Ownership

Brightspeed’s yearslong nationwide fiber build-out created valuable assets but saddled the telecommunications company with roughly $11 billion of debt as it looks to secure fresh capital and sets itself up for a sale. The Apollo Global Management-backed broadband provider, which raised nearly $5.9 billion of capital over the last two years, is burning through cash because of the massive capital expenditures required to build out its fiber assets. Brightspeed plans to raise capital again this year th

Decades of mergers and acquisitions have reduced the number of major U.S. media companies to a handful of transnational conglomerates that dominate the production and circulation of news, film, television, sports, games, and other forms of media and culture. If Paramount Skydance acquires Warner Bros.

It wasn’t a surprise when Carolina West Wireless decided to sell its wireless business to Verizon. It’s the same old story for a lot of regional and rural carriers. It wasn’t always like this. Twenty or so years ago, smaller carriers raked in the dough from roaming revenues as larger carriers paid for their subscribers to roam onto their networks. But nationwide carriers slowly but surely expanded their coverage, encroaching on the regional operators’ territories, leaving little by way of roaming revenues.

One of the biggest things to emerge from Dish’s bankruptcy filing is EchoStar’s plan to sell Dish Wireless, with EchoStar acting as a stalking horse bidder, meaning it would set a minimum price for the assets. Under the plan submitted to the U.S.

Google lost its long-running fight against a €4.1 billion ($4.7 billion) European Union antitrust fine after the European Court of Justice said regulators were right to punish the company for abusing Android’s market power. The court ruled that Google’s earlier defeat against a European Commission penalty should stand.

Intrepid Fiber Networks announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Southern California fiber network of Ubiquity. The acquisition adds an established, in-service fiber-to-the-premises network across San Diego County to Intrepid’s growing California footprint and accelerates Intrepid’s open-access strategy in one of the nation’s fastest growing markets. The acquired network spans the communities of Solana Beach, Encinitas, Carlsbad and Oceanside in San Diego County, and contributes an asset base of over 35,000 fiber passings.

Comcast plans to separate its media and connectivity businesses, dismantling an earlier bet on combined entertainment and distribution in the face of intensifying competitive pressure. The cable and entertainment company, home to “Saturday Night Live,” “Law & Order” and Bravo, aims to complete a tax-free spinoff of NBCUniversal and Sky, establishing a pure-play media company.

Apparently, President Trump plans to nominate a tech critic and telecommunications lawyer, Adam Candeub, to lead the antitrust division at the Department of Justice. Candeub, the general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, was an author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a road map of policy conservative proposals created for the Trump administration. In his chapter for Project 2025 on the FTC, Candeub criticized big tech companies for impeding free speech online, listing “the interference of larg

Stanley Woodward, a top Justice Department official, has told antitrust enforcers he prefers they stop taking cases to trial and settle them instead. Some lawyers at the department interpreted the comments from the department’s third-ranking official as a directive to resolve any litigation against companies and avoid future litigation. Woodward, who now directly oversees antitrust enforcement, has said internally that he favors avoiding drawn-out, manpower-intensive litigation. Woodward’s posture could weaken the department’s ability to challenge anticompetitive mergers and could put settl

Another struggling rural carrier is shutting down. Carolina West Wireless struck an agreement to transition its wireless network to Verizon and will end its wireless services effective September 30, 2026. Terms were not disclosed. Based in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, Carolina West Wireless was formed 35 years ago and is owned by a partnership of Skyline Telephone and Surry Communications. The company provides wireless service across 11 western North Carolina counties.