Bloomberg

If Democrats are able to wrest control of the White House and Senate in November, dramatic changes could come to the Federal Communications Commission and US communications policy. Net neutrality would be the major issue revisited. A Democratic-controlled FCC might seek to re-establish a role for the FCC in ISP privacy regulation, especially if Congress does not enact a federal consumer privacy law covering ISPs.

[Ari Fitzgerald is a partner at Hogan Lovells]

Frontier Communications, the provider of telecom services in 29 states, is asking creditors to help craft a turnaround deal that includes filing for bankruptcy by the middle of March. Company executives including Bernie Han, Frontier’s new chief executive officer, met with creditors and advisers and told them the company wants to negotiate a pre-packaged agreement before $356 million of debt payments come due March 15. Frontier has been in talks with advisers about possible solutions to its $17.5 billion debt load, which has become a heavy burden as people stop using landlines.

States suing to block T-Mobile's proposed acquisition of Sprint urged the federal judge overseeing the landmark antitrust trial not to defer to the Trump administration’s approval of the $26.5 billion deal. Lawyers for NY and CA, which are leading the lawsuit for the states, said in a filing late Jan 8 that the deal’s approval by the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t carry any special weight and should be ignored by the judge.