Fierce Network

Data center backlash is becoming an election issue that has political operatives worried AI data center growth is colliding with local power, permitting and public sentiment concerns Still, the hyperscale data center pipeline remains strong Data centers are so unpopular they could end up swinging elections, the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned in a memo obtained by Axios. The memo is focused on the Ohio Senate race between Republican candidate Jon Husted and Democrat Sherrod Brown.

OVHcloud’s data center strategy centers on reuse and retrofits, turning former offices, factories and industrial sites into cloud infrastructure OVHcloud’s Northern Virginia site earned local praise for its low community and environmental impact Redeveloped sites may offer a path for AI infrastructure growth as data center backlash grows The public at large has had it with data centers – so much so that a Fierce story from 2023 about the top 10 ugliest data centers in the world is suddenly...

Nokia's reported R&D retreat from China is the latest in a series of adjustments the vendor has made to shift focus to its faster-growing units The vendor has sold off other under-performing assets, including its FWA CPE unit to Inseego Nokia’s optical networks business is currently its crown jewel Nokia’s reported abandonment of its Chinese business is the latest in a series of pivots by the vendor, as it cashes in on what CEO Justin Hotard calls the “AI supercycle.” During Nokia’s second...

Lumen stopped providing wholesale phone services to a Nebraska CLEC, causing it to go out of business in several states Cable company Optimum is discontinuing broadband service in some rural areas And AT&T is trying to get out of its carrier of last resort obligations in California Telecom providers and cable companies are ditching areas where they no longer want to serve customers.

North America | 4-5 Nov | Times Square, New YorkFutureNet North America brings together telecom leaders shaping the Ffuture of connectivity with AI and automation. Hear insights from senior leaders at T-Mobile, AT&T, Comcast, EchoStar, Boost Mobile, Lumen Technologies, TELUS and more. | Meet the leaders shaping the future of telecoms in North America.

Mediacom Communications today announced that its local community network, MC22, will be rebranded as Mediacom Local. The new Mediacom Local brand reflects the company’s continued investment in local journalism and its commitment to providing communities with timely, relevant and trusted information. While the station’s name and visual identity will change, viewers can continue to expect the same dedication to local storytelling and community coverage that has defined MC22.

AT&T is betting on open AI models to control GenAI costs as usage surges from 8 billion to 45 billion tokens per day The operator is shifting older AI use cases from closed models to open alternatives Smart model routing is central to AT&T’s AI cost strategy, with cache-aware routing helping decide when to use open models or premium options AT&T is leaning hard into open AI models from American companies as it looks to keep AI costs in check despite rising usage, pursing a “tokenomics”...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – August 18, 2026 – According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, the Radio Access Network (RAN) market continued to stabilize in the second quarter of 2026. Worldwide RAN revenue increased modestly year-over-year (Y/Y), marking the third consecutive quarter of growth following more than two years of contraction.

Lightyear launched an agentic AI service that automate telecom quoting and installation for enterprise customers The Quoting Agent returned bids 30-50% faster while the Implementation Agent cut install times by five to 10 days Lightyear said it trained the agents on more than 2 million quotes across 1,200 carriers gathered since 2019 Lightyear on Tuesday launched an agentic AI platform that sources and install network services with far less human oversight than previously required, the...

· China still leads — but the real AI race is moving beyond AI · The Index measures who can turn AI into productive economic capability — and retain control over the infrastructure that makes it possible · The U.S. dominates frontier AI and compute — but ranks only tenth when the entire AI economy is measured There is certainly no shortage of rankings that tell us which companies and countries are winning at artificial intelligence. They are asking the wrong question.