Ownership

Frontier Communications CFO Scott Beasley knows a thing or two about finance. After all, he’s spent the past four years guiding the operator from bankruptcy to not only profitability but a $20 billion acquisition by telecommunications giant Verizon. As the data center industry rolls full steam ahead into a high-cost building boom, he’s got some words of wisdom: look into asset-backed securities. Unlike other funding vehicles, ABS use income-generating assets as collateral. ABS vehicles have historically been used by tower companies to raise money for new projects.

T-Mobile said it modified, changed and ended some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in its bid to receive regulatory approval for its deal with EQT for fiber operator Lumos.

Elon Musk's self-deal for his AI company xAI to acquire X, formerly Twitter, is the strongest sign yet that the AI business is devouring the social media world. Musk's move is a maneuver

AT&T is preparing a $5.5 billion bid for Lumen Technologies' consumer fiber operations. If that deal goes through, it would have significant implications for other players in the space—particularly T-Mobile.

Europe is proposing to fund a homegrown alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink, following US threats to switch off the dominant satellite company’s broadband services in Ukraine. In a boost to the bloc’s struggling satellite operators, the European Commission’s defence white paper said that Brussels “should . . . fund Ukrainian [military] access to services that can be provided by EU-based commercial providers.” Miguel Ángel Panduro, chief executive of Spain’s Hispasat, said that Brussels had asked his company, Eutelsat, and SES to present an “inventory” of services for Ukraine.

Apple has suffered a blow in its efforts to salvage its lucrative search placement deal with Google. A new ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals affirms that Apple cannot participate in Google's upcoming antitrust hearing, which could leave a multibillion-dollar hole in Apple's balance sheet. The judges in the case say Apple simply waited too long to get involved. Google pays Apple $20 billion a year to secure placement as the default search provider in the Safari desktop and mobile browser. The antitrust penalties pending against Google would make that deal impermissible. 

Ever since Donald Trump bumped Brendan Carr up to chair of the Federal Communications Commission in November 2024 (after naming him a commissioner during his first term), Chairman Carr has attacked the country’s media, entertainment and even tech giants with a cool fury, threatening their business and, critics say, attempting to bully them into more favorable coverage of the President. Historically concerned with the sundry matters of broadcast licenses and station fines, the FCC hardly would seem like the centerpiece of a major media-suppression effort.

Within the Trump administration’s Defense Department, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocketry is being trumpeted as the nifty new way the Pentagon could move military cargo rapidly around the globe. In the Commerce Department, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will now be fully eligible for the federal government’s $42 billion rural broadband push, after being largely shut out during the Biden era. At NASA, after repeated nudges by Mr. Musk, the agency is being squeezed to turn its focus to Mars, allowing SpaceX to pursue federal contracts to deliver the first humans to the distant planet.

Elon Musk’s Starlink is set to cement its dominance of the satellite internet market with a surge in revenues in 2025, but the world’s richest man’s ties to President Donald Trump are shifting from an asset to a hindrance in Starlink's global rollout. The billionaire’s SpaceX group is engaged in talks to rapidly bring the service to countries with 1 billion potential new users, including holding negotiations with Turkey, Morocco and Bangladesh, while making progress towards regulatory approval in other vast markets such as India.

President Donald Trump fired the only two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, handing the remaining Republican commissioners exclusive control over the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection laws and serves as the U.S. government’s primary regulator of the tech industry. FTC  Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter announced their dismissals on the social media site X, with both calling their firings illegal.