The Head Lemur at raving lunacy writes about a scandal that many of us will never hear about but which needs to be given a much wider audience. Big hint -- this scandal has already cost each and every American Citizen the sum of $2,000 for services promised but for which, the companies in question have zero intent to deliver.
$200 Billion Broadband ScandalAnd under whose watch did this happen? Some more from the summary site:
The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal book by Bruce Kushnick, is a free .pdf download for the next few days.
FREE: ONE WEEK ONLY ---TILL MONDAY June 26th. 2006
Here is a taste of the synopsis:The Commitment:
* By 2006, 86 million households should have already been wired with a fiber (and coax), wire, capable of at least 45 Mbps in both directions, and could handle 500+ channels.
* Universal Broadband: This wiring was to be done in rich and poor neighborhoods, in rural, urban and suburban areas equally.
* Open to ALL Competition: These networks were to be open to ALL competitors, not a closed-in network or deployed only where the phone company desired.
* Each State: By 2006, 75% of the state of New Jersey was to be wired, Pennsylvania was to have 50% of households by 2004, California to have 5 million households by 2000, Texas claimed all schools, libraries, hospitals.�Virtually every state had commitments.
* Massive Financial Incentives: In exchange for building these networks, the Bell companies ALL received changes in state laws that gave these them excessive profits, tax savings, and other perks to be used in building these networks.
Background: Starting in the early 1990's, the Clinton-Gore Administration had aggressive plans to create the "National Infrastructure Initiative" to rewire ALL of America with fiber optic wiring, replacing the 100 year old copper wire. The Bell companies � SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest, claimed that they would step up to the plate and rewire homes, schools, libraries, government agencies, businesses and hospitals, etc. if they received financial incentives.The download is a 1.6MB, 406 page book with 28 pages of citations and links to the research and documentation. Not light reading but it is a necessary one if you want to see our telephone industry in action. Before the whole internet thing got popular, I ran a multi-line BBS (it got up to 20 lines / Wildcat software) in Seattle. Back then, I constantly had to battle the telco over their charges -- I wanted lines with no dialtone, incoming calls only but it was something the telco's didn't admit that they could produce -- I had to visit their main office and look at their book of tariffs and show them that, yes indeed, they were supposed to offer this. I also had huge problems with the my outgoing lines (before the internet, BBS systems would call out to exchange packets of messages and files). A couple times/year, they would "forget" that I had a contract negotiated with MCI and they would move the account over to a generic "no long distance specified" billing which put LD calls at $1.36/minute instead of the $0.04 I was supposed to be paying. I always got a refund but a month or two down the road, I had another $800 phone bill... Scum-sucking bastards. And my sincerest apology to all the bastards out there not tied to the telephone company!
