IRREGULATORS to California: Time to Rattle the Cage

AUGUST 31st, 2020

Contact: Bruce Kushnick, bruce@newnetworks.com

IRREGULATORS to California: Time to Rattle the Cage

PLEASE DONATE

NEXT STEP: Halt the Billions in Wireless Cross-Subsidies; Use the Money to Upgrade America with Fiber Optics-to-the Home—Solving the Digital Divide.

Read Our Analysis, Our Call For Investigations, And More.

EFF writes, August 31st, 2020: “Outrageous-The CA Assembly Democrats have just moved to stop efforts to close the Digital Divide this year.”

Don’t Get Mad: Get Even: Let’s get back the estimated $1.7-$2.4 billion that was overcharged by AT&T CA in 2019; the $10.3 billion total over the last 5 years–And this is the low number.

  • FACT: AT&T California is the primary telecom state-based public utility in California.
  •  California bill SB1130, states: “An act to amend Sections 281… etc, of the Public Utilities Code”.
  • “Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including telephone corporations.”

You didn’t know that AT&T California is a state-based telecommunications PUBLIC utility?

The current pandemic has exposed that America’s telecoms, Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink, failed to properly upgrade their state utilities to deliver high speed broadband. In fact, there is an estimated 163 million people that do not have very high-speed broadband, and this is not only in rural areas, but inner cities, with low income areas hit the hardest. From children who can’t go online to go to school, or communities that can’t participate because of this Digital Divide; this is a social injustice. America wants answers.

However, there is now a knee-jerk reaction to throw money and use inferior wireless 5G and WiFi services. These services are just a bait-and-switch as they require a fiber optic wire and they have DATA CAPS (on purpose). More importantly, removing the billions in subsidies makes them unprofitable. America and California paid for a fiber optic service your never got; Fiber is much, much faster, much more reliable, and it should never have data caps– and here’s the money to pay for it — without government subsidies and added charges to your bills.

NEW AMMO: On June 8th 2020, the Verizon NY 2019 Annual Report, was published; it is the primary public telecom utility of NY State and New York City—THESE ARE VERIZON’S FINANCIALS: We found that Verizon moved billions of dollars of expenses into basic local service to subsidize the wireless build outs and dump Corporate expenses. In Verizon NY, Local Service was overcharged an estimated over $1.1-1.6 billion in just 2019—almost $6.8 billion over the last 5 years, and this is just the beginning.

America’s been Played: This financial shell game also made all of America’s communications services to be 3-14 times more expensive than the rest of the world. We can’t fix the Digital Divide if we don’t confront this–now.

The States are Now Independent: On March 13th, 2020, IRREGULATORS v FCC, the DC Court of Appeals made it clear that the states are now independent to devise a new set of accounting requirements and not use the FCC’s formulas. Last month, we started in New York, and filed calling for immediate investigations to halt the subsidies and use the funds to solve the Digital Divide.

Read the Verizon NY 2019 Annual Report, our analysis and our call for investigations.

What happened in California: Start the Investigations Immediately.

By 2000, 5.5 million households should have had fiber optics, and Pac Bell was to spend $16 billion – never happened and it went down hill from there. 100% of AT&T should have had broadband by 2007, (No unserved areas) and the company manipulated the financial accounting just like Verizon as it is based on FCC federal accounting formula.

This isn’t easy, and it’s not going to happen without your help.

Please consider a gift in any amount to help offset the legal costs of making sure everyone in the U.S. has access to high speed broadband at a reasonable cost.

Thanks,

Bruce Kushnick, Managing Director, IRREGULATORS

bruce@newnetworks.com