Like GAFAM, US Telecom Industry Has Severe Debt Problem
Earlier this year: Biggest "AI Companies" (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft) Borrowed (Additional Debt) About $100,000,000,000 in a Year | In Case You've Missed It (ICYMI), Google's Debt More Than Doubled in a Year
Telecoms aren't typically covered here because we focus on software more than on hardware and infrastructure. Having said that, Charter Communications Inc is drowning in about 100 billion dollars... in debt, AT&T Inc is about 160 billion dollars in debt (it was more like 0.2 trillion dollars not too long ago), and Comcast Corp is about 100 billion dollars in debt. US telecoms all seem like a huge mountain of debt. These are just three. Suppose all the major telecoms have a combined debt of over a trillion dollars.
Why that high? This is Verizon's debt growing like mad:
Why does Wall Street assign to them ridiculous valuations? This is a bubble, it'll result in massive inflation. Here in the UK telecoms already uses the "Excuse of Hardware Costs" for sharp price surges. Maybe their real problem is true profitability. This was in the news only hours ago: "Rogers is offering voluntary departure packages to about half its workforce, while Microsoft plans a smaller buyout program for some US employees."
Same as Microsoft, layoffs sold as "voluntary departure packages" or "buyouts".
To quote: "Rogers Communications, one of Canada’s biggest telecom companies, is offering voluntary departure packages to about half of its roughly 25,000 employees, The Globe and Mail reported."
Telus Corp is also spinning out of control, debt-wise. Then you look at Bell and others.
Also see The US Telecom Cost-Cutting Imperative: $28 Billion by ’28 (they'll probably make up some story about "hey hi").
How long can banks and governments subsidise those companies or feed them with more debt (liabilities)?
As stated right at the very start, we don't often write about telecommunication because it's not our expertise and we're not financial gurus either. However, to paraphrase an associate, it may help to add below some of the links to articles about slop (not really "AI") being a bubble from recent weeks, including Cory Doctorow's old one from long ago.
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Make 2026 the Year of Thomas Paine
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Most venture capital deals are now AI - Pivot to AI
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Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh
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The Capital is Misaligned and the Crash is Coming
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What "AI" means now
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The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s 41-Year U.S. Debt Secret
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Saudi Arabia’s US Treasury holdings rise over 6% to $134.8bn in January
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When the dotcom bubble burst
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The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it
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United States Government Debt (see below, it keeps on growing fast)
It's hard to consider this "safe" or sustainable. They are kicking the can down the road and hope they can get away with it for a while longer (while police or population control become more sophisticated and aggressive). █
Judging by the Nvidia graphic in this article about faking novelty and knowledge ("How to Sound Like an Expert in Any AI Bubble Debate"), the whole thing is more or less reducible to a Ponzi scheme. To reproduce the one about the circular investments (financing of oneself in a loop):
And "there's a much ruder one out there too," as an associate notes.
