While the Trump administration has paused the most extreme of its proposed tariffs for now, they're still having a negative effect on the economy, S&P Global Warnings said Thursday. “We expect the PC and smartphone sectors will be most affected … while hardware issuers that focus on server, storage, and networking equipment products will be less affected,” S&P said. IT spending growth “will slow to 5%-7% in 2025 compared to our previous forecast of 9%.”
Carrier groups urged the FCC to move cautiously as it updates its Part 36 separations rules, which haven’t seen a major overhaul for more than 35 years. The rules remain important for many small providers, they noted in comments due Wednesday in docket 80-286. The FCC also has the ongoing “Delete, Delete, Delete” proceeding, which is examining eliminating rules of all kinds (see 2504140046 and 2504140063).
AT&T CEO John Stankey warned Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could hurt the carrier, echoing Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg on Tuesday (see 2504220033). Unlike Verizon, which lost postpaid phone subscribers in Q1, AT&T reported 324,000 postpaid phone net adds in the quarter, buoyed by FirstNet.
Apple and Meta violated the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Commission said Wednesday in its first noncompliance decisions under the measure. It hit Apple with a $568 million (500 million euros) fine and Meta with $227 million (200 million euros). Neither company commented immediately.
Changes wrought by President Donald Trump’s return to the White House are already affecting telecom industry financials. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg noted the risks from tariffs on a call with analysts Tuesday after the company released Q1 results. The nation’s largest wireless provider reported a net loss of 289,000 monthly prepaid phone subscribers in the quarter, after adding 568,000 in Q4 2024.
The U.S. trade war and resulting geopolitical tensions are a short-term not a long-term worry, a trio of satellite executives said Wednesday during a panel discussion. They were also bullish about their prospects in the face of competition from SpaceX and, soon, Amazon's Kuiper.
The U.S. reliance on tariffs should have minimal impact on most fiber broadband equipment pricing and deployments, Dell'Oro Group's Jeff Heynen wrote Monday. Key U.S. fiber broadband equipment providers have onshored most of their manufacturing and assembly so they can qualify for BEAD's Build America Buy America provisions, he said. Most commonly deployed components have already been self-certified by vendors and seen big increases in domestic manufacturing.
Global smartphone shipments increased 1.5% year over year in the first three months of 2025, despite potential headwinds looming, IDC said Monday. Shipments rose to 304.9 million units, said an IDC report, which came after a confusing weekend for smartphones and the Trump administration's China trade policy.
The USF's future is one of the biggest issues for Competitive Carriers Association members, CEO and President Tim Donovan said in an interview. The organization is “cautiously optimistic” following U.S. Supreme Court arguments in the Consumers' Research case (see 2503260061), he said.
The FCC and FTC are moving toward trying to rein in what they see as overly broad applications of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and to reverse what their agency leaders call censorship by social media platforms. Agency watchers said they expect the FCC to issue an advisory opinion soon, though some see such an opinion as more performative than practical. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly said that addressing "the censorship cartel" is one of the agency's priorities (see 2411210028). His office and the FTC didn't comment. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez has been critical of the possibility of a Section 230 advisory opinion (see 2502240062).