Rural cooperatives have been the backbone of modern efforts to bring affordable next-generation fiber to long-neglected rural U.S. communities. So it’s important to listen to them when they warn that Trump administration Natinoal Telecommunications and Information Administration changes to telecommunications subsidy programs are going to have a profoundly negative impact on efforts to expand fast, affordable Internet access. Rural electric and broadband cooperatives recently gathered for the 5th annual Broadband Leadership Summit. The topic du jour was broadly unpopular changes made by the NTIA to the Broadband, Equity, Deployment, and Access program created by the 2021 infrastructure bill. NTIA BEAD changes reduced oversight of deployment, lowered quality standards, stripped away requirements that the resulting taxpayer Internet access be affordable and equitably deployed, and redirected billions of dollars away from affordable fiber to the low-Earth orbit space ambitions of billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. That’s not sitting well with the cooperatives doing the heavy and costly lifting to bring affordable access into long-neglected rural communities.

Business Oregon’s Oregon Broadband Office announced the preliminary awardees selected to assume Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment projects that were voluntarily declined by their original awardees. Through a structured replacement process and strong collaboration with broadband providers across Oregon, OBO has successfully identified preliminary awardees to serve all eligible locations affected by the declined awards, ensuring broadband deployment remains on schedule. Following two rounds of competitive reassignment, six preliminary awardees were selected to deliver broadband service across the affected project areas: 

• Alyrica
• Amazon LEO
• City of Sherwood
• Columbia County
• Douglas Fast Net
• Stimulus Technologies 

The reassignment process was initiated after four original awardees declined a total of 15 projects prior to June 10, 2026, Notice of Intent to Award acceptance deadline. Those declined projects represented 13,381 broadband serviceable locations, approximately $122.9 million in requested grant funding, and more than $39.1 million in matching contributions. 

Ribbon Communications, a vendor that does IP routing, is working with MGW Telephone, a third-generation ILEC serving communities across Virginia, to help it transition from legacy TDM infrastructure to an all-IP environment. MGW is using Ribbon's Circuit Emulation Services and NPT platform. The transition MGW is undergoing is something that other telcos are trying to do, as well. And while one might think that transitioning from legacy TDM networks to all-IP infrastructure is a no-brainer and should have happened by now, that is not the case. Joni Roberts, SVP and chief marketing officer of Ribbon, said, “For many carriers, the challenge is not simply deploying IP technology; it's maintaining service continuity while modernizing networks that have been in place for decades. Most operators need to support existing services and customers throughout the transition. That's why many providers adopt approaches that allow legacy TDM services and modern IP networks to coexist during the migration process.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk maintains an extremely close relationship with Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr. Under Chairman Carr’s leadership, Musk’s rocket company has effectively been given carte blanche in its efforts to roll out its orbital Starlink broadband service to more Americans, a glaring conflict of interest that could have profound implications for society. That’s despite concerns over thousands or even millions of satellites cluttering our planet’s already extremely busy orbit and the environmentally damaging rocket launches that send them up. And the space-based network is already starting to experience some major strains — as some experts have long predicted. It’s a lesson some Starlink customers are finding out the hard way. SpaceX is now charging some users so-called “demand surcharges” of up to $1,500, simply because their address is within a high-demand area. “Starlink is too congested to handle meaningful load at scale so they’re quietly hitting people with $750-$1500 ‘demand surcharges,'” TechDirt‘s Karl Bode wrote in a recent post on Bluesky. Even worse, those who are trying to contest these charges are facing a “black hole,” since SpaceX doesn’t “invest in customer service.” The development highlights some considerable shortcomings that satellite-based internet has over physical broadband infrastructure back on the ground, including fiber.

Three AI trends are accelerating and colliding, forcing government, business and investors to rethink strategies in real time:

1. AI is getting bigger and better, both here and in China.
2. The U.S. government is scrambling to keep pace by creating a regulatory framework, perhaps with international reach.
3. Both America and China are considering blocking access to their best AI, in recognition of the rising stakes.

The explosive rise of truly autonomous agents is forcing Washington and Beijing away from light-touch oversight, transforming the global AI race from a commercial sprint into a national-security standoff.

While there is robust literature on the negative impact of adolescent device use on physical and psychological health, there is less research on the use of technology in the presence of others and its implications for key relationships. Known as “technoference” and “phubbing,” these device-based behaviors have only recently been examined in parent-child contexts. The present study investigated adolescents' perceptions of their primary caregivers' device-centric behaviors, the emotional appraisal of that behavior, and their association with the caregiver–adolescent attachment relationship. We hypothesized that adolescents' perceptions of less attentional availability would be associated with higher levels of insecure attachment. To test this, we validated the Device Attachment Interference Scale in a general population sample of U.S. adolescents. We also examined the association between DAIS scores and adolescent-reported attachment to a primary caregiver using the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures scale. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a unidimensional structure of the DAIS. Additionally, higher DAIS scores were consistently associated with greater insecure attachment (both anxious and avoidant) to both mother- and father-like figures. These findings highlight adolescents' perceptions of caregiver attentional availability in the context of device use as a potentially important relational context associated with attachment insecurity. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Oracle is touting changes to its plans for a massive 1,400-acre, 2+GW data center campus in New Mexico as it awaits a key permit for the project, hoping its new plan will be enough to win over regulators despite extensive public backlash against the project. The campus in question is Stargate’s $165 billion Project Jupiter data center, one of a series of super-campuses OpenAI and its partners are seeking to build around the world. Oracle is the tenant for the Project Jupiter campus in New Mexico. Project Jupiter’s plans initially called for the construction of a natural gas plant on the site to help power the massive facility. But that plan was scrapped in favor of Bloom Energy’s fuel cell technology after local leaders and the public strongly voiced concerns about emissions and water usage. Oracle’s development partner, Yucca Growth Infrastructure, is currently seeking an air quality permit for the revised plan from the New Mexico Environmental Department. Public comment on the plan closed  July 7. But before the comment window closed, Oracle published an op-ed, issued a blog, and publicly posted a letter to the Department in an apparent effort to show residents it is listening to them.

What happens when powerful technology becomes accessible to smaller broadband providers? Ian Oliver of Globema discusses the software, automation, and AI tools helping tier-two and tier-three internet service providers work smarter, design networks faster, and better serve their customers.