Brian Fung

As the Justice Department prepares for a legal showdown with AT&T over its $85 billion bid for Time Warner, analysts are debating whether the acquisition has potential harms for consumers and business competition that could sink the deal in court. One central concern at Justice is that AT&T could seek to deny other providers of TV and Internet, such as Comcast and Verizon, access to Time Warner's programming, and that it could prevent the rise of new technologies aimed at delivering content to consumers. Time Warner owns a substantial library of content. Under AT&T's control, th

Comcast and Verizon have both asked the Federal Communications Commission to make clear that the FCC's new policy on network neutrality — which could be put to a vote as early as Dec — will preempt state and local regulations that might read differently. The request marks the industry's latest step to weaken federal rules that regulate broadband companies like legacy telephone companies. The broadband industry fears that even if the FCC succeeds in deregulating, states could take steps “countermanding” the federal agency's decision, according to the Verizon white paper.

Despite some onlookers calling him — or her — a hero, the anonymous Twitter employee who pulled the plug on President Donald Trump's Twitter account before leaving the company may want to lawyer up, according to experts on computer law. Whether or not Twitter pursues legal action against its former worker, federal officials could be motivated to prosecute — if only to deter future cases, analysts say.

The biggest corporate acquisition of the year is inching closer to resolution. With President Donald Trump's top antitrust official, Makan Delrahim, getting up to speed in his new job, many analysts predict the Justice Department could rule on AT&T's purchase of Time Warner in a matter of weeks. At this point, it seems, things could go either way. The Justice Department is still talking to the companies involved, as well as outside parties, to try to understand how the deal could affect competition.

There's a huge court case you need to hear about. It might not be on your radar yet because, frankly, some of it gets pretty technical. But the outcome is likely to have enormous repercussions for online privacy, net neutrality and the economy. For months, policymakers have been struggling with the implications of this case, FTC v. AT&T, in part because it overturned about a century's worth of established legal practice and also, analysts say, because it appeared to open a wide loophole that businesses might use to evade most federal oversight. On May 9, the federal appeals court responsible for the ruling announced that it has agreed to rehear the case, potentially opening the door to a different result. Here's everything you need to know.

Maybe you've heard: Charter Communications is teaming up with Comcast. The two cable companies are working together to protect their nascent cellphone businesses from huge, national providers — such as Verizon and AT&T — by largely refraining from going after each other. Under the deal, Comcast and Charter have temporarily agreed not to take actions that could compromise each other's new offerings, such as selling mobile-phone service to consumers outside their respective cable footprints or trying to buy up existing cellphone carriers such as Sprint or T-Mobile.

Essentially, it's a deal by cable giants to shield their early investments in an industry they're just beginning to explore. But this detente, while it may seem like a small announcement, has some important implications for cellphone service, television and online media. Here's why it's such a big deal.

In its bid to blow up the nation’s cellular industry a half-decade ago, a company named LightSquared proposed something no wireless carrier had done before: It vowed to build America’s first retail cellphone network using airwaves traditionally reserved for orbiting satellites. After a multiyear restructuring during which LightSquared’s owner and top investor — the embattled hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone — stepped aside, the company has re-emerged. It has a new name — Ligado — and even grander ambitions.

If it succeeds, Ligado will be well-positioned to control a massive chunk of the industrial market for connected devices, a market that Morgan Stanley thinks will be worth $110 billion a year by 2020. Ligado is promising not only to build the world’s first wireless network using ground-based airwaves that had long been considered unsuitable for cellular use, but it’s also planning to join that capability with a satellite hovering above North America.

A federal appeals court has said it will not rehear a landmark case looking to overturn the government’s rules on network neutrality. May 1's decision by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit allows its previous ruling upholding the regulations to stand — and paves the way for opponents of the rules to appeal to the Supreme Court.

“I'm super excited,” said Daniel Berninger, one of the critics who in 2015 sued the Federal Communications Commission, which wrote the rules. “When we get to the Supreme Court, we want to be saying [to a largely conservative bench] this is a severe case of government overreach.” If the Supreme Court agrees to take the case, it could hear oral arguments spring 2018, said Berninger, who intends to file his appeal within 90 days.

They've raised prices. They've slowed speeds. But despite their best efforts, the country's biggest cellphone carriers have been unable to kill off the unlimited data plan. Now they're discovering something else: Unlimited data is extremely popular. And it might just be the thing that saves them in an increasingly cutthroat market for wireless services.

After years of trying to shift customers to plans with monthly data caps, companies such as AT&T and Verizon have begun heaping praise on their newest unlimited data plans as consumers have flocked to them. The plans were once common in the industry. But telecom giants stopped selling them as consumer demand for data grew. Many unlimited customers found themselves signing onto metered plans when prices rose, or abandoning their unlimited plans after running into speed limits. Eventually, the number of those on grandfathered unlimited plans dwindled to a handful. In 2015, just 1 percent of Verizon's customers were on unlimited plans.

Verizon has launched a faster version of its FiOS Internet service that can reach download speeds of up to 940 Mbps per second. By taking the leap into “gigabit” service, Verizon is becoming the latest company to compete with Comcast, Google Fiber and others at that speed tier.

The product, known as FiOS Gigabit Connection, is available now in eight US markets on the east coast, including New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia (PA), Richmond (VA), Hampton Roads (VA), Boston (MA), Providence (RI), and Washington (DC). It costs $70 a month as a stand-alone product or $80 if purchased as part of a triple-play bundle, according to the company. Those prices are comparable to that of Google Fiber.