Comcast exited 2022 with several thousand fewer employees than it had the year prior, but cable rival Charter Communications significantly expanded its own workforce over the same period. The changes highlight the different approaches the operators are taking to cut costs and drive efficiency as macroeconomic challenges mount. It’s not necessarily a surprise that Comcast’s employee count dropped given the operator confirmed layoffs in its cable field organization and media divisions in recent months. But the scale of those cuts was hitherto unclear. According to its most recent 10-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Comcast ended 2022 with 186,000 total employees, including 73,000 in its Cable Communications division. Those figures were down from 189,000 and 79,000 as of the end of 2021. However, its NBCUniversal division gained 3,000 employees, jumping to 77,000 from 74,000 the year prior. Charter, meanwhile, apparently took a very different approach in the face of uncertainty. The operator ended 2022 with 101,700 employees, an increase of 8,000 from 93,700 at the end of 2021.

In his first State of the Commonwealth address in January 2020, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) asked lawmakers to address some stark realities. At the time, Kentucky was the third poorest state by per capita income and over 1 in 5 children in the state lived in poverty. The state ranked in the top eight of states in terms of hunger. Kentucky had some of the highest child abuse and neglect rates in the country. The state ranked 45th in the country for adults with high school diplomas. The state incarcerated its own people at one of the highest rates in the U.S. and in the world. "To attract the jobs of the future, we must invest in three areas: infrastructure, workforce training, and most importantly, education," declared Gov. Beshear. That included "coming together to chart our future to ensure every area of the state has high-speed internet." 

I want to share some broad observations about the Internet’s dominance—and in particular, the dominance of the biggest digital platforms—over our economy, our society, and our democracy. It’s easy to forget how different the world was just 20 years ago. At the time, General Motors topped the Fortune 500 list. Apple was 285 on that list, and Amazon didn’t even make the cut. Twitter was still an idea somewhere in the recesses of Jack Dorsey’s head. Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t old enough to vote, even though he’d likely already acquired the undeveloped view of the First Amendment that he holds to this day. No one on this planet had ever heard of Gmail, or YouTube, or TikTok. That was only 20 years ago, but it might as well have been 200. Today, Americans spend over two hours a day on social media—more time socializing online than in-person. The average TikTok user in our country spends over 80 minutes a day on the app—that is three weeks of every year. I’d say speaking as a parent and a citizen, you could probably learn almost anything but Mandarin if you focused on it three weeks out of the year. We are using that for TikTok. Facebook now hosts 2.7 billion “friends”—half a billion more souls than Christianity. Twitter has fewer followers, of course, than Facebook, but those followers include every single politician, every journalist, every TV producer in America—withering our political debate to 280 characters and to those effervescent posts. In just two decades, a few companies have transformed much of humanity’s daily life. How we amuse ourselves. How we discover, learn, and shop. How we connect with friends, family, and our elected representatives. How we pay attention. How we glimpse our shared reality, or how we don’t. This transformation is a staggering testament, of course, to American innovation. And we can all think of a dozen ways these platforms have improved our lives. But this dramatic shift from our analogue to our digital human existence has never been guided — or even informed, I would argue — by the public interest. It’s always been dictated by the unforgiving requirements of a few gigantic American enterprises and their commercial self-interest.

Fixed wireless and fiber provider Rise Broadband has been acquired by private equity firm GI Partners – a move that will propel Rise’s fiber-to-the-home deployments in the rural US, the companies said. GI Partners and Rise aim to “execute a multi-year, fiber-based network expansion effort,” according to Brendan Collins, managing director and co-head of GI Data Infrastructure. The firm said it will also invest “meaningful new capital” for the rollout and to improve Rise’s customer experience. Rise provides fixed wireless service to 16 states across the Midwest, Rocky Mountains, and Southwest US, including Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin. Residential fixed wireless plans range from 25 Mbps to 50 Mbps, with some locations having access to speeds up to 100 Mbps. As for fiber, Rise offers gigabit service in 11 markets, mostly in Texas but also in Maroa, Illinois. Rise is also one of only 11 fixed ISPs that cover more than 5% of the US population, per the Federal Communication Commission's 2022 Communications Marketplace Report.