egulations, are spending millions on lobbying. Facebook is under congressional scrutiny due to allegations that millions of fake posts influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections. Google, part of Alphabet, spends increasing amounts of money on lobbying to influence congress on immigration, tax reform, and antitrust issues. It has also faced questions on its treatment of its own company's search rating compared to Google's rivals. THE STATE OF THE INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATION VIA MERGERS The telecommunications industry is dominated by organizations that are among the 100 largest companies in the United States. Technological innovations have enabled companies such as Apple, Google, Netflix, and Amazon to encroach on services that were formerly the www.TechnicalPDF.com exclusive domain of traditional telephone and cable TV operators. Mobile operators, cable Multiple System Operators (MSOs), and Internet companies now vie with one another for revenue from mobile, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), cloud, and streaming services. Competition to Telephone, Mobile, and Cable TV Companies Telephone and cable TV companies compete with satellite companies for streaming and voice calling; Amazon and Google for household automation; Facebook, Netflix, and Walt Disney for video, and with each other for all of these services. They additionally compete with upgraded 4th generation and new 5th generation cellular networks capable of supporting streaming, Internet access, and cloud computing. In order to stay competitive, they continuously make capital expenditures to upgrade and maintain their networks. Mobile Operators AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless are the largest mobile operators in the United States; they are also the only ones with nationwide coverage. Verizon Wireless's network covers approximately 322 million people as of 2018 (98 percent of the population). The vast majority of the 325.7 million people in the United States, as of December 2017, have access to mobile networks. However, high capacity coverage 