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ATT is acting like a monopoly that needs to be broken up by the courts.

What is "Double Jeopardy!"?

I thought AT&T was already broken up three decades ago for monopoly abuse.

They were, this is not the same AT&T. It basically died and Southwestern Bell bought the name. You can find more about it here:

http://www.teletruth.org/Histo...

If it means universal service provisions for broadband internet access, then yes.

There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.

Universal service provisions allowed telephone service to reach every single person in the entire country back in the day. The same thing should happen for broadband internet access today.

I'm going to burst your bubble. In the US governments has already given cablecos and telcos hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to build out broadband. However all these companies did was pocket the money to be used as pocket liners. Former telecom industry analyst Bruce Kushnick documented how the federal government was ripped off by businesses in the e-book $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. In New Jersey alone Verizon was given tax breaks along with allowed to raise phone rates to cover the state with broadband. An agreement was reached between the state and Verizon 20 years ago but the state does not have wide coverage of broadband yet.

The only non-big government inexpensive way broadband will become more widely available throughout the US is by allowing competition and getting rid of monopolies/duopolies. Google is in the process of rolling-out fiber in Kansas City. Before fiber is rolled out in a neighborhood Google is asking 25% of the people to sign up and it costs $10. Wiki has an article on the plan, Google Fiber, including the cost for the services. 1Gbps net access and TV cost $120 a month with $300 construction fee. A Nexus 7 tablet is included. Internet access alone is $70 a month. In both cases the construction fee is waived if a 2 year contract is signed. And "Free Internet" with speeds of 5 Mbps / 1 Mbps is provided for the cost of the construction fee which can be spread out over a year, $25 a month.

There are people in rural areas right now that don't have Internet access because telcos aren't willing to spend the money to run it out to them.

While it may be expensive to roll out cables and fiber that's not true with radio, wire-less, access. Of course wire-less has it's own problems, such as not being that secure and not being as fast as fiber.

Falcon

$300 Billion Broadband Scandal

Alliance for Customers' Telecommunications Rights

The US Gov should start getting US citizens better internet access than think about "forcing internet" on others.

http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf

The best place for complete info is broadband scandal. Lots of footnotes, actual wording from contracts is included. It's a free ebook and worth a perusal at the least.

The 20 page NJ case study shows how bell was allowed a rate increase specifically for fiber to the home, took in a billion extra from this and only had an outlay of about 79 million. They also paid almost a billion extra in dividends.

What I blame the lawmakers for is making laws and rules and then never enforcing them, or even seeing if the rules are being carried out and/or turning a blind eye. I blame the telcos for stifling competition by acting like the monopolies they are.

We've already paid 320 billion to get fiber to the home that never got installed. If the FCC and state utilities would simply hold the telcos to the existing contracts it'd be a done deal. But we'd have to have politicians not beholden to the industry. My local House rep Fred Upton was previously chair of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. Not surprising to see SBC, Verizon, and other telcos giving upwards of 100K a year (according to opensecrets.org). Corporatism at its finest.

You can get a really rough estimate from here PDF of Financial and Operational Results, Page 11, look in the Other segment, and page 12 under Wholesale and GEM solutions.

I say rough estimate, because it isn't broken down completely. You only get the totals for the entire segment, but that is where any government funding would be added in.

You can probably dig up more in the stuff found here as well.

The better question to ask is: "How much of my landline bill is being used to illegally cross-subsidize U-Verse/FiOS/DSL/Wireless?" (Seriously, there are numerous state telecoms laws across the country that disallow POTS income/revenue from being used on expansion of DSL/FiOS, etc, but the companies do it anyhow with seeming impunity).

Also, see here: http://www.teletruth.org/ and here: Bruce Kushnick: Nieman Watchdog Group

Well how about my own personal experience? My cableco/teleco duopoly hasn't moved a damned foot in ANY direction in a good 20 years. My mom had her house built 29 YEARS ago and was exactly two blocks from where the cable ended. Want to guess how far she is from the cable now? Can you say two blocks boys and girls? i think you can.

And that "free market" bullshit doesn't work when it comes to the cableco/teleco duopoly. case in point the above area where my mom lives. No less than 3 times have little independents tried to set up to service the area, and every. single. time. they were crushed by the duopoly. One of which was done by a good friend and former classmate who paid for a T1 to be run out there and was selling access. Basically what happens is this- someone provides access, local teleco starts to lose their $60 a month 33k dialup customers ( you read that right, $60 for 33k dialup) and then simply raise the rates on backbone access so damned high there is no way the customer can afford it and the independent goes under. My buddy talked to a lawyer and was told anywhere from 2-10 million would be required to sue, along with a decade or so to deal with all the bullshit tactics the teleco lawyers would pull. So naturally he just walked away.

As for more citations how many do you want? Because this isn't exactly some big secret here, we gave them 200 billion+ in tax breaks and other "bonuses" in return for nationwide broadband and all we got was the finger. So if you are a capitalist you should be ALL FOR seizing the last mile, after all we paid a huge amount for a service that we didn't get. We should give the teleco/cableco duopoly 90 days to pay back the money with interest, or we seize the whole damned thing. After all if a company rips off its customers you sue and seize the assets to pay the debt, yes? And I'd say robbing the public to the tune of 200 billion plus interest is more than enough to warrant seizing of their assets.

It's not just USF. ILECs also got nice tax breaks and other concessions because they 'promised to wire america'. Teletruth.org has more info. Since they were part of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee they know what they're talking about. The 200 billion dollar broadband scandal, talked about by Crigley and others, are based on this investigation.

Here's Some Reading Material:

http://www.teletruth.org/

Whereâ(TM)s that broadband fiber-optic access?
Scandals by state

Here's Some Reading Material:

http://www.teletruth.org/

Whereâ(TM)s that broadband fiber-optic access?
Scandals by state

You just know this is going to be a misserable thread. Really

Some even had billions of _public_ money handed to them by Governments to build their _future_ networks.

It seems obvious to me that if you some rural location with a low cost of living was wired it could allow those areas to be more competitive with outsourcing overseas or south of the border.

Most of those jobs don't pay much though, and they don't create new jobs. At most they bring back jobs that were outsourced to begin with. Like what Dell did. At first Dell sent support to India but ended up relocating support to Carolina, I don't recall whether North or South. Outsourcing to India didn't really work for them.

And then there are the entrepreneurs that we dont know about...

And all the unknown jobs. However seeing as how TFA was about new jobs it would of been nice if they had said somethng about what sort of jobs they would be.

There is distance learning which would help educate those in more rural areas who cannot reach a community college.

Some people find distance learning helpful but others need someone physically present. I learned this a long tyme ago when I used to tutor. Since then I relearned, because of an injury I survived, yes survived as I wasn't expected to live, that. After struggling in classes I realized I needed that person aid. Heck, after my injury for a while I had an ILS, Independent Living Skills, nurse help me.

Yet we don't have the infrastructure to do it. And based on a a lot of the comments here on Slashdot there is not the appreciation or the willpower to do it. Probably because most of you posting already have your fast connection. If just those digital 'have nots' would pull themselves up by their tin can straps...

I don't know where this comes from. Other /.ers have, as I have myself, railed against Cablecos and Telcos for not expanding, building out, the infrastructure for broadband. And yet they have already been paid billions of dollars to do so. There's the "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", "Pennsylvania Broadband Fraud", and "You've Already Paid $2,000 For A Fiber Connection You'll Never Get". And those are from the still good bookmarks I have. Googling /. for broadband cableco OR telco" returns 1250 results. Admittedly not all are where /.ers complain about broadband not being rolled out but a good percentage should be. I don't recall how many tymes, but it's been a bunch, I've posted about the Broadband Utopia in northeastern Utah and have said that though I consider myself libertarian I like that the infrastructure here is owned by the communities involved, who then allow anyone to use it to provide any services it can deliver, and not some for profit monopoly. However it doesn't have to be owned by government as in this case, actually I'd rather it be owned by a coop.

Well this story is off the page but a link I read earlier makes the point that it was subscribers who footed the bill. While the government may have given the needed permissions. That's not the same thing as taxpayer funding. Plus I noticed he dragged cable companies and "other" into this discussion which just tells me it's a "big business" rant than any kind of conclusion based upon facts.

BTW I think this (1.6 MB) is the PDF that slashdot claims proves their point.

Here's the proof: a 406-page book you can download. It's loaded with plenty of exhibits from the Telcos' Annual Stockholder Reports. The telcos loudly promised to install 45 mbps fiber broadband -- and then thoroughly broke those promises. The money they received for doing nothing is also listed there, in the same Annual Reports. This is verifiable information. Is that enough proof for you?

So now you know: you eagerly gave the telcos $200 billion and got nothing in return. Sucker.

Easy enough, if you did indeed RTFA, the link to the 400+ page ebook about this scandal is on the right page:
http://www.teletruth.org/docs/SCANDALFINAL92006.pd f
I'm glad its free now, the author used to charge for it. Maybe I can finally read it.

Essentially very little of the $200 billion is anything to do with phone rates. Its mostly stuff like corporate tax breaks from states and local gov to the companies.
A quick check of the ebook shows:
Chapter 19 on page 191 of the PDF starts the coverage of the money trail.

A random example on page 200:
"[Southwestern Bell's] Telefuture 2000, the plan for Missouri, froze local service rates, and required a $180 million investment in advanced technology."

almost $200 million in a direct investment from the state (not even a tax credit, just a big payment)

There's also another $80 billion in missing equipment (i.e. equipment never purchased, or equipment that was purchased and never installed, or disappeared). So even if you can somehow explain away the $200 billion, there's at least another $80 billion :)

Note that this book is heavily footnoted (500+ footnotes) so feel free to dig around in the source material (much of it taken from public company documents such as annual reports, or 10-K etc) if you wish to verify any of this.

In reality, if the US government did it the way the free ways were laid, in 10 years 99 %of the homes would ahve broadband of at least 9 Mbit, probably more.

Or they could do it the way PA did, allowing Verizon to reap huge economic benefits from an agreement with the state where Verizon promised to create a broadband network capable of service at 45 Mbps both upstream and downstream and then 8 years later essentially letting Verizon back out of the deal, instead offering vastly inferior DSL over old copper lines. (For the record, I probably count as being "completed" even though they never managed to get a DSL connection to my place to work.)

Here's a pdf of the dissenting opinion of the PA Utility Commission Chairman who dissented with the decision

Maybe 45 Mbps wasn't realistic, but neither was the money they made off me without yet being able to get working broadband to my place.

The solution to all this is to strip all the fiber away from the companies (who didn't actually pay for it anyway, and lease it out at a set wholesale rate...with no one company able to lease more than 15 or 25% of a given pipe. Also, no one leasing a pipe should be able to provide last mile connectivity. That would fix this whole damn mess.

Does anyone remember the Interstate Access Charge. My memory may not pe right on this, but i thought I read somewhere that, though not precisely a tax, this was initally set out try to subsidize telco's building out service to more remote/rural areas. Supposedly, it had the effect of being an incentive for telcos building switches in bumblef**k USA, and raking in millions in a form of corporate welfare. Can anyone elaborate? do any of you recall it like this?

Just checking my memory.

A Quick Google yeilds this PDF. looks like it may be relevent...
http://www.teletruth.org/docs/unauthbiocomplete.pd f
--- WE ARE POPEYE OF BORG, YOU WILL BE ASKIMILGATED, ACK, ACK, ACK

You're absolutely right funding would be easy. And way cheaper than paying verizon to charge me for numerous ridiculous and spurious "fees" that they didn't warn me about ahead of time.

*Especially* when we're talking about something that has the potential of $500 billion a year to the economy. And not through the profits of the telcos. The internet is really a public utility that enables business, just like roads and electricity. Making it cheap and plentiful enables huge gains in other economic areas both short term (google) and long term (education benefits booming).

Finally, other countries pay less for more because they had a national plan, subsidized (and regulated) by the government and tax payers, and implemented aggresively. Plain and simple. We simply regulated that the telcos raised their prices without regulating that they provided any extra services with it. The result has been that as telcos have raised prices to pay for fiber and broadband, they have slashed fiber deployments and employee numbers. Meaning the top 1% of the company is making out like bandits, and the nation, the customers, and the employees get screwed. And its cost consumers over $200 billion in direct fees.

*Especially* when we're talking about something that has the potential of $500 billion a year to the economy. And not through the profits of the telcos. The internet is really a public utility that enables business, just like roads and electricity. Making it cheap and plentiful enables huge gains in other economic areas both short term (google) and long term (education benefits booming).

Finally, other countries pay less for more because they had a national plan, subsidized (and regulated) by the government and tax payers, and implemented aggresively. Plain and simple. We simply regulated that the telcos raised their prices without regulating that they provided any extra services with it. The result has been that as telcos have raised prices to pay for fiber and broadband, they have slashed fiber deployments and employee numbers. Meaning the top 1% of the company is making out like bandits, and the nation, the customers, and the employees get screwed. And its cost consumers over $200 billion in direct fees.

After a while, once the word gets out and customers start to leave for alterative "single tier Internet" providers,

The assumption here is that there will *be* other providers. I think that the government should take control of all fiber lines, and rent them out at a set price per strand per mile, with a cap on how much of a given backbone that one company can own. Like 25%. Maybe 50.

The reason I think that is because right now there are basically 2 remaining Tier 1 ISPs...and that number is likely to drop the way that Verizon/AT&T are pushing hard. They don't want competition. It is a lack of competition that allows them to even contemplate this, because they know that if there was true competition they could never ever consider this sort of thing.

I agree that the internet shouldn't be regulated, but we have to make sure that something as important to the national economy and structure as the internet has competition. Have you ever seen that stats on how badly access in this country is lagging behind other countries? Its because we've systematically removed competition from fiber lines in the name of providing more competition. The rational from the telcos: we need to be a monopoly in order to compete. I hope most of you notice the irony in that one.

Teletruth.org, my friends. Its well worth the read.

In all seriousness, though, you're wrong. I'd explain, but I don't do it as well as teletruth does.

As for "the market will solve everything"...no it won't. A true Free Market, one that guarantees competition within a set of reasonable, well-defined rules, is good. An Anarchy Market, where the company who is the "strongest" makes the rules to fit them benefits no one except the top echelons of that one company. The cato instittue likes Anarchy Markets...but the market isn't free if it is owned by a single entity who doesn't want competitors.

No, I'm talking about the billions the government of PA literally gave them SPECIFICALLY for fiber rollout.

http://www.teletruth.org/PennBroadbandScam.html

They ARE under obligation when they take money from the government in exchange for doing it. If you claim they are not, I'm apparently going to have to start my own "telecommunications company", promise to rollout fiber for the government, and then buy myself a couple nice houses and every exotic car I've ever dreamed about.

If you're going to spout a bunch of companies, you should at least do some homework first.

AT&T at the time of its breakup in 1984 consisted of 22 local "Bell" companies, plus its long distance service. AT&T local service was broken up into 7 companies:

Ameritech (IL, IN, OH, MI, WI)
Bell Atlantic (NJ, PA, DC, DE, MD, VA, WV)
Bell South (FL, GA, NC, SC, AL, KY, LA, MS, TN)
NYNEX (NY, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT)
Pacific Telesis (NV, CA)
SBC Comm (AR, IA, KS, MO, OK, TX)
US West (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, UT, WY, MN, ND, SD, NE, OR, WA)

Plus a few independent phone companies like GTE, SNET (Connecticut), and Sprint (only in this context could Sprint be considered "independent").

Over the last 20 years, the original 7 "baby Bells" have gobbled up independents and each other leaving the current 4 Big Bells:

Bell South (Bell South)
SBC (Ameritech, SBC, Pacific Telesis, SNET)
Quest (US West)
Verizon (NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, GTE)

Sprint and a handful of other independents remain the incumbent carriers in pockets around the country.

For more history and info about the phone companies, check out www.teletruth.org.

And of course, all of that is completely separate from the wireless carriers. The history of that is much more complicated, but of the five now remaining:

Cingular is owned by SBC (60%) and Bell South (40%)
Verizon is owned by Verizon (which is 45% owned by Vodafone, a huge UK phone company)
Sprint owns Sprint (obviously)
Nextel is actually an independent company (AFAIK)
T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom

If you're not supporting a huge US corporation, you're helping a huge foreign one instead. Pick your poison.

You can read about many of the other scams the teleco's are in at TeleTruth. Some quotes from their front page:

"Teletruth estimates that customers paid Verizon Pennsylvania $785 per household for a fiber-optic service they will never receive."

"50% of All Small Business phonebills have mistakes. ---And that's why we have announced our "Send Us Your Phone Bill" campaign in the Verizon territory to help business and residential customers recover overcharges on their Verizon telephone bills."

Also if you have a lot more time than I do you can read "The Unauthorized Bio of the Baby Bells" and How The Bells Stole America's Digital Future. Excerpt from the latter:

"New Networks Institute (NNI) estimates that consumers have already paid over $45 billion in extra telephone charges, and continue to pay over $8 billion annually. As monopoly providers of local phone service, the Bells are still subject to some regulation, yet they are among the most profitable companies in America today. Bell profit margins are more than double that of the major competitive long distance companies and other regulated utilities and literally 167% above the profit margins of some of America's best-known companies. Much of this excess profit is a result of the financial incentives that were supposed to build the infrastructure for America's digital future."

The guy behind all this is Bruce Kushnick. I've yet to find any one claiming he's anything but on the level. If you have please email me.

My blog post about this