COMMENTARY Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, is facing a new round of financial scrutiny after The New York Times reported August 10 that he has drawn six-figure income for years from a cell tower company he co-founded in 2005 — one that landed a site on the grounds of a Frisco, Texas …
SpaceX’s terrestrial network has a timing problem: Nobody’s buying new phones
SpaceX’s plan to compete with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon runs into a market reality that has nothing to do with satellites, spectrum, or rooftop small cells: people are holding onto their phones longer than they have in years, at the exact moment SpaceX needs them to buy new ones. A network that requires new hardware, launching into a slumping upgrade …
Trump nominates FCC’s Thumann, NATE’s 2026 Regulatory Champion, to fill commission vacancy
President Trump nominated Danielle Thumann Severs, currently senior counsel to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, to fill one of two open seats on the five-member commission, the White House announced Friday. For an industry that spends considerable time navigating FCC wireline, public safety, and infrastructure policy, the nomination carries a detail worth flagging directly: Thumann Severs spent a year in the …
SpaceX wants to be a fourth major network, but it’s building around towers, not on them
SpaceX used its first earnings call as a public company this week to say out loud what the industry had been speculating about for months: it intends to build a terrestrial mobile network and go head-to-head with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told investors during the Q&A that the EchoStar spectrum “does have terrestrial components, so we …
24 hours to take down a cell site? EHT’s fundraising “investigation” doesn’t survive its own timeline
The Christian Post ran two stories on a Maryland Lutheran church’s rooftop cell site, an industry media outlet picked up the coverage, and then Environmental Health Trust published a triumphant press release on July 14 crediting its own “investigatory” work with getting the site removed — “one of the fastest, most gratifying results from an investigation in EHT’s history,” in …
31-year-old tower foreman killed in Minnesota cable strike; first industry fatality of 2026
A 31-year-old tower foreman died on July 15 after being struck by a transmission line his crew was removing from a 300-foot self-supporting tower in Castle Danger, Minnesota, ending what had been the safest year on record for the tower industry. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office received the call at 2:35 p.m. reporting a worker was struck by a cable …
AT&T loses bid to pause California’s copper service rules while lawsuit proceeds
A federal judge in California has rejected AT&T’s attempt to temporarily halt state rules requiring the company to keep providing basic telephone service, dealing the carrier a setback in its broader campaign to exit copper infrastructure nationwide. U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez of the Southern District of California denied AT&T’s request for a preliminary injunction on July 16, ruling from …
AT&T, Ericsson show cell towers can spot drones — interception is still somebody else’s job
AT&T and Ericsson demonstrated something with real security implications outside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX on Friday, July 10: standard 5G cell towers, already blanketing American cities, can detect and continuously track multiple drones in real time using nothing but software layered on equipment that’s already up there. What it does not do is stop one. This was a sensing …
AT&T to FCC: We won’t fix 600 copper outages — Here’s where they all happened, city by city
AT&T filed a 606-page application with the FCC on July 6, seeking emergency authorization to permanently suspend voice service at 600 locations across 16 states, rather than repair the copper facilities damaged at each site. Wireless Estimator reviewed the full exhibit, which lists every incident individually, and the underlying data tells a clearer story than the filing’s legal boilerplate does. …
Carrier capex says the money’s still there. Help wanted postings say the legitimate companies aren’t.
Across the wireless construction industry, a complaint has become too common to dismiss as isolated grumbling: legitimate wireless communications contractors say they can no longer compete with illegal 1099 crews and foreign nationals working outside U.S. labor law, who are underbidding compliant companies on price because they carry none of the costs — insurance, workers’ compensation, proper tax withholding, safety …
Westlake, Texas refuses to surrender: Town appeals fed’s order to grant cell tower permit to Vertical Bridge
The Town of Westlake, Texas — the wealthiest municipality in the Lone Star State — took another step this month in its ongoing fight against a federally ordered cell tower permit, filing its record excerpts with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on June 1 as the appeal moves into active briefing. The filing, lays out …
AT&T reports 90% drop in louisville copper theft, but Eastern Kentucky remains under siege
Copper wire theft in Louisville, Kentucky, has plummeted by 90% over the past year, according to AT&T — a dramatic turnaround the carrier credits to a sustained partnership between the city, law enforcement, and the telecom industry. But even as Louisville celebrates measurable progress, AT&T warns the problem has migrated east, where rural communities are paying a steep price in …
Supreme Court rules 8-1: The FCC has constitutional authority to fine telecommunications companies
The U.S. Supreme Court today handed the Federal Communications Commission a significant enforcement victory, ruling 8-1 that the agency has the constitutional authority to impose financial penalties on telecommunications companies through its in-house adjudication process — without first providing a jury trial. The decision, issued in the consolidated cases FCC v. AT&T and Verizon Communications v. FCC, resolves a years-long …
America’s Big Three carriers unite to kill wireless dead zones — but is this about coverage, or SpaceX?
In a move that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have announced that they have reached an agreement in principle to form a joint venture to eliminate wireless dead zones across the United States — with satellite technology at its core. The three carriers, which spend billions of dollars annually competing aggressively against …
AT&T’s $1.35 Billion Plano headquarters takes shape with its most visible feature a 280-foot corporate icon cell tower
When AT&T builds its new global headquarters in Plano, Texas, the first thing visible from miles away will not be a building. It will be a tower — an illuminated, AT&T-branded structure rising approximately 280 feet above the 54-acre campus at 5400 Legacy Drive, crowned by a globe-shaped cellular antenna bathed in the carrier’s signature blue. For an industry that …
$7.5M sewage spill, coverage fight, and contractor collapse expose fiber drilling risk as BEAD work surges
A Florida sewage spill tied to an AT&T fiber project is now at the center of two lawsuits—one seeking damages, the other seeking to avoid paying them—highlighting how a single underground strike can trigger a chain reaction of liability, insurance disputes, and contractor failure. In a complaint filed April 24, 2026, the City of Lake Worth Beach is seeking more …
AT&T points to organized crime behind copper theft surge as losses top $80 million
AT&T is no longer describing copper theft as a nuisance; it’s calling it something far more coordinated. In a recent corporate blog post, the carrier said it is seeing “clear evidence of organized crime” behind a growing wave of copper theft incidents impacting its network infrastructure across the United States. The shift in language signals that what was once viewed …
AT&T’s capex surge coupled with FirstNet signals where the real infrastructure build is in 2026
For wireless infrastructure contractors who have spent the past three years watching carrier capex decline and work slow, this week’s FirstNet announcement deserves a close read. AT&T and the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a $2 billion agreement in principle to expand and upgrade FirstNet, America’s dedicated nationwide public safety broadband network, though only $1 billion represents new money from …
Mike Rowe quits PureTalk after learning its network is built on the backs of underpaid tower crews
Mike Rowe, the nation’s most recognizable champion of skilled trades and PureTalk’s lead spokesperson, has abruptly terminated his relationship with the mobile carrier after a Reddit post and a chance encounter with a tower crew exposed what he described as “two uncomfortable truths I can’t unknow” — one about the company he represented, and one about the industry that makes …
Kiss Cam love story ends the moment Verizon’s terms were unveiled last night
For approximately 12 seconds yesterday, the telecom contractors industry achieved something remarkable: everyone looked happy. AT&T and Verizon executives had invited NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association’s directors and administrators to a Washington Nationals game, a gesture of appreciation following the much-discussed framework agreement among the carriers, NATE, and the FCC. Under the stadium lights, it looked like progress had …
