CBS and Viacom are one important step closer to merging under the CBS name, creating one of the country’s largest programming and broadcasting powerhouses.

Last week, the two companies’ board of directors agreed on who would run the combined company that will be worth tens of billions of dollars.

Under the agreement, the top spot will go to current Viacom CEO Bob Bakish, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Bakish has been working with Viacom to transform its operations in a world increasingly dominated by cord-cutting and online streaming. Viacom had a reputation of being ruthless with its cable and satellite partners, demanding some of the industry’s highest rates for Viacom-owned cable channels, causing some cable operators to drop Viacom networks from their cable TV lineups.

It will not be the first time CBS and Viacom have been merged. Owner Sumner Redstone kept the two companies together until splitting them apart in 2006. Shortly after, Redstone’s declining health led to warring factions inside the two companies and several legal disputes with Sumner’s daughter Shari, who took over for her 96-year-old father. Former CBS CEO Les Moonves long opposed a merger between CBS and Viacom, but Moonves was forced out of CBS because of a burgeoning sexual harassment scandal. His replacement, acting CBS CEO Joseph Ianniello, is said to be sanguine about the merger deal, even though it would result in a demotion to managing CBS’ broadcast network, owned and operated TV stations, and Showtime.

The merged company would absorb Viacom into CBS, putting assets including Comedy Central, MTV, VH-1, Nickelodeon, BET, and Paramount Pictures under CBS ownership and control.

Three people close to the situation cautioned talks were still ongoing and not final.

Fox Business News reports the merger of CBS and Viacom may be imminent. Will they also acquire Discovery Networks? (4:53)

Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile’s 5G launches are blazing fast, when you can find a signal, but your phone will also get blazing hot while using it.

The Wall Street Journal embarked on testing current 5G launches in several American cities and found speeds on 5G nearing 1,800 Mbps in some places, but the millimeter-wave frequencies most carriers are using for mobile 5G don’t travel far and are subject to disappear just by walking down the street, around the corner, or indoors.

Some devices with 5G support are also suffering from heat issues, sometimes causing phones to heat up to over 105° and drop 5G service in favor of less battery-intense 4G LTE. Network engineers admit they bring coolers filled with ice to cool down overheating 5G phones.

Only Sprint’s mid-band 5G network in Chicago offered a much larger coverage area that still worked after walking indoors, and devices remained cool to the touch while using it. But Sprint’s 5G service sacrifices performance for coverage, often topping out at around 200-300 Mbps.

The Wall Street Journal found a reporter, a tent, and some new 5G devices and sent them out to test some of America’s new 5G services. (5:39)

Frontier Communications customers across Rhinelander, Wis. were left without phone and internet service for a day after a construction crew cut fiber optic and copper cables that Frontier earlier promised to move, but never did.

In early July, service across parts of the city of 8,000 was knocked out as construction crews worked on a new roundabout, severing communications cables thought to be inactive. As a result, area businesses could not process credit card transactions, the local airport was disrupted, and medical clinics had to resort to cell phones to manage information about their patients.

Frontier later aggravated state officials by putting the blame for the outage on the construction crew.

“Frontier notified the contractor the cable was still in place and that its location was properly marked. It appears, the backhoe operator did not verify the depth of the cable, resulting in the cut,” said Frontier spokesman Javier Mendoza in an email at the time.

But a local TV station unearthed documents with an open records request that now point the finger of responsibility solely at Frontier.

Rhinelander, Wis.

On July 3, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation notified Frontier it was in violation of the Wisconsin Administrative Code because the company had promised to move the communications cables prior to the roundabout construction, but apparently never did.

“Unfortunately, Frontier did not relocate its facilities into this new conduit and never shared that fact with anyone. This caused the existing facility to be cut,” according to DoT utility engineer Chris Peplinski. The project manager, Dan Erva, wrote a frustrated internal email about the debacle that same day.

“At no point did anyone from Frontier or their contractors let us know that they did not relocate and [abandon] the lines as indicated in the work plan and contract special provisions,” Erva wrote.

Frontier could be held financially liable for the contractor delays.

This has not been the first frustrating experience customers and Wisconsin officials have had dealing with Frontier. In April, one outage left more than three dozen Rhinelander customers without service for weeks, and customers accused the company of being unable to give any straight answers about how and when service would be restored. Among those affected, one customer relying on medical monitoring equipment. She reportedly was given the runaround and even hung up on by Frontier customer service.

Frontier blamed April’s outage on a difficult-to-diagnose problem with a damaged high-capacity telecommunications cable. Frontier officials suggested construction crews were responsible for that damage as well.

“The assessment process for isolating damage to such cables generally takes significant time,” a Frontier spokesperson told WJFW-TV.

Some customers told the TV station they now understand what “significant time” means when dealing with Frontier.

“About 10 days [into the outage] a Frontier truck came around and I asked him, and he says ‘Oh about two days,'” said Sonny Paszak, who relies entirely on his landline. “Well, that was 10 days ago and I still haven’t got it.”

WJFW in Rhinelander, Wis. spoke earlier this year with frustrated Frontier landline customers that lost service for weeks. (2:45)

The Justice Department has helped engineer an approvable merger deal between T-Mobile and Sprint that will get antitrust regulators’ blessings as early as tomorrow, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The sticking point that held up merger approval for weeks was the divestiture of certain wireless assets to Dish Network, which claims it will temporarily use Sprint and T-Mobile’s wireless networks to offer a new nationwide “fourth option” for cell phone service. Dish’s new cell phone service will come from a $1.4 billion acquisition of prepaid carrier Boost Mobile, which currently relies on reselling Sprint’s 4G network. Dish would inherit Boost’s nine million customers. Dish will also be able to lease access to T-Mobile and Sprint’s existing wireless networks for up to seven years while it builds out its own network of cell towers. The deal also includes a guarantee that Dish can pay $3.6 billion to acquire 800 MHz wireless licenses held by Sprint.

The Justice Department claims that lower frequency spectrum will allow Dish to service rural communities, assuming Dish is willing to invest in cell tower construction in high cost, low return areas.

Regulators in the Trump Administration’s Justice Department claim shaving assets from a super-sized T-Mobile will preserve the competition that will be lost when Sprint becomes a part of T-Mobile. But Dish will emerge as a miniscule player with only a fraction of the 100+ million customers that AT&T and Verizon have, and at least 80 million customers signed with T-Mobile. One of the core arguments T-Mobile and Sprint made in favor of their merger was that each was too small to afford to deploy 5G service quickly and efficiently. Dish will have even less money to build out a basic 4G wireless network.

Another merger requirement for the combined T-Mobile and Sprint will be mandatory support for eSIM, which allows consumers to change wireless carriers quickly without investing in a physical SIM card. But that requirement will not impact AT&T or Verizon Wireless, which both continue to push physical SIM cards on the much larger customer bases.

If the Justice Department does publicly approve the merger, the last hurdle the wireless companies will have to overcome is a multi-state lawsuit filed by attorneys general that argue the merger will impact low-income customers and is anti competitive. That court case is unlikely to be heard until late fall at the earliest.

CNBC’s David Faber reports that T-Mobile and Sprint have settled with the Department of Justice to go through with their merger deal. (6:14)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department would sue to block the merger of T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp if the parties do not settle next week, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing sources.

T-Mobile and Sprint did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment.

In June, a group of U.S. state attorneys general filed suit to block the merger, arguing that the deal would cost consumers more than $4.5 billion annually.

To win over the Justice Department, which is not involved in the lawsuit, T-Mobile and Sprint have agreed to a series of deal concessions, including selling the prepaid brand Boost.

The companies have been in talks for weeks to sell Boost to Dish Network Corp but are haggling over issues such as restrictions over who can buy the divested assets if they are sold in the future, with T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom seeking to prevent them from going to a cable or technology company.

T-Mobile is about 63% owned by Deutsche Telekom and Sprint is controlled by Softbank Group Corp.

The companies told the court in late June that they were willing to refrain from closing the deal until after the state attorneys general case is completed.

The two companies have a July 29 deadline to complete the deal but are expected to extend it.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai has given his blessing to the merger in principle and is expected to circulate a formal order within weeks.

Reporting by David Shepardson and Diane Bartz in Washington and Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonya

CNBC’s David Faber reports the biggest stumbling block in the merger is a fear Dish might sell its wireless service to a cable company. T-Mobile wants contract language restricting that possibility. (5:13)