Read the fine print of the Charter-Cox merger and you find a number the California Public Advocates Office put in the record — one the FCC's general competition analysis passed over: 16,485.
That's how many California locations where Charter and Cox are the only two providers offering gigabit speeds — the only two, at 65% of the 25,503 places their footprints overlap. The California Public Advocates Office put that in the record. The FCC read it and called the competition concerns "unpersuasive."
Welcome to a week where three government bodies each rewrote what's in your shopping cart, and each dressed the restriction up as a gift.
Think of it as a three-envelope delivery from the state. Envelope one: a drone you already own may become the last one of its kind you can legally buy. Envelope two: a broadband bill that just quietly lost its only rival. Envelope three: an app-store "fee cut" that somehow isn't a cut to zero.
All three landed within days. All three were sold to you as wins for competition or security. All three shrink your actual choices.
All three were sold to you as wins for competition or security. All three shrink your actual choices.
Last week in this space, we tracked the FCC decoupling drones and robot vacuums from the US market — new foreign models blocked on a going-forward basis, with your existing gear left alone. That was the reassuring version. This week the reassurance evaporates.
The FCC is now going after drones it already approved. A new proposal would block imports of "military grade" hardware — a definition broad enough to cover any drone with LiDAR navigation, thermal imaging, or the ability to dispense "economic poison," meaning pesticides.
Here's what "military grade" means in practice: it bans the DJI Air 3S, PCMag's top-rated camera drone. It bans the Avata 360, the best drone for spherical imaging. It bans the Mini 5 Pro.
The earlier ban only touched future releases. This one reaches backward.
DJI understands exactly how that lands, which is why it's emailing enterprise customers to lobby the FCC before the September 2 comment deadline. The line that matters: "You could keep flying the drones you already own—but replacing or expanding your fleet with the same models may no longer be an option."
Read that twice. The gear on your shelf still flies. But when a motor wears out — and drones have moving parts that wear out — you can't buy the same model again.
The security rationale here has an odd shape. The government wrote a 2024 law requiring a security audit of DJI before December 23, 2025. Then, as PCMag reports, it became clear the government had little interest in performing the audit. No audit, no findings — just the Covered List.
The people who'd actually pay are on the record. The Ohio Law Enforcement Drone Association told the FCC that even where a domestic alternative exists, "it may not be functionally equivalent, immediately available, compatible with existing infrastructure, or affordable to a small or rural agency."
A Colorado search-and-rescue volunteer put it plainer: public-safety agencies shouldn't have to "sacrifice capability, pay dramatically higher prices, or replace effective equipment simply because a commercially available drone happens to contain a sensor that can also be useful to the military."
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's framing is "onshoring." The bans, he says, keep the US from becoming "overly dependent" on foreign supply chains: "now is the time to onshore a lot of the investment."
Decode that for your budget. "Onshore" means the American-made alternative — one that, by the drone operators' own testimony, often costs more and does less. The security story is really a price-and-capability story you're being asked to eat.
Now to envelope two, where the logic runs backward. The FCC blessed Charter's $34.5 billion purchase of Cox — a deal that makes Charter, operating as Spectrum, the largest home internet provider in the country, ahead of Comcast.
The stated reason it's fine: Charter and Cox don't really compete, because cable companies operate in separate franchise territories. "They compete directly against each other only at a very small number of locations," the FCC wrote.
Except the number isn't small where it counts. At those 16,485 California locations, the two companies are the only gigabit game in town. Merge them, and those customers go from two providers to one — a monopoly, by definition, for high-speed service.
The FCC's answer is that fiber, fixed wireless, and satellite will keep prices honest. That's the load-bearing assumption. Public Knowledge's John Bergmayer notes the contrast: in 2016, the FCC approved Charter buying Time Warner Cable only after imposing conditions on data caps, usage-based pricing, and paid interconnection. This time, the agency decided those concerns "no longer apply."
Bergmayer's sharper line: the Carr FCC "did not require Charter to do anything it wasn't already planning to do."
Carr's own headline demand of merging companies wasn't broadband at all — it was ending DEI programs. The FCC approved the deal one day after Charter sent Carr a letter outlining how it would end DEI. Read the priorities in that sequence.
California, the last hurdle, extracted more than the feds did: $275 million in network upgrades, a $20 monthly low-income plan, 72-hour backup batteries. Real concessions. But the commissioners adopted the companies' preferred version over an administrative law judge's tougher one that would have added rural-deployment and low-income conditions. The merger's official name is now Cox, even though Charter is the buyer — a fitting touch for a deal where the fiction is doing the work.
Envelope three is the tidiest trick of the three, because it's dressed as a courtroom loss for Apple.
Epic won a single, specific victory: developers can link out to purchases outside the App Store. The point of that win was to escape Apple's toll. Apple's last-ditch move to avoid complying has failed.
So Apple filed its "compliance" plan. It proposes charging 15% on external, linked-out purchases for standard apps, 10% for partner programs and renewals, and 5% for Small Business apps.
Sit with that. The whole prize was the right to route a payment around Apple's cut. Apple's response is a cut on the routed-around payment.
Epic's position is that the correct number is zero. It has vowed to appeal any value above 0%. Which means the "loss" Apple suffered is still, for now, a revenue stream — a toll reinstated at the door Epic pried open.
So here's the buyer's playbook, because that's what actually matters.
If you rely on a DJI drone with LiDAR, thermal, or spray capability — the Air 3S included — treat your current fleet as finite. Comments close September 2; the docket already has over 1,000. Buy your spare or your expansion now, before importation stops, because "keep flying what you own" is not the same as "buy another."
If you're a Charter or Cox customer at one of those overlap addresses, understand that your two-provider choice is about to become one, and the FCC's price protection is a bet on satellite and fixed wireless, not a guarantee.
If you're a developer, don't budget as though linking out is free yet. Apple's proposed 5-to-15% stands unless Epic's appeal knocks it down.
Which is the one open question threaded through all three. DJI is suing the FCC, arguing it never got the chance to refute the security concerns. Epic has promised to appeal any nonzero fee.
The regulators have redrawn the map. Whether the courts redraw it back is the only thing not yet decided — and the only thing that might widen a choice all three rulings, whatever they claimed, quietly narrowed.