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Arkansas’ largest county wrote rules and refused to grandfather the first project. The Pulaski County quorum court voted 11 to 4 on Sept. 22 to adopt the county’s first data center regulations, the Arkansas Advocate reported Sept. 23. Large data centers are classified as heavy industrial uses requiring conditional use permits, with a 500-foot setback from residential property, noise limits, and required electrical load analyses, water and wastewater plans, land-use suitability studies and decommissioning plans with financial assurance. Applicants must show the project will not materially impair the utilities serving surrounding properties.

The rules set no cap on how much power or water a facility may use. They also decline to exempt AVAIO Digital’s planned $6 billion campus near Wrightsville, which was proposed before the ordinance and which coverage puts at 760 acres with potential draw above 1 gigawatt.

Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood, the lead sponsor, said she “did not think it was fair to let one company opt out on the rules just because they were first.” Wendell Griffen, a former circuit and appeals court judge now running for county judge, wrote the measure. County Judge Barry Hyde has seven days to veto it, according to the Advocate; KATV reported five days, and the two accounts cannot be reconciled from the coverage.

The air modeling for Spartanburg’s 457-megawatt permit used Greenville’s monitor. At a specially called meeting on Sept. 21, Spartanburg County Council members questioned the pollution monitoring behind the air permit South Carolina’s Department of Environmental Services issued Sept. 18 for the Valara data center on South Pine Street, Fox Carolina reported. Council members said the background air quality modeling relied on Greenville data rather than the T.K. Gregg Community Center monitor in Spartanburg, and that formaldehyde is not continuously monitored, with post-startup stack testing feeding monthly calculations instead. Public comment was not allowed at the meeting.

The 457 megawatts is permitted generating capacity and it decomposes. The permit adds about 409 megawatts across five 17-megawatt turbines and six 54-megawatt turbines, on top of 48 megawatts already permitted. Emission limits are 250 tons of volatile organic compounds on a rolling 12 months, 25 tons of hazardous air pollutants combined with none above 10 tons, and fine particulate at 35.88 pounds an hour.

Catherine Wannamaker, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, raised formaldehyde, particulate matter and residents’ health. Resident Al Schneider told the council that “meetings and inquiries should have taken place before one shovel of dirt was even turned over.”

Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, approved $314.5 million in tax breaks for a $3.2 billion campus. The Tuscaloosa County Economic Development Authority voted unanimously to approve incentives for Applied Digital’s Delta Forge 2 near Brookwood, the Birmingham Free Press reported Sept. 26. The package is $314.5 million in noneducational property, sales and use tax abatements over 20 years, alongside $270 million in community benefit payments over the same period, or $13.5 million a year, and a projected $131.5 million in education-related taxes.

The project is 210 megawatts of critical information technology capacity in an initial building of about 1.26 million square feet, on 160 acres of a 1,300-acre site. Construction was to begin in October 2026 with operations in 2028, at a peak construction workforce above 1,000 and more than 100 permanent onsite jobs. Neither report names the electric utility.

Colleton County, South Carolina, got its first proposal a week after writing the rules. Eagle Rock Partners presented plans for the Rhodes Technology Park at a Colleton County Economic Alliance public information session, Live 5 News reported Sept. 22. The proposal covers more than 1,200 acres west of Interstate 95 off Mount Carmel Road, inside the Digital Infrastructure Overlay District the county council created Sept. 15, and is described at 1,000 megawatts.

Partner Ken Loeber told residents, “This is a single-user large hyperscale campus. We do not yet know who the user may be.” Brantley Strickland of the economic alliance projected that by year four the county would pass a $100 million annual threshold. Resident Nancy Thomas asked what training program would exist for local young people. Coverage does not specify whether the 1,000 megawatts is information technology load or interconnection capacity.

Georgia Power and Google agreed to fund nuclear upgrades with a subscription fee. Large customers would pay a fee on top of their bills to fund upgrades at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and Plant Hatch near Baxley, receiving clean energy credits in return, the Georgia Recorder reported Sept. 24 from WABE and Grist. The work would add 96 megawatts of nuclear generating capacity and the companies project about $900 million in customer benefits over the units’ remaining life.

Aaron Mitchell, senior vice president of strategic growth at Georgia Power, and Lucia Tian, director of advanced energy technologies at Google, announced the arrangement. It requires approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission. No docket number appears in the coverage and no residential bill impact analysis was published.

California signed seven data center laws in one afternoon. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package on Sept. 21 covering electricity cost allocation, water disclosure and environmental review. Three bills shift grid infrastructure costs onto data center operators and bar shifting them to low-income customers: SB 1168 by Sen. Jerry McNerney, SB 886 by Sens. Steve Padilla and McNerney, and AB 2383 by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur. Three require disclosure of water use, supply, efficiency and drought planning to local governments and water suppliers: AB 2469 and AB 2619 by Assemblymember Diane Papan, and AB 1577 by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan. SB 887 by Padilla removes blanket environmental review exemptions.

Newsom said California has proven “we don’t have to sell out Californians or sacrifice our well-being” to succeed. The release contains no megawatt, water-volume or dollar figures, and the claim that the package is the most comprehensive in the nation is the governor’s own.

Chesterfield County, Virginia, cannot agree on what to do with the money. For the second straight meeting, the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors discussed how to spend expected data center revenue without reaching consensus, The Richmonder reported Sept. 24. A vote was pushed to Nov. 18. Proposals on the table include cutting the car tax from $3.25 to $1.79 per $100 of assessed value, addressing $185 million in school maintenance needs over the next decade, and raising fire staffing from three per shift to the standard four. Expected sales tax revenue is put at $1 billion over 20 years.

Supervisor Kevin Carroll of Matoaca said the revenue may be slower than expected. “Those data centers are not going to come out of the ground for a long time, because Dominion doesn’t have the energy to power them,” he said. Supervisor Jim Ingle of Bermuda said he is committed to giving “some relief to our citizens with that revenue.”

The suit in Effingham County, Georgia, has a name for the buyer and a second case beside it. The Southern Environmental Law Center filed suit Sept. 21 in Effingham County Superior Court on behalf of five residents and the group One Hundred Miles against the county industrial development authority, alleging Georgia Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act violations in a July board vote on the land sale, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Georgia Recorder reported. The buyer is identified in the filings as Octans Georgia. A separate suit brought earlier in September by three residents challenges the zoning changes before the county commission, and the two should not be conflated.

Zachary Hennessee, an SELC staff attorney, said Georgia’s public process rules “exist because communities should not learn about major decisions only after deals have been negotiated behind closed doors.” Eric Johnson, an authority board member and former state Senate leader, said of the process that if “we’d have put it out in front of the public, they’d have said, ‘No data center’ based on misinformation.” The project is announced at $20 billion on 1,440 acres, with 3.2 gigawatts of projected demand and a 15-year, 50% property tax abatement valued at roughly $900 million. Accounts differ on the floor area, at 4 million square feet in the Journal-Constitution and 4.4 million in Inside Climate News, and on the pledged community investment, at $85 million and $80 million.

A Senate candidate called for a temporary ban on new data centers in Mississippi. Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate challenging Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, called for a temporary halt to new data center construction conditioned on the facilities being self-funding and on greater transparency in their agreements, Mississippi Today reported Sept. 24. Seven data center projects are under construction in the state.

“The reality is, the consequences of data centers in Mississippi are already here. We’re seeing it in our power bills,” Colom said. Of the incumbent he said, “She refuses to provide any oversight.” The report notes $2 million spent by the Leading the Future super political action committee and cites the Walls turnout as evidence of the backlash.

The Sierra Club gave Entergy Mississippi an F. The organization’s annual Dirty Truth report graded utilities on retiring coal by 2030, avoiding new gas generation and building clean energy to replace fossil load by 2035, Mississippi Today reported Sept. 25. Entergy Mississippi received an F and Mississippi Power a C. American utilities received an F overall for the second consecutive year.

Entergy plans about 3,500 megawatts of new gas capacity by 2035, including three new 754-megawatt plants. Mississippi Power plans 548 megawatts. Entergy has a 100-megawatt solar plant online since 2022 and 3 gigawatts of renewables approved or pending. Holly Bender, the Sierra Club’s chief program officer, tied the expansion to artificial intelligence demand. The report connects Entergy’s buildout to Amazon data centers across central Mississippi.

Ten river states moved toward a compact on water exports. Leaders from 10 Mississippi River states announced plans for regulatory protections against data center water demand, Circle of Blue reported Sept. 22, following the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative meeting in Natchez on Sept. 18. Missouri passed strict out-of-state water export rules in 2025, and Minnesota, Mississippi and Louisiana have agreed to pursue similar legislation. Three more state commitments would allow a Mississippi River Compact to go to Congress.

Mississippi Sen. Derrick Simmons said the river corridor lacks the protections the Great Lakes have “yet the resources of our corridor are more fragile and have a larger global impact.” Louisiana Rep. C. Travis Johnson put water-intensive activities at almost 80% of his state’s economy. Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas are not named among the committed states.

Memphis residents filed a federal class action over the turbines on Sept. 23. Robert Carter and Sabrina Anderson filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Action News 5 reported Sept. 25. The complaint alleges that gas-fired turbines at the Southaven facility produce relentless noise and physical vibrations, and that the company went from three turbines to 69 between August and September 2025, which it characterizes as a 2,300% increase.

The suit brings five claims: private nuisance, public nuisance, negligence, negligence per se under Memphis noise ordinances, and trespass on the theory that noise waves and vibrations invade the property. It seeks an operational halt or significant noise reduction, compensatory damages for diminished property values and punitive damages, and demands a jury. The neighborhoods named are South Memphis, Whitehaven and Southaven. No decibel figures appear in the coverage.

The Justice Department asked a judge to pause the NAACP’s Clean Air Act case, citing national security. The department asked the court to stay the NAACP’s suit, which alleges the company ran turbines in Southaven without an air permit, pending the department’s own appeal, Action News 5 reported Sept. 25. The filing argues in favor of the company’s importance to national security. In June the department moved to intervene on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency and dismiss the case, the judge denied it, and the department appealed. Neither the court nor the judge is named in the coverage.

A Memphis moratorium would not reach the plant a mile away. The company’s DeSoto County operations keep expanding less than a mile from the Memphis city line, unaffected by the city council’s pending moratorium, the Daily Memphian reported Sept. 21. Reporter Samuel Hardiman described the site at 2875 Stanton Road in Southaven on Sept. 17, with buses shuttling workers, and wrote that the wind that day blew from the south, carrying emissions north into Whitehaven.

The Memphis City Council takes a final vote Oct. 6 on a revised 12-month moratorium. The city would continue accepting applications but would not process or approve them while a study committee develops permanent zoning rules, Action News 5 reported Sept. 25. Existing lawfully operating data centers are exempt if they do not expand building footprint, electrical demand, utility capacity or operational intensity. A companion regulation ordinance posted by the city defines a large data center as one with projected electrical demand of 20 megawatts or greater, or designed to reach that within 10 years.

Data centers became the attack ad in a Memphis congressional race. Three Star PAC, a Democratic-aligned committee, is running an advertisement against Sen. Brent Taylor, the Republican candidate in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, over data centers, the Tennessee Lookout reported Sept. 24. The ad says Taylor took more than $100,000 from data center companies and wrote Senate Bill 2128, and it says: “They’re coming for our rivers, our neighborhoods, our farmland, because Brent Taylor wrote the law allowing massive data centers to take over Tennessee.”

The committee’s own September poll puts district voters at 68% opposed to data centers and 32% in support, and a separate poll had Taylor leading Rep. Justin Pearson 48% to 44% before the advertisements ran. Three Star PAC reported $105,000 in receipts in the first half of 2026 and had spent $675 as of June 30. District 9 was split from a majority-Black urban Memphis district in a May special session.

The state will study brownfields for data centers, and the list that circulated has no Southside on it. Executive Order 22 directs the state energy department to study data center siting and identify locations that diversify economic benefits and minimize energy, water, land use, infrastructure and community impacts, with the study due in about 180 days. Cardinal News ran an inventory on Sept. 24 of sites that might qualify, compiled by founding editor Dwayne Yancey.

The sites named are in southwest Virginia’s coal counties, the former Radford Foundry, Danville’s White Mill, Roanoke’s former American Viscose plant, the Smith Gap landfill in Roanoke County at 94.5 acres, the former Kim-Stan landfill in Alleghany County at 30 acres, and the Central Virginia Training Center in Amherst County at 110 acres. No Petersburg, Richmond, Hampton Roads or Southside site appears on the list.

A hearing examiner heard argument on what the merger case is allowed to examine. Clean Virginia argued before State Corporation Commission Hearing Examiner Mathias Roussy on Sept. 22 for an order compelling NextEra to produce documents on alleged political conduct in Florida and on its failed bids for Santee Cooper and JEA, Virginia Mercury reported Sept. 23. Clean Virginia attorney Greg Habeeb said “the behavior of the party acquiring Virginia’s largest electric utility is clearly relevant.” Joseph Reid, for the joint petitioners, said the request would “turn this case into a mini trial” and that “it would be a circus.”

Figures in the record include $23.6 million NextEra spent on the Santee Cooper bid, $2.6 million on JEA, a $150 million settlement over alleged Florida ghost candidate activity, and more than 2,200 discovery questions already answered. No ruling had issued as of Sept. 23. The case is docketed as PUR-2026-00112 according to coverage. The commission’s own site could not be reached.

A statewide poll found most Virginians had heard nothing about the merger. Two outlets reported on the same Embold Research poll of Virginia voters, fielded Aug. 26 to 31 and commissioned by the Virginia Distributed Solar Alliance. Both give a margin of error around 3.2 points. WHRO and the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism reported 1,107 respondents on Sept. 25; The Center Square reported 1,017 the same day and named a second commissioning group. We could not resolve the discrepancy and are not printing a sample size.

In the WHRO account, about two-thirds say electric bills are too high, 80% name rising costs as a primary concern for lawmakers, 75% had heard little or nothing about the Dominion and NextEra merger, 36% opposed it and 59% were unsure. After hearing statements from both sides, opposition rose to 63% and uncertainty fell to 27%. In The Center Square account, 89% support requiring data centers to pay the full cost of the infrastructure built to serve them. Neither write-up contains a breakdown by race, region or income.

A Roanoke County project was confirmed as a data center, and the disclosure ban is why. The Wood Haven Technology Park project was confirmed as a data center developed by Clearview Dynamics on 94 acres, drawing water from Spring Hollow Reservoir, Cardinal News reported Sept. 22. The reservoir currently supplies 7.5 million gallons a day of an 18 million gallon capacity. Power and water requirements are not yet determined and due diligence runs through March 2027, with closing anticipated in October 2027.

The park is owned by Roanoke at 44.2%, Roanoke County at 44.2% and Salem at 11.6%. John Hull directs the Western Virginia Industrial Facility Authority. The disclosure follows Executive Order 22’s bar on state agencies signing nondisclosure agreements about proposed data center development.

Twenty-one cities told the FCC to leave local permitting alone. Industry groups and local governments filed sharply opposed comments in FCC docket 25-253, which proposes a 120-day shot clock and limits on local fees for wireline broadband permits, Broadband Breakfast reported Sept. 22. USTelecom asked for 60 days for standard applications and 90 for complex ones. Supporting the proposal: USTelecom, NCTA, NTCA, INCOMPAS, the Fiber Broadband Association, ACA Connects, WISPA, the Wireless Infrastructure Association and AT&T.

Opposing it: the National League of Cities, whose chief executive is Clarence Anthony, a coalition of 21 large cities including Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas, and state and local telecom regulators. Kathleen Slattery Thompson of USTelecom called local barriers “structural impediments that alter rational investment and construction decisions.” The league’s filing said its members “strenuously object to the portrayal of local permitting as an obstacle.” Local governments noted that under the 2018 federal shot clock for wireless, agencies met the deadlines only 50% of the time.

Civil rights groups asked for a Democratic nominee alongside the Republican one. Nine organizations wrote to the Senate Commerce Committee asking that Commissioner Anna Gomez be renominated alongside Danielle Thumann Severs, Broadband Breakfast reported Sept. 25. The signers are the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Urban League, the Hispanic Federation, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the ACLU, Common Cause, the Communications Workers of America, LULAC and UnidosUS. Their letter calls nominating a Republican without an accompanying Democrat “a breach of democratic norms.”

Separately, Sen. Ron Wyden asked Gomez on Sept. 25 for a legal opinion on whether the Communications Act permits the commission to operate with commissioners from only one party, warning that partisan actions could be overturned in court. If Thumann Severs is confirmed she becomes the third Republican, leaving Gomez the only Democrat. Thumann Severs was nominated Aug. 7.

A think tank told the FCC not to regulate broadband prices in its competition report. The Free State Foundation filed in the commission’s 2026 Section 706 report proceeding arguing against retail price caps, Broadband Breakfast reported Sept. 24. President Randolph May and Senior Fellow Joseph Kennedy wrote that “price regulation is not the answer for broadband affordability” and that this “is certainly not the time to renew efforts at rate regulation as the broadband marketplace becomes ever more competitive.” They cite a Comcast offering at $40 a month for 300 megabits per second and attribute $21 billion in BEAD savings to satellite competition. Christopher Ali of Penn State, on the other side, cites a $78 median monthly broadband bill.

Four state broadband directors said the second round will not finish the job. Directors from Washington, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio said the supplemental BEAD round excludes underserved locations and community anchor institutions, leaving gaps despite large unspent balances, Broadband Breakfast reported Sept. 23 from a summit in Milpitas, California. The distinction that governs eligibility is the 25/3 megabit threshold for unserved locations against the 100/20 threshold for underserved ones, and only unserved locations are in the supplemental round.

Jordan Arnold, Washington’s broadband director, said about 1,000 underserved locations in his state are excluded. “I’m just banging my head against the wall because that community desperately needs service,” he said. Projected remaining balances are $350 million in Washington, $300 million in Indiana and $340 million in Oklahoma. Peter Voderberg of BroadbandOhio said, “We want this money to stay in Ohio to benefit Ohio.” No Southern state was on the panel.

Louisiana said 52,000 more locations can now get service. The Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity said more than 52,000 homes and businesses gained broadband availability over six months, a 3.16% increase in the state’s total served locations against a 0.9% national average, putting Louisiana fourth nationally for proportional growth. The figures come from the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Data Collection reflecting availability as of December 2025.

The item went out by email on Sept. 22 and does not appear on the office’s own press release page, whose most recent posting is Sept. 16. No official is quoted by name. The fourth-place ranking measures growth rate, not the level of access.

North Carolina extended its satellite grant to Sept. 30. The Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity moved the deadline for its $1 million Broadband Satellite Resiliency Grant from Sept. 23 to 11:59 p.m. Sept. 30, the office announced Sept. 23. This corrects last week’s issue, which reported the program closing Sept. 23. State agencies, units of local government, volunteer fire departments and community anchor institutions including schools, libraries, community colleges and community centers may apply.

The money buys satellite equipment and installation and cannot be used for service subscriptions. Priority goes to organizations in the 39 counties in the Hurricane Helene federal disaster area and to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The funding is state money appropriated through the GREAT program, not BEAD and not BEAD non-deployment funds. This was the only item published by any of the nine state broadband offices during the week.

Eight of the nine broadband offices published nothing, for the second week running. Only North Carolina posted a news item between Sept. 21 and Sept. 27, and it was the satellite grant extension above. Louisiana sent one item by email that never reached its own news page. The other seven published nothing at all.

Tennessee’s broadband announcements page has not been updated since Nov. 13, 2024, which is nearly two years. Georgia’s broadband press release page carries nothing newer than July 2021, and the Georgia Technology Authority press release page reads “No press releases.” Mississippi’s BEAM last posted a day-dated news item in January 2024 and its most recent BEAD notice is from June 2025. Alabama last posted in March, Arkansas in June, South Carolina in June and Virginia’s broadband pages in November 2025.

None of the nine has published a supplemental eligible location list or opened a supplemental challenge window. Under the policy notice NTIA released Sept. 3, a state has seven days after completing its review to publish that list, then broadband providers, local governments and nonprofits get 30 days to challenge, then the state has 30 days to adjudicate with no rebuttal round.

Virginia’s own broadband grant has closed comments and announced nothing. The comment period on draft 2026 guidelines for the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative closed Sept. 18 and no application round has been posted. The draft adds a category of additional eligible use projects covering make-ready work, undergrounding, mandated relocation and disaster recovery infrastructure.

One in seven American households now depends on a phone for the internet. The share of households the Purdue Center for Regional Development classifies as mobile-dependent rose from 11.9% in 2019 to 14.1% in 2024, according to a report by Roberto Gallardo that the Benton Institute circulated Sept. 25. The report itself is dated August 2026, so the figure is not new this week.

The measure is a composite index rather than a single survey variable. It averages two overlapping percentages, households whose only internet is a cellular data plan and households whose only devices are mobile ones, and it is built from American Community Survey five-year estimates at the census tract level, covering 82,551 tracts in 2024. Households with no internet access at all fell from 17.6% in 2017 to 6.5% in 2024, while households relying solely on cellular rose from 7.5% to 11.5%. Disability, income, educational attainment and homeownership all predict mobile dependence. The report contains no state, county or racial breakdowns.

The 42% Universal Service Fund charge takes effect around today. The Federal Communications Commission proposed a fourth-quarter contribution factor of 42.0% on Sept. 14, up from 38.8% in the third quarter and the highest on record. A proposed factor is deemed approved 14 days after release absent commission action, which puts the operative date at roughly Sept. 28. The factor is charged against carriers’ projected interstate and international end-user revenues and is passed through to customer bills.

The announcement itself fell outside this coverage window and was reported in last week’s issue. The public notice carries the per-program demand figures, but fcc.gov could not be loaded, so they are not in hand.

Nothing moved on copper retirement, and the date is seven weeks out. No filing, order or coverage on copper telephone line retirement appeared between Sept. 21 and Sept. 27. The date still stands. AT&T’s discontinuation, approved automatically in January when the commission did not act within 31 days, affects roughly 90,000 customers across 18 states, more than 30% of the company’s copper footprint outside California, and could begin Nov. 15. Thirteen of those 18 states are Southern, including eight of the nine covered here.

Two senators asked for federal rules on license plate readers. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama wrote to Attorney General Todd Blanche seeking federal guidelines for automatic license plate readers and disclosure of how much federal money has been spent on them, the Georgia Recorder reported Sept. 23. Their letter says they are “deeply concerned about the misuse of ALPR systems and believe that appropriate safeguards are necessary to protect against unauthorized access and abuse.”

About 140,000 law enforcement officers have access to these systems and 19 people were arrested in Georgia in 2026 for misusing the cameras. Flock Safety, the largest vendor, is based in Atlanta. The coverage documents cases of women stalked by former partners with law enforcement access. State Sen. John Albers of Roswell said the technology “can’t be trusted to manage itself. And right now there are no guardrails at all.”

In a separate piece Sept. 23, Michael De Dora of Access Now and Maria Villegas Bravo of the Electronic Privacy Information Center put the network at more than 120,000 Flock cameras in 49 states capturing about 20 billion plate readings a month, with 71% of stolen-vehicle alerts in one California city containing misread plates and more than 170 documented abuse cases catalogued by the Institute for Justice. On the same night, Spartanburg County Council postponed a first reading of proposed Flock regulations, citing a need for legal guidance on criminal penalties.

Black immigrants carry the weight of federal facial recognition, three advocates argued. Tsion Gurmu and Nekessa Opoti of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and Fatima Mohamed of Columbia Law School published an analysis of federal biometric systems in Tech Policy Press on Sept. 24. Current deployment figures: about 200,000 people are in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program and roughly 84% of them use the SmartLINK app; Customs and Border Protection runs biometric checks at every international airport on entry, 66 airports on exit and 39 seaports. The piece names Mobile Fortify, HART, Clearview AI and Palantir as components.

One set of figures in the piece needs a date on it. The error rates it cites, 1% for lighter-skinned men against 34.7% for darker-skinned women, and one vendor with 93.6% of errors on darker-skinned subjects, come from the 2018 Gender Shades benchmark of commercial systems of that era. They are not measurements of any system in federal use now, and no comparable independent audit of the current federal stack is public.

The piece also reports that in July the Department of Homeland Security signed a biometric data-sharing agreement with CARICOM IMPACS covering six Caribbean countries, adding to agreements with Mexico, Colombia, Belize, Chile and Ecuador. No Southern state is named in the piece; the geographies are Ohio and Minnesota.

906 million people in Africa live under a signal they do not use. The GSMA and the Partnership for Digital Access in Africa published a roadmap on Sept. 21 titled “Advancing Digital Connectivity in Africa: Charting Africa’s Path to 1 Billion Connected People by 2030.” The usage gap, meaning people within mobile broadband coverage who do not use mobile internet, is 906 million, about 60% of the continent’s population. The coverage gap, meaning people with no mobile broadband signal at all, is 122 million, about 8%. Globally 3.1 billion people are in the usage gap.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, co-chair of the partnership and former president of Liberia, said the goal “is ambitious, but it is achievable” if connectivity, electrification, affordable devices and digital skills are brought together. John Giusti, the GSMA’s chief regulatory officer, said Africa “has already built much of the network foundation for its digital future” and that the urgent task is closing the usage gap.

The cheap smartphone is getting further away, and a tax cut is the one thing that worked. An entry-level handset costs 44% of monthly income for the poorest fifth across low- and middle-income countries and 76% of monthly income for the poorest fifth in sub-Saharan Africa, TechCabal reported Sept. 24. Memory prices more than doubled between the third quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, then rose a further 80% to 90% in the second quarter of 2026, driven by artificial intelligence chip demand. The average smartphone selling price in Africa rose $41 year over year to $202, and shipments of devices under $100 fell 34%.

One country ran the experiment. South Africa removed a 9% excise duty on phones below about $156 in April 2025, and entry-level smartphone sales rose 80% over the following 11 months. Caroline Mbugua of the GSMA said Africa “has built the networks. But not enough people can afford to use them,” and that governments “continue to treat spectrum as a revenue resource.”

Entergy filings put Google’s Arkansas power bill at $2.1 billion, and two figures do not match. Unredacted Arkansas Public Service Commission records from early September put Google’s total payment to Entergy Arkansas at $2.1 billion over 20 years, with $1.6 billion for the Cypress Solar plant at 600 megawatts plus a 350-megawatt battery system, $190 million as Google’s transmission upgrade contribution, and a termination fee near $2 billion for the first 13 years, mgrid.org reported Sept. 23. The same report puts at $5.77 the monthly residential bill increase in June 2026 attributable to three generation projects, and at $1.1 billion Entergy’s projected net system benefit.

The unresolved number is Google’s upfront contribution, reported at $526 million by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Aug. 31 and at $443 million in the filings mgrid describes. We cannot reconcile the two and are printing both. Issue 03 reported the $526 million figure.

Randy Zook, chief executive of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, told Talk Business & Politics on Sept. 23 that data centers are “not bad for the community, if they’re regulated properly” and that the companies “will pay. They’re contractually obligated to pay the full cost.” He said a newspaper calculation omitted $83 million a year in payments across 19 years.

Alabama’s attorney general can intervene in rate cases, and mostly has not. Under Alabama Code Section 37-1-16 the attorney general may intervene in Public Service Commission rate cases on behalf of the public, a power largely unused until this summer, when the office entered a natural gas company case, the Alabama Reflector reported Sept. 24. Alabama residential electricity rates were 16.04 cents per kilowatt-hour in June 2026 against a regional average of 14.89 cents.

Jeff McLaughlin, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, said the office “needs to be the champion of rate payers in our state where energy bills are at least as high or higher than in the rest of the country,” and noted it has been about 40 years since a rate case on some Alabama Power rates. Katherine Robertson, the Republican nominee, is chief counsel to the current attorney general. Daniel Tait of Energy Alabama said the office “gets access to a lot more information that is not made public.” Alabama Power has voluntarily proposed a rate freeze through 2029. The article does not mention Black or low-income ratepayers.

Sept. 30: North Carolina’s satellite resiliency grant closes at 11:59 p.m. Extended from Sept. 23. Priority to the 39 Helene disaster counties and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Equipment and installation only.

Sept. 30: comments due at the FCC on Universal Service Fund administration. Reply comments Oct. 30. Rural Health Care comments are due the same day.

Oct. 5 and Oct. 6: two North Carolina hearings. Vance County, the most heavily Black jurisdiction with active data center business in this issue at 49.3% Black, takes up a 900-megawatt campus proposal and a 60-day moratorium on Oct. 5. Reports conflict on whether that moratorium has already been adopted. Raleigh holds its data center moratorium hearing Oct. 6 at 7 p.m., with 30 minutes for public comment and no size threshold specified in the notice.

Oct. 6: the Memphis City Council takes its final vote on the data center moratorium. Twelve months, applications accepted but not processed, with a study committee writing permanent rules.

Oct. 7: the first public hearing on the Dominion and NextEra merger, in Newport News. Christopher Newport University, Freeman Center, Gaines Theater, 6 to 8 p.m. Fairfax follows Oct. 9 and Richmond Nov. 5, with telephonic testimony Nov. 5, 9 and 10.

Oct. 13: comments due at the FCC on the future of E-Rate. Docket WC 26-133. Reply comments Nov. 12. The inquiry asks whether the program should be limited to rural areas, conditioned on device restrictions, or ended.

Oct. 16: the parties in the Digital Equity Act case are to confer. No filing or ruling appeared in the case between Sept. 21 and Sept. 27. The government still says it targets a December opening for the competitive grant program, with an outside date of Jan. 15, 2027.

Oct. 20: Staff in Loudoun County, Virginia, return with the data center pause resolution. The Sept. 15 vote directed staff to draft it, and did not itself start a pause. The board indicated it should be retroactive.

Nov. 15: the earliest date AT&T’s approved copper discontinuation could begin. Roughly 90,000 customers across 18 states, eight of them in this coverage area.

Nov. 17: applications close for the Native Entity Grant Program and the third round of the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program. $250 million and $540 million available, with awards from $500,000 to $2.5 million.

Nov. 18: Chesterfield County supervisors vote on how to spend data center revenue. Delayed twice. A car tax cut, school maintenance and fire staffing are the competing uses.

The Walls decision is not final. The planning commission recommended denial on Sept. 22. The mayor and board of aldermen make the actual decision and no meeting date has been announced. We called this out in the lead item and we will follow it. If you live in Walls or DeSoto County and you learn of a date, the town clerk’s office is the place to confirm it, and it will be in the next issue.

One item we could not resolve. A report exists that the Shelby County Commission in Tennessee introduced its own data center moratorium ordinance. We could not confirm the publication date or the originating outlet, because the only copy we found was a syndication that would not load. If it is real and in this window it belongs in this issue, and it will be in the next one either way.

Two from issue 03. We reported that a judge in the Chatham County, North Carolina case “ordered the county to pay damages.” That is wrong. Judge John Morris granted summary judgment to the developer and the order states that “the determination and award of Plaintiff’s damages is reserved for further proceedings.” The county may owe damages and no amount has been determined. Our bullet and our item both overstated the ruling.

We also reported that North Carolina’s $1 million Broadband Satellite Resiliency Grant closed at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 23. The state extended the deadline to Sept. 30 in an announcement published that same day. Anyone who read us and concluded they had missed it has two days left.