,” said a June 15 filing by the state of California and the California Public Utilities Commission. “Indeed, AT&T has been making this argument for years. It is not and has never been true.” Although California officials say AT&T is allowed to upgrade copper lines to better technology, such as fiber, AT&T has repeatedly claimed state rules force it to maintain the copper lines. California told the FCC that, in reality, the CPUC declined to adopt rules that would prevent phone companies from replacing copper lines with fiber. In a 2008 decision, it decided that such rules would “discourage and delay fiber systems from being built in California, contrary to clear state legislative direction to bring affordable and widespread high quality communications services to all Californians.”
AT&T filed several petitions at the Federal Communications Commission asking the FCC to override regulations from the State of California. The State is forcing AT&T to maintain copper networks until such time that AT&T can offer the same services to customers using some alternate technology. The FCC reacted by issuing two requests for public comments related to the AT&T petitions. In the first, the FCC asks for comments related to its ability to preempt California’s regulations related to copper networks. The second asks for public comments related to AT&T being able to walk away from carrier-of-last-resort responsibilities in California as it tears down copper networks. These proceedings ask some interesting questions, although my hunch is that the FCC already plans to preempt California on these issues and is only going through the formalities first.
Most rural broadband providers expect AI to change how they operate, even as the majority remain in the early stages of using it, according to Telecompetitor’s 2026 Rural Broadband State of AI study. Of the 132 providers surveyed, 91 percent said they anticipate a significant impact on both their own companies and the wider industry. That expectation has not yet translated into deep adoption, and the findings suggest that many providers are not as far behind as they might feel. Nearly half of respondents described their AI use as limited or informal, while about half said they are experimenting with the technology. Only 1 percent reported integrating AI into core systems or workflows, indicating the bar most providers measure themselves against is lower than they probably think.
The Trump administration entered office promising to get government out of the AI industry's way. It hasn't worked out that way. The White House says AI shouldn't be regulated, but it's shaping the industry through case-by-case interventions without clear rules, creating major uncertainty. What has emerged is a shadow AI policy, one that shapes the AI industry's future without ever spelling out the rules. Without clear national AI rules set by Congress, the administration has focused on overriding state AI laws, the national security and cybersecurity implications of advanced AI models, the procurement of AI systems into the federal government and the economic impact of the biggest AI companies. The Trump administration may not call it AI regulation, but its decisions are dictating the future of the technology around the world.
A flagship U.S. program designed to boost AI exports could be undermined by the very administration that created it. "The government's willingness to arbitrarily and abruptly remove America's best models from all foreign use shows that the strategy behind the AI Export Program is no longer relevant to decision makers in the U.S. government," said Dean Ball, a former AI adviser in the Trump administration. The Trump administration slapped export controls on Anthropic's newest model Fable 5 due to disagreements over whether it is safe for deployment, causing Anthropic to pull access to it entirely. Administration officials and Anthropic staff continue to hash out their disagreements, with no solution yet.
The U.S. government's move to stop Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos models turns a long-theoretical debate into a real-world test of who should have the power over world-changing AI. Handing the reins to companies means trusting firms with huge commercial incentives. Leaving decisions up to governments could lead to secretive high-stakes decisions with little public approval. Anthropic was given just 90 minutes to take down Fable and Mythos after Amazon raised concerns with U.S. officials about a jailbreak that could bypass Fable's guardrails and expose cybersecurity capabilities. The government imposed stringent export controls that ultimately led Anthropic to take the models offline entirely. AI policy researchers and industry critics say the U.S. is now regulating frontier models through emergency intervention rather than a clear process. "Things feel very ad hoc," said Adam Gleave, CEO at FAR.AI, an AI safety research firm, adding, "you're only as safe as the least safe model on the market."
If you hang out in any even vaguely AI-skeptical parts of the Internet, you’ve probably stumbled on plenty of memes and posts premised on data centers’ insatiable thirst for water to power evaporative cooling. But a new report from Amazon highlights just how little water all these AI data centers are using in aggregate, on a relative basis, even as individual data centers can strain local water supplies. Amazon claims its data centers withdrew “about 2.5 billion gallons” globally in 2025. That number sounds incredibly large at first glance, but it looks downright puny compared to the 117 trillion gallons of water withdrawn in the US alone in 2015. While there’s no risk of big tech companies literally draining the oceans to power the data centers behind their LLMs, even moderately sized data centers can have an outsized effect on nearby water resources. A single Meta data center in Newton County, Georgia, for instance, now uses about 10 percent of the entire county’s water supply.
This report synthesizes findings from academic and industry research, civil society documentation, journalism, and GLAAD’s own monitoring to provide a comprehensive examination of AI’s impacts on LGBTQ people. Key findings include:
- If AI fails LGBTQ people, it fails everyone. Companies must continue to work to improve AI equity, counter bias, and strengthen the safety and quality of AI products for LGBTQ people and for everyone.
- AI must authentically represent the diversity of LGBTQ lives, stories, and experiences. If LGBTQ topics and issues aren’t accurately represented during foundation model development or in fine-tuning, AI systems tend to perpetuate biased or stereotypical assumptions.
- AI companies must continually update training datasets and fine-tune models to reflect how hate and misinformation evolve online. To better protect marginalized communities, models must have regular context updates as new terms, language, and social and cultural tensions emerge.
- AI developers and deployers must prioritize data protection and privacy. Sensitive data collection, profiling, and inadequate safeguards expose LGBTQ people to discrimination, surveillance, and potentially physical harm.
- AI content moderation must be implemented responsibly—it should enforce hate and harassment policies, but not suppress LGBTQ voices. AI can play an important role in scaling content moderation, but when moderation systems lack nuance, transparency, and human oversight, they can both fail to curb harassment and wrongly suppress legitimate LGBTQ content.
- There is an urgent need for thoughtful industry oversight to protect users, especially historically marginalized communities. From discrimination and surveillance to misinformation and data misuse, many of the broad risks associated with AI fall disproportionately on marginalized groups, pointing to the need for careful regulatory oversight in collaboration with civil society.
AI reshapes global labour market into two distinct paths, rewarding human skills: PwC 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer
AI is rapidly reshaping the skills employers want most from workers—increasing the emphasis on human skills such as judgement, creativity and leadership—as companies most able to use AI continue to expand hiring faster than their peers. New research also finds that AI is driving a ‘two-track’ global labour market in which ‘professionalised’ roles—in which AI automates routine tasks so human judgement and expertise are emphasized—are growing faster than roles ‘democratised’ by AI—in which AI makes the role itself easier for non-experts to perform. ‘Professionalised’ roles (such as radiologists or recruiters) are seeing twice the growth in available jobs and 42% faster salary growth than those categorised as ‘democratised’ (such as IT service managers or medical secretaries). At the entry level, AI appears to be increasing demand for more ‘senior’ skills from junior workers. Based on 2.4 million entry-level jobs analysed in the US, entry-level roles most exposed to AI are now seven times more likely to require traditionally senior-level ‘human-intensive’ skills like leadership, creativity or face-to-face interactions. Job openings for these ‘seniorised’ entry-level roles have grown 35% since 2019, while other entry-level roles shrank 10%.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s transforming everything from medicine to work to entertainment. At the same time, Americans are using chatbots more than ever before and some are bringing smart devices into their households, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults. THe key takeaways:
- About half of U.S. adults now report using AI chatbots, up substantially from the summer of 2024. This includes roughly one-in-four who use these tools on daily basis.
- Some people are bringing AI into their homes. About a third of Americans say they have a smart speaker, and smaller shares have a doorbell or thermostat with AI features.
- But Americans—including younger adults—are deeply skeptical of AI. More adults predict that AI will have a negative rather than positive impact on them and on society. And majorities think AI is advancing too quickly and will put their personal information at risk.
Building data centers in space is more complicated than proponents might portray, but experts say it's increasingly doable. Work is already under way from startups Starcloud and Cowboy Space Corp. as well as big tech companies including SpaceX and Google. SpaceX has already filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to launch a million satellites. The prospectus outlines plans to launch a test of its orbital data centers by 2028, however Reuters reported the company has been telling investors during its roadshow that it actually hopes to do so by the end of 2027. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has also filed for permission to launch data centers in space. As part of its Project Sunrise, Blue Origin has sought to launch more than 50,000 satellites—far less than SpaceX—but still an enormous effort. In a new report, real estate research firm JLL says it sees space as particularly suited to energy intensive, but less urgent tasks.
The private equity firm Grain Management is combining two of its fiber operators—Ritter Communications and Great Plains Communications—into one entity called Rightfiber. Heath Simpson, currently CEO of Ritter Communications, will serve as CEO of Rightfiber, and Todd Foje, currently CEO of Great Plains Communications, will serve as executive chairman. Foje said that the reasoning behind the combination is that there are advantages to scale. “Our network is going to become a 20-state regional network that opens up additional opportunities with hyperscalers, wireless customers and others,” he said. The bigger scale also gives Rightfiber easier and less-expensive access to capital and stronger buying power with suppliers. Those financial benefits will, in turn, allow the company to make more investments in information technology and cybersecurity. “We can spread that expertise and investment across a larger organization, so it creates efficiencies from that standpoint,” said Foje.
Frank Ssekamwa says the United States presented his country with an impossible choice. If it accepted the terms of a new health agreement, Uganda would have to give the U.S. access to the data of millions of his fellow citizens—a decision he worries would make their personal information more vulnerable to breaches and possible exploitation. But if it refused, the East African nation would likely lose out on more than a billion dollars to address HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other illnesses, even as its people face ongoing threats from Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases. So, on December 10, it agreed. “If you take the deal, you’re going to be exploited. If you don’t take it, you’re going to die,” said Ssekamwa, an attorney and digital rights expert in Uganda. “It’s the essence of digital colonialism.”
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org), Grace Tepper (grace AT benton DOT org), and Zoe Walker (zwalker AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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