Tuesday Bytes: Verizon, 123NET, Texas

A bit of AI, a bit of last mile fiber, and a regulatory hurdle:

Verizon has tapped Google Cloud to bring AI to the enterprise space. The two have signed a new strategic partnership that Verizon hopes to leverage in meeting the needs of both consumers and businesses around the country. They will be bringing Gemini Enterprise and related technologies to pretty much every conversation, and when it comes to customer experience I mean literally. But it also means more agent orchestration and employee productivity efforts.   The arrangement is an expansion of an existing relationship of course.

On the fiber front, 123NET has completed construction on its work in Michigan’s Allegan County, which is southwest of Grand Rapids. They have delivered 1,100 miles of fiber over the last 4 years to power connectivity to as many as 17K addresses. It was part of a $65M project by the county backed by Michigan’s ROBIN program. 123NET is still progressing on similar work in neighboring Ottawa County with 325 miles of new fiber.

And the resistance against AI and data center energy consumption is starting to have some financial teeth. Apparently BloombergNEF has now warned that Texas’ move to audit all the projects in its power interconnection queue may cost projects $15B, which is like real money. It’s not the only regulatory move lately in this vein, but it is probably the biggest, and of course has nothing to do with the political arena. Ok, yes it does, but the scale of all this has made that pretty much inevitable. AI has put such things in the spotlight, and it’ll only get more visible from here.

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