In Britain, BT has decided that the £5billion or so it has spent on football rights is not the best of investments, and chief executive Philip Jansen wants more focus on delivering fibre for UK broadband users.
New York telecoms behemoth Verizon Communications is on a similar journey – it is disposing of its media brands Yahoo! and AOL to private equity. It also has disposed of blogging platforms Tumblr and Huff Post.
Verizon found it hard to compete in the digital advertising space with online giants Facebook and Google. It is doubling down on efforts to roll out 5G super-fast mobile networks across the US.