Customers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their cell phone service as the major wireless operators in the United States merge together, said a J.D. Power and Associates report. Overall satisfaction with a subscriber�s wireless provider dropped 10 percent in 2004, the largest year-over-year change since the U.S. Wireless Regional Customer Satisfaction Index Study was launched a decade ago. The findings provide a harsh contrast to the claims of the merging companies and their officials, who hope to smooth over the possible negative effects of industry consolidation on the consumer. �Given the number of major changes consumers have experienced over the past couple of years, the gap between customer expectations and actual service experience tends to widen as uncertainty from mergers greatly influences consumer perceptions,� said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates. The report, which surveyed 24,096 wireless users, found that forces like mergers, regulatory programs, and competitive expansion have made it difficult for carriers to meet customer expectations. The companies that underwent major mergers had greater drops in customer satisfaction.
Gartner's latest worldwide IT spending forecast exposes a trend every CIO has already felt in budget negotiations. Total spending will climb 14.2 percent in 2026, reaching $6.37 trillion. It seems that the IT infrastructure market is simply having a strong year. However, the more useful insight is how unevenly that growth is distributed. The Headline Number vs. The Real Story Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are absorbing capital at a pace several multiples faster than devices, communications services, and traditional IT services. This is not incremental growth spread across a healthy portfolio. It is a wholesale reallocation of enterprise technology budgets toward AI infrastructure, made on the expectation that demand for AI workloads will justify the outlay before that demand has been fully proven. Where the Money is Going Data center systems are forecast to grow 62.5 percent in 2026, that's up from 51.6 percent growth in 2025, reaching $822 billion....