Shalini Ramachandran

The Environmental Protection Agency sent letters requesting telecommunications companies to meet with the agency about their lead-sheathed phone cables, in a new phase of an investigation in the EPA’s efforts to protect the public from potential lead hazards.

For decades, AT&T, Verizon, and other firms dating back to the old Bell System have known that the lead in their networks was a possible health risk to their workers and had the potential to leach into the nearby environment. They knew their employees working with lead regularly had high amounts of the metal in their blood, studies from the 1970s and ’80s show.

Americans in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas get slower broadband speeds even though they generally pay similar monthly prices as their counterparts in wealthy and urban areas. The country’s biggest broadband provider charges more in markets without competition. Most people don’t have a choice. These are among the findings of an analysis of America’s internet bills.

The Federal Communications Commission’s nearly decade-old program, Measuring Broadband America, is the US government’s gauge of whether home internet-service providers are holding up their end of the bargain when they promise users certain speeds. Companies wield tremendous influence over the study and often employ tactics to boost their scores, according to interviews with more than two dozen industry executives, engineers and government officials.

The Wall Street Journal studied the internet use of 53 of our journalists across the country, over a period of months, in coordination with researchers at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. Our panelists used only a fraction of their available bandwidth to watch streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube, even simultaneously. Quality didn’t improve much with higher speeds. Picture clarity was about the same. Videos didn’t launch quicker.

Apparently, Comcast and Charter will announce a wireless partnership, agreeing not to make a material merger or acquisition in wireless without the other’s consent for one year.

That agreement could stoke Wall Street speculation among investors and analysts that the two largest U.S. cable companies together could decide to make a play for a carrier like T-Mobile US or Sprint. Neither company as a single entity could buy another wireless carrier for that time period as a result of that agreement without the other’s blessing or involvement.

Apparently, Verizon Communications is exploring a combination with Charter Communications that would unite two giants in search of growth in a rapidly consolidating media and telecom landscape, according to people familiar with the matter. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has made a preliminary approach to officials close to Charter, which has a market value of more than $80 billion. Verizon is working with advisers to study a potential transaction, the people said. There’s no guarantee a deal will materialize.

It is unclear whether Charter executives, including Chief Executive Tom Rutledge, would be open to a transaction. The effort could be complicated by Charter’s ownership structure, which includes cable tycoon John Malone and the Newhouse family. A combination would bring together Verizon’s more than 114 million wireless subscribers and what remains of its landline business with Charter’s cable network, which provides television to 17 million customers and broadband connections to 21 million. Verizon has a market capitalization of $194 billion and more than $100 billion in debt.

AT&T’s practice of exempting its streaming video services from data-usage caps is rankling competitors and shaping up as a major issue for regulators set to weigh the company’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner.

When AT&T rolls out its $35-a-month DirecTV Now online TV service, its wireless subscribers will be able to stream as much as they want without it counting toward their monthly data caps. But if the same customers binge on outside services like Netflix or Hulu, those bits will add up—potentially leading to surcharges. Streaming services are likely to press regulators to scrutinize the practice—known as “zero rating”—in their review of the AT&T-Time Warner deal, people familiar with the matter said. TV networks that have streaming apps, like CBS and ESPN, also may have a stake in the matter. Several companies are likely to argue that AT&T’s DirecTV Now approach is anticompetitive, and will push for conditions on the merger, the people say.

Some Federal Communications Commission staffers already view AT&T’s DirecTV Now exemption as an example of improper zero-rating, people familiar with the situation said, because it disadvantages AT&T’s streaming rivals. The agency is considering how to address zero-rating and whether to raise it as a merger issue, the people said. Other options the agency is weighing include industrywide guidelines on zero-rating.

Two months ago, AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson stopped by Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes’s offices in New York for a lunch of salmon, while musing about the increasing convergence of the media and telecommunications industries. During their lunch, Stephenson surprised Bewkes by suggesting that AT&T buy Time Warner, apparently. Bewkes said it wasn’t for sale, but at the right price he would consider an offer, apparently, signaling that a deal was possible.

Stephenson walked away with his mind swirling with the possibilities that Time Warner’s premium content—top brands such as HBO, CNN and Warner Bros.—could bring to the streaming video service he was trying to build. “If you were ever going to do something like this, this is the content you’d like to use as an anchor tenant,” he said. From that point forward, things proceeded at breakneck speed, culminating in the biggest deal of the year as AT&T announced it was buying Time Warner for $107.50 a share—a 36% premium to where its stock was trading before the news of a deal started to trickle out during the week of Oct 17.

AT&T’s blockbuster deal promises to reshape the media landscape—if the companies can navigate a series of obstacles, including possible opposition from US antitrust authorities and objections by lawmakers and media and telecom rivals.

Even before the deal was announced, members of Congress, industry groups and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump began to question it, contending the combination of AT&T’s millions of wireless and pay-television subscribers with Time Warner’s stable of TV networks and programming would limit competition and hurt consumers. Trump said if elected he wouldn’t approve the deal “because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called on the Administration to block the merger. Sen Tim Kaine (D-VA), the Democratic nominee for Vice President, said he shared the “concerns and questions” raised by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) that the deal could lead to higher costs and fewer choices. “Pro-competition and less concentration, I think, is generally helpful, especially in the media.” The Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission both declined to comment.