Joshua Jamerson

A $14 billion federal program to increase access to high-speed internet faces an early hurdle: The people who need it most are the hardest to reach because they aren’t online. The roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that President Biden signed last November includes $65 billion to build up the country’s broadband network—a need 

Facebook said it would hire 3,000 more staffers to review content in an attempt to curb violent or sensitive videos on its site without scaling back its live-streaming tools. The planned hires, announced by Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, are in response to the Facebook posting of such violent videos as one in April showing a Cleveland (OH) man fatally shooting another man.

Zuckerberg’s proposed fix, which would increase Facebook’s roster of 4,500 reviewers by two-thirds over the next year, addresses the amount of time it takes Facebook to remove graphic content, as opposed to preventing its site from being used to display such content. The Cleveland video was up for roughly two hours; the Thailand video stayed up for 24 hours.

Windstream Holdings, Inc. and EarthLink Holdings Corp. agreed to a $673 million all-stock merger, combining the network service providers as they look to trim costs amid declining revenue.

Windstream—which provides cloud computing, broadband and voice services—said it expects to issue roughly 93 million shares to complete the deal. EarthLink also provides cloud networking as well as other network services. The companies said the deal is valued at about $1.1 billion including debt. Upon closing of the transaction, expected in the first half of 2017, Windstream shareholders will own 51% of the combined company and EarthLink shareholders will own 49%. The companies believe the increased scale of a combined company—which will keep the Windstream name—will give it the leverage to compete while cutting more than $125 million in annual operating and capital expenses through synergies.

CenturyLink said it plans to sell its data centers and colocation business to a consortium led by BC Partners for $2.3 billion, which it will use in part to fund its planned tie-up with Level 3 Communications. Under the terms of the agreement announced, CenturyLink has agreed to sell the data centers and colocation business for $2.15 billion in cash. It will also receive a $150 million minority stake in the consortium’s new global secure infrastructure company.

CenturyLink recently reached a $25 billion cash-and-stock deal to buy Level 3. The deal would turn CenturyLink—which has grown from a small Louisiana phone provider by scooping up the former Qwest and Sprint’s landlines—into an even more corporate-focused service provider. The combined company would also keep millions of home Internet subscribers, most of whom use slower digital subscriber lines.