The heat of summer brought us a number of hot stories in June and highlighted a few that continue to catch your eye, even though they first hit our site earlier in the year.

Layoffs in the first half of the year at AT&T and CenturyLink once again cracked our list of most-read posts. As the old news saying goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

But June also brought us a flurry of new products and services that got your attention, including a new SDN offering from Verizon, as well as new and improved features offered up by SolarWinds.

Here, you’ll also find a controversial CLEC/ILEC rate-hike proposal that Windstream is fighting, and the introduction of a new channel chief at 8×8.

And those are just some of the headlines you’ll find in our top 12 from June. Our rankings take into account both online page views and our weekly newsletter results. (You can sign up for that here.)

Which story was No. 1? Click through our gallery below to find out!

Missed the previous month’s top stories? Click here to see our most-read posts in May.

Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.