Verizon cannot count on a quiet exit from copper landlines in Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia. According to the trade publication Inside Towers, the Federal Communications Commission pulled Verizon’s application to retire that legacy service out of the automatic-grant process on September 25, 2026. The FCC…

November 1, 2026 is a date written into a federal funding law, and 29 senators want the Department of Health and Human Services to beat it. The law, as the senators describe it, requires HHS to distribute at least 90 percent of its total Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program allotment by that day. Their…

“Heating oil costs are projected to soar by 31% this winter.” That sentence, in a September 23 press release from Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, is the only support for the 31 percent figure behind this headline. The release names no forecaster and links no data. The number is best read as the…

Rhode Island Energy customers face two separate bill changes this winter. The average residential bill rises by a net $16.42 a month on Oct. 1, and a $20.45 monthly credit follows on the January, February and March 2027 bills. The credit is a later, distinct change and is not built into the October figure. The…

Columbia Gas of Virginia customers face an interim increase of $10.81 a month, about 11.11%, beginning Oct. 12. The step applies to the average residential bill and is the first half of a two-part request now before the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Cardinal News reported the details on Sept. 25. An 11.11% step on an…

T-Mobile is raising the monthly fee it charges on data-only lines. Starting Oct. 12, the Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee on mobile internet lines, the category that covers tablets and hotspot devices, goes from $2.10 to $2.60 a month per line, an increase of 50 cents. Voice lines take a larger jump, from $4.49…

Ten percent is the number at the center of Minnesota’s Cold Weather Rule, and it describes a ceiling on a payment plan rather than a cut to the bill. The rule runs from Oct. 1 to April 30, and the ceiling reaches lower-income households that ask their utility for an agreement. The Cold Weather Rule’s…

Minnesota’s winter shutoff protection begins Oct. 1, New Jersey’s and Massachusetts’s begin Nov. 15, and Pennsylvania’s begins Dec. 1. Four separate state rules set those dates, and each carries its own income test and its own way of being triggered. In most of them, a household behind on a heating bill has to reach the…

The lowest-income fifth of U.S. households spent 9.86% of income on electricity and natural gas in 2025, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA). That is nearly 10 cents of every dollar, up from 9.38% the year before. The figure appears in NEADA’s winter heating report, released September 14, ahead of a heating…

Two of the least avoidable costs in any household, the gas bill and the electric bill, both climbed over the past year, according to the government’s latest measure of inflation. Utility natural gas service rose 4.4% and electricity rose 3.8% over the 12 months ending in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported.…