Telecom Act Is 30. $500 Billion Overcharging, the Digital Divide and Delete3 by FCC Chairman Carr.

Not One Pundit, Politician, Advocate or Lawyer Mentioned the Rewriting of History

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is now 30 years old, and there has been a lot of events, hearings and webinars, including a congressional hearing, an FCC series of panels, Public Knowledge, Benton Foundation, TPI, Brookings, Broadband Breakfast, and a few others, all easily findable on the web.

The Act was supposed to open the wired networks to direct competition, that would lower prices and bring in new and innovative services that would be available via a new fiber optic wire to the home and business. And it would be delivered to everyone, equally, as this Act was an update of the original Communications Act of 1934

And I just sloughed through a collection of them, even read the testimony for over 11 hours, and if you want to know why there is a digital divide, why America’s communications prices are out of control and every excuse to not build fiber optic infrastructure to the home, or why much of America does not have serious competition, it is because…

ANSWER: It appears that every advocate, politician, analyst, lawyer or former FCC congressional staffer, all worked off a rewritten history, which failed to address basic facts. (Unless we missed it...)

Basic Facts:

§ Virtually every state in America had a plan to replace the original copper wire of the state telecommunication public utility with a fiber optic wire. Though the plans varied by state.

§ The original copper had been put in before the 1980’s, but it could be decades earlier. For example, copper wires in areas of Brooklyn, NY were laid in the 1920’s, and only got replaced when they had to — almost 90 years later.

§ Irony of Ironies: It appears that the copper wires in 2026 are part of these original state Bell system utilities that were written off decades ago, and should have been replaced with fiber.

— Hold that thought; we’ll come back to this point.

§ State laws were changed to give the companies more profits.

§ Customers we charged extra for upgrades of the networks.

§ Then, after the fiber replacements were delayed and not built as committed to or announced in the media, the companies every time would push a ‘wireless’ substitution.

This happened multiple times.

§ The FCC never examined these issues and failed to investigate our claims when we told the FCC in 1998 there would be a digital divide, or in 2005, that America had paid over $200 billion, documented, by 2004.

§ And this overcharge has been accruing every year, with new ways to overcharge America.

Failure of the companies to deliver was hidden.

§ The manipulation of the FCC Advanced Network reports to Congress which were supposed to detail whether broadband was being deployed in a ‘timely fashion’ failed to give an accurate assessment because it never tracked state broadband.

§ The state laws were never reversed so customers were overcharged thousands of dollars for upgraded fiber service they never received.

§ The financial accounting has been manipulated over the last 2 decades so that the basic phone service has been illegally paying expenses of the other lines of business, such as the data lines.

§ The construction budgets of the state utilities have been illegally diverted to the wireless business since 2012.

Thus, if Congress was assigned the task of oversight of the FCC… there are no serious checks and balances to protect the public interest, no mechanism with enough clout to keep the companies in check. Or worse, there is no enforcement, no penalties and fines, or a mechanism to halt egregious acts.

§ The number of copper lines in America is hidden because there has been a shell game created using the “IP” classification — a line that carries an internet service, or a phone service using IP, like VOIP, is classified as an information service, Title I — and it has no obligations and when added it is taken out of the line accounting. And all data lines have been removed and in some presentations all business lines are omitted, such as USTelecom’s filings, the association for the wireline companies.

§ The ‘shut off of the copper’ proceedings are leaving out an estimated 70–90% of lines.

This cost billions of dollars in unjust rate increases, as ‘losing lines’ equals rate increases

§ AT&T has an estimated 80 million locations but only 10.4 million fiber lines to the premises — Where are all of the other lines — are they copper lines?

This is a partial list of items that have never been addressed by the FCC even when we filed extensive research with experts and lawyers.

And the longer list includes the failure of the mergers that allowed the Baby Bell siblings to marry each other; an act against nature — then help to shut down ongoing fiber projects, or to not compete in each other’s territories with wireline broadband competition.

We continue: Let’s add some detail to the failure of the Telecom Act and the agency that is supposed to be working for the public.

State broadband plans were omitted from the FCC plans and not examined. And Common Wisdom of what trends and market dynamics created the T elecom Act left of the thte first wave of fiber hype- known as the Information Superhighway.

Starting in the 1990’s, a few years before the Telecom Act, America was promised a new shiny fiber optic future. 7 holding companies had been created in 1984 and given control over the existing state telecommunications public utilities, which were based on copper wire.

And in 1992, Vice President Al Gore laid out the ‘Information Superhighway’, a fiber replacement of this existing copper wires.

Note: This shows the current 3 holding companies after multiple mergers.

And instead of the government running it, the holding companies went state to state and convinced the state to create a new ‘alternative regulation’ that would give more profits that would be used for construction — i.e.; rates would go up and new tax benefits were given.

• Pacific Bell CA was to spend $16 billion and have 5.5 million homes by 2000
• Ameritech, in 5 states, claimed 6 million homes by 2000 in 5 states.
• Illinois Bell, an Ameritrch state, would spend $3 billion alone.
• SNET CT would spend $4.4 billion and have the state completed by 2007
• Verizon NJ would have 100% completed fiber to the home by 2010
• Bell Atlantic would spend $11 billion on 8.75 million homes.

NOTE: This was a decade before Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse, circa 2005.

In fact, there was a feeding frenzy of hope and hype — it made 5G look like a whisper.

Americast & Tele-TV. A quick billion dollars to push through the Telecom Act.

An example: Almost all of these holding companies joined forces in 2 groups to promote a new wonderous future over a fiber optic wire. Companies that now are part of AT&T and Verizon created 2 separate large coalitions to bring these new technological fiber optic networks to the public.

There were press releases every day hyping the project.

“Americast will reach 68 million homes in 32 states.”

“Americast … Announced the purchase of $1 billion worth of high-tech boxes, referred to as digital set-top boxes.”

In order to create new content and have a noise machine for their fiber optic plans, the Bell companies split into two primary new companies, TELE-TV and Americast.

These two companies’ partners included six of the seven Bell companies, as well as then independent, SNET and GTE (Qwest was missing).

• TELE-TV was announced in October ’94 and consisted of three partners: Bell Atlantic, NYNEX and Pacific Telesis.
• Americast, created to rival TELE-TV, was created in April ’95, and consisted of Ameritech, BellSouth and SBC Communications, as well as Disney and GTE.

Look at the dates. These 2 entities spent over a billion in a few years to promote the new fiber service that was vaporware.

And each of the companies hyped their new fiber optic plans.

Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith, in bravura mode, was interviewed in Wired Magazine, February 1995, and said that Bell Atlantic would have 50% of the cable business by 2000.

“I would say that by the year 2000, we’ll have 50% of the cable business. No doubt about it. Which is why the cable companies are in a panic.

“Meanwhile, the cable companies won’t have even 5% of our wireline phone service customers.t

NOTE: This hype lasted for years. Bell Atlantic would merge with NYNEX, to cover the East Coast from Maine to Virginia. By 2000, Bell Atlantic failed to do the upgrades in every state. Then it would merge with GTE, an independent company that had wireline locations all over the US, and the company sold off or closed most if not all of the fiber build outs it had started on in multiple states.

These groups and this hype were done to get the Telecom Act passed, not for competition, but instead there was a sub-plot — so that the local phone companies could enter the long distance business — which was very lucrative, and in 2004-ish they changed the laws to have the FCC close the network for competition.

Video dialtone FCC applications were for show and to get rid of regulations.

The state-based broadband plans were to start in 1994-ish, but there was also video dialtone, which was filed at the FCC at the same time the state plans were approved — and they overlapped. But unlike the state plans, these FCC plans came and went in a few years.

In aprevious post we highlight 24 ‘permanent’ fiber to the home deployments. These below are a sample of the filings.

Examples of Video Dialtone “Permanent” Fiber Deployments by Verizon, AT&T and Lumen, 1993–1994.

We note that there were a few reports that covered video dialtone

The Video Dialtone second report was the last, it appears, bccause after filing 24 permanent locations the companies started halting their deployments and tried to do a wireless bait and switch — notice they do not use the official term utility but rather LEC — local exchange companies.

First FCC report, 1994.

“VDT framework, along with technological advances, has spurred increased video-related activity by LECs, including several market and technical trails and twenty-four applications for permanent authority covering over 8.5 million homes.

“Those applications, taken together, constitute a promising source of competition to cable operators for the multichannel distribution of video programming.”

And in 1995, after the ink on the state agreements were consumated, 1993–1995, the decided to drop the video dialtone permanent plans.

“On May 24, 1995, Bell Atlantic withdrew two applications for permanent commercial VDT systems that proposed to pass 1.2 million homes in the D:C. LATA and 2 million homes in the mid-Atlantic area.”’ Bell Atlantic announced that it was considering new technologies and would submit amended applications at a later date, after further evaluating the technologies. Press reports suggest that in the D.C. and mid-Atlantic regions. Bell Atlantic plans to use wireless technology pending further development of switched digital video (“SDV”) architecture.”

Notice this first wireless bait and switch in this FCC 2nd report. Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video Programming CS Docket №95–61 SECOND ANNUAL REPORT : December 7, 1995.

What is never mentioned by the FCC is that these deployments were directly tied to state utilities and specific commitments made in each state.

The first report to Congress in 1998, Advanced Network Section 706

Refreshing the Record: 27 Years of FCC Filings and Complaints in the Section 706 Advanced Network and Related Proceedings by New Networks Institute, Teletruth and the IRREGULATORS.

New Networks Institute, TeleTruth and the IRREGULATORS presents the factual history of fiber optic broadband that we filed with the FCC since 1998. We participated in over 50 proceedings, and submitted over 5,100 pages, all focused on the Section 706 advanced network inquiries and related proceedings.

Let us give you the punchline pertaining to the US fiber infrastructure and the Telecom Act’s chief agency, the FCC.

In 1998, the FCC put out a Notice of Inquiry to supply info for the first ‘advanced network 706 report that was supposed to tell congress whether broadband was being delivered on a timely basis.

Under chairman Kennard, the FCC released a report claiming that the speed of broadband in America would be 200Knps in one direction.

The FCC Definition of Broadband Is 200 Kbps. — It Can Not Handle Video.

We wrote “We believe that the growth of the economy has been directly harmed because of the redefinition of the word “broadband” in terms of speed. Since 1999, the FCC, in order to keep face and to make it look like America was on the right path, published numerous biased reports. The FCC redefined “advanced” broadband as 200 kbps in both directions, and “high speed” as 200 kbps in one direction. New Networks has been a critical of this definition since 1998.

· Advanced networks are 200 kbps in both directions.

· High-speed networks are 200 kbps in one direction.

More importantly, the Telecom Act of 1996 required broadband to handle “high-quality” video services. The definition of “Advanced capability” includes “broadband” with a capability of high-quality voice, data, graphics and video telecommunications. Section 706(c)(1) defines

“Advanced telecommunications capability” as follows:

“The term ‘advanced telecommunications capability’ is defined, without regard to any transmission media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband.

This is the definition of broadband in the 1993 Verizon New Jersey order from the NJ Board of Public Utilities. Verizon NJ covers 96% of the state.

In our filed comments as New Networks Institute we told the FCC that the speed of broadband as told by state laws and commitments was 45Mbps in both directions — 1000Kbps=1Mbps.

In the Bellsouth-AT&T merger, AT&T claimed it would have 100% of 22 states capable of broadband — but the kicker was even tin cans and strings was faster.

The original 1998 New Networks Institute filing should have been taken seriously.

”In the Matter of Inquiry Concerning the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to All Americans in a Reasonable and Timely Fashion, and Possible Steps to Accelerate Such Deployment Pursuant to Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996

“Conclusion: The RBOCs Have Repeatedly Failed To Deliver On Promises Of Network Upgrades Made In Exchange For Regulatory Benefits.

Fast Forward, 2025 — Delete, Delete, Delete is in full swing.

§ **Our Current Filing September 8th, 2025 -This post is part of our filing.**

§ **FCC Section 706 Advanced network report This is the FCC’s document underway as of September 15th, 2025**

· **Read specific FCC Filings (Partial List)t- CLICK HERE:**

We also add the current, seriously problematic lobotomy of America’s broadband future:

· If the FCC Abolishes America’s 1 Gig Goal for Broadband Speed, in 10 Years, We Will be the Equivalent of Tin Cans and Rabbit Ears.

If you want ridiculous, this is the FCC’s reasoning behind removing the one gig goal — it skews the data in the wrong way.

This is what the FCC wrote:

“ As part of our return to following the plain language of section 706, we propose to abolish without replacement the long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps established in the 2024 Report.

“Not only is a long-term goal not mentioned in section 706, but maintaining such a goal risks skewing the market by unnecessarily potentially picking technological winners and losers. It would also appear to violate our obligation to conduct our analysis in a technologically neutral manner. At present, it is impossible to predict long-term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences.

“Further, assuming a long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps may be unreasonably prejudicial to technologies such as satellite and fixed wireless that presently do not support such speeds. We believe it prudent to continue to monitor technological developments and consumer preferences and adapt our current benchmark, as well as relevant high-cost support programs, accordingly. Do commenters agree with our proposal and reasoning?”

IRREGULATORS position: This comment, laden with the stench of a sewer that has backed up, actually says that the high speed fiber services skew the data and could violate laws because it is not neutral.

The 30 year arc from a fiber optic future to FCC Chairman Carr’s shutting off the copper

In March 2025, newly minted Chairman Brendan Carr unleashes a barrage of proceedings, all interlocking to dismantle the state telecommunications public utility.

In order to do this, Carr decide to just push through orders that in 2026 help AT&T to offer crap wireless — a technical term for a company offering a device and then they refuse to take responsibility for their product that doesn’t work.

We filed an Application for Review because Carr did this without a comment period, though, he ignores all of the public comments anyway.

And in his presentation at the Open Meeting, Carr claims that one provider, AT&T, has only 5% of the lines are copper and yet the company claims it is spending $6 billion annually to maintain them.

Corporate Capture of the Advisory committees — our inside view

We should be clear that the corporate takeover of the advisory committees has been going on for 2 decades as seen by our complaint to Congress over our membership on the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee that was stacked with the companies, their paid and astroturf groups and blocked the presentation of our work on Truth in Billing, which was done by collecting actual bills.

“Re: Request for a Congressional Investigation of the Control of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee by Telecommunications Business Interests.

“Can you understand the charges and taxes on your phone bill? Of course not. Why hasn’t the FCC moved to fix this nationwide problem?

“In 2003, TeleTruth was appointed to be on the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee. TeleTruth was honored to serve. Our specialty and expertise are the auditing and correcting of mistakes on residential and small business phone bills, as well as covering other areas of the phone and broadband industries for the public interest.

“However, it has become clear over the course of two-years of events that this Committee is the epitome of “regulatory capture” the telecommunications industry has been able to unduly influence events on this Committee and at the Commission and has harmed the public interest. We found that the problem with phone bills is that the regulatory system has fallen to the depths of no longer serving the public’s needs.

This summarizes the more recent advisory committee ‘swamp’.

PROVING REGULATORY CAPTURE OF THE FCC

And in the first term, President Trump claimed he would drain the swamp, this was the rogue’s gallery — the advisory committee and the FCC were captured.

**EXPOSED: The Corrupt Trump Republican FCC: Puppets of Verizon and AT&T.**

Conclusion: The 30th anniversary of the Act reveals you can rewrite history and even those who should know, seem to either legitimately do not know the factual history, or they don’t want it told

America can never fix the Digital Divide or lower prices when the FCC has been captured, especially the Chairman. Moreover, even the states have proven to be clueless. or don’t want to take on the companies that failed to properly upgrade their state utilities.

And finally, the utilities still exist but under Chairman Carr they are being dismantled to give the utility’s assets to the holding companies wireless affiliate. And Carr is actively erasing the audit trail.

This is the financial summary of Verizon New York 2024 Annual Report, The next 2025 report is due May 21, 2026.

And this is a link to some of the details. Why is local service paying for corporate operations or why are construction budgets are being charged to a copper based service that is no longer being offered?

The Verizon New York 2024 Annual Report Just Came Out and It Contradicts Everything; Common Wisdom Is Wrong.

And how is it that no panelist addressed the utilities or these financial books that are manipulated to make local service pay the majority of the expenses?