8 ms·

Summary: $200B Broadband Scandal (2005)

140 points by dabber 9y ago

rayiner 9y ago
The book is an advocacy piece designed to stoke outrage more than inform. Consider the Pennsylvania issue. Regarding the Pennsylvania issue: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2095227/verizon-pennsylvania-commitment.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2095.... What the book's account leaves out is that (1) the law required only 1.5 Mbps to qualify for alternative regulation, and (2) the State of Pennsylvania didn't pay anything for this failed promise. And at the end of the day, Pennsylvania has fiber to 40% of households (more than the Netherlands, less than Sweden). The book isn't lying, it's just not the full picture.
- jack9 9y ago
  Despite that clarification, there were fraudulent claims made and fraud performed. As a critical piece, it's both informative and outrageous in content. If there was any interest in reform, it would be damning. The FCC's modus is that minimizing the negative press about today's problems matters more than the lobbied outcomes. This will not even be a footnote on wikipedia in 2 decades...if there is still a wikipedia that has an FCC (tm) article.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- dahauns 9y ago
  >Pennsylvania has higher fiber deployment than Sweden Has it? The best numbers I could find was ~60% for Sweden, and ~40% for PA. http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2016/Snabb-bredbandsutbyggnad-med-fiber--och-mobilnat/ https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2016/Snabb-br...
  - johansch 9y ago
    > The best numbers I could find was ~60% for Sweden A year later (October 2016, rather than October 2015): 66.4% https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2017/Sju-av-tio-har-snabbt-bredband-till-foljd-av-fortsatt-fiberutbyggnad/ https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2017/Sju-av-t...
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Looks like there was a big jump in Sweden in the last couple of years, it was under 40% in 2014: https://www.cnet.com/news/fast-fiber-optic-broadband-spreads-across-developed-world https://www.cnet.com/news/fast-fiber-optic-broadband-spreads.... I've corrected my post.
      - Retric 9y ago
        Still wrong. "the Netherlands is ranked with Switzerland in having the most broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants,[1] has no bandwidth caps,[2] and has the most homes passed in Europe in terms of connection speeds of 50 Mbit/s and higher.[3]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_Netherlands https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_Netherlands Yes, they use a lot of DSL, but you can have 20+Mbit DSL connections. The cap is actually ~120 megabit under the right conditions. Though you need a telecom willing to make a few investments which seem rare in the US.
        rayiner 9y ago
        I said Pennsylvania has more fiber deployment (40%) than the Netherlands (33%). That's completely accurate http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/06/03/third-of-dutch-homes-connected-to-fibre http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/06/03/third-of-dutch-hom.... But even speaking about the other things, Pennsylvania is ahead on many metrics: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... In the Netherlands, average connection speed in Akamai's testing is 17.4 mbps, versus 20.8 in Pennsylvania. And 46% of connections are above 15 mbps, versus 54% in Pennsylvania. The "homes passed with 50 mbps+" statistic you cite is to a pay-walled article, but this source says https://www.telecompaper.com/research/netherlands-most-homes-passed-with-50mbps--690051 https://www.telecompaper.com/research/netherlands-most-homes... that the Netherlands, Japan, and South Korea are above 80%, while Sweden, Hong Kong, Denmark, and Taiwan are between 50% and 80%. The number in Pennsylvania is 88%: http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania.
- LogicX 9y ago
  Anyone know what happened next in PA after this order?
- exelius 9y ago
  PA also has two of the major telecoms in their backyard (Comcast in Philadelphia, Verizon's HQ is closer to Philly than NYC) and even the rural areas are relatively densely populated. The executives want to play with the shiny, new things; so their neighborhoods get implemented first (I've been involved at gigabit rollouts at both companies -- this is actually how it works). There are also a lot of very high net worth areas northwest of Philadelphia (which is all served by FiOS, as is most of the inner city). Median household income is the primary reason telecom deployment happens in one neighborhood vs. another; and the suburbs outside Philly have some of the highest-income zip codes in the country.
dustinls 9y ago
Have Frontier DSL here, the techs told me about the fiber installed just a hundred feet away, that Frontier had installed for this government program. They still don't plan on doing anything with it for another 5+ years, and will be servicing business customers first before residential. 20 Mbps is cool too I guess.
JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
This pisses me off so much. I live in a rural area and have to use a damn unlimited Sprint cell phone shared through Windows Internet Connection Sharing as my home's only source of internet. AT&T has DSL across the street but refuses to allow me to have DSL and calls to them pleading to extend service go nowhere, I may as well be talking to a chatbot. I think of this fraud the telco industry perpetrated a lot when I have to deal with the constant problems a setup like mine causes.
- rayiner 9y ago
  A lot of the industry's problems can actually be traced to the government's attempts to ensure service in rural areas. The government wanted rural areas to have telephone service, but didn't want to pay for it with tax dollars. So it gave various companies monopolies as a carrot in return for the obligation to serve rural areas (or rural parts of municipalities). Post-deregulation, it imposed a huge extra tax on the industry which it then diverted to phone service in rural areas. Of course there is no free lunch--the end result of all that intervention was entrenched incumbents with little incentive to upgrade their networks.
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    This would be believable except that lobbyists often step in at the state level to knock out community buildouts of self-financed infrastructure at much lower costs than what the big telcos claim.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      It's important to break down barriers to community fiber deployment, but it's a footnote in the big picture. In most states, there is no restriction on such deployment, yet you still see very little of it.
      - dv_dt 9y ago
        Because all it takes is a very few public examples to discourage the activity at all. Just like businesses want stability to make capital investments, so do community projects. What happens if you get 90% of the way through, and state lobbyists make your project illegal? All the invested capital becomes stranded or lost - do you risk that in your state if there are examples of that outcome in other states?
atonse 9y ago
I read things like this and other failed infrastructure stories (high speed rail) and just get so depressed. Growing up in India, we used to read and see stories about the West (Europe and the US) and were just amazed at what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so. Now, I've lived in the US for 23 years, and I look longingly elsewhere at Europe and Asia to see what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so. From broadband, to high speed rail, to public transportation, to food safety, to medical care. The problem is, as a population, we still haven't come to terms that we're slipping behind badly. We just say "but, but, silicon valley!" or "but we innovate!" and move on.
- cobookman 9y ago
  I feel like our economy still hasn't fully recovered. Sure you've got an overall increase in market cap, but the common worker isn't nearly as well off as before the crash. The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3.
  - mercer 9y ago
    > The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    >I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3. It's still unclear that we would need another one. Going by the WWII timeline, the invasion of Poland would be roughly in the next year.
- exelius 9y ago
  I find it's generally a "grass is greener" thing - we envy other countries for infrastructure but ignore the serious problems in those places like high unemployment, etc. But you're right; the US got overrun by nationalism post-9/11 which led to a feeling that because we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god -- and the rest of the world surpassed us in many ways.
23443463453 9y ago
No one talks about the far larger fraud committed by the tech companies we all love so much, who externalize the cost of maintaining and expanding the internet to end users. That ~$80 you pay for internet at home and the $100 yo pay or mobile internet per person ... yeah, that's a market distortion that comes from "Net Neutrality" (the feel good term conjured by the big tech companies, in whom's interest it is for you to continue paying for their costs and therefore their profits as they destroy and eat the economy instead of having to pay those costs). Because who would want to have to pay for a cost when you can just use some useful idiots that you already have convinced to freely be harvested of all their information value, to also defend their paying for your profits as you rape and pillage the economy.
CLGrimes 9y ago
The page mentioned that Verizon cut deployments in 13 states, and the deployments that were made were not doing equitably. What recourse is there for companies that made this commitment and still exist today? Could Verizon still be on the hook for providing these services, and if so, how can it be enforced?
banderman 9y ago
The full report appears to be available here: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/61BF.pdf https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/61B...
drawkbox 9y ago
In 2012, Goldman Sachs estimated it would cost 140 billion to fiber up the entire country[1]. Let's round up to 250 billion for corporate/politician bribery greed/pork and double it for today at 500 billion. That is about $2500 per household for fiber internet nationwide, built to be expanded later, quite affordable. With our wars for the last 2 decades coming in at 6 trillion we could have bought that 10+ times. [1] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Nationwide-Google-Fiber-Build-Estimate-140-Billion-122347 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Nationwide-Google-Fiber-B...

140 points by dabber 9y ago

The book is an advocacy piece designed to stoke outrage more than inform. Consider the Pennsylvania issue. Regarding the Pennsylvania issue: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2095227/verizon-pennsylvania-commitment.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2095.... What the book's account leaves out is that (1) the law required only 1.5 Mbps to qualify for alternative regulation, and (2) the State of Pennsylvania didn't pay anything for this failed promise. And at the end of the day, Pennsylvania has fiber to 40% of households (more than the Netherlands, less than Sweden). The book isn't lying, it's just not the full picture.

jack9 9y ago
Despite that clarification, there were fraudulent claims made and fraud performed. As a critical piece, it's both informative and outrageous in content. If there was any interest in reform, it would be damning. The FCC's modus is that minimizing the negative press about today's problems matters more than the lobbied outcomes. This will not even be a footnote on wikipedia in 2 decades...if there is still a wikipedia that has an FCC (tm) article.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dahauns 9y ago
>Pennsylvania has higher fiber deployment than Sweden Has it? The best numbers I could find was ~60% for Sweden, and ~40% for PA. http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2016/Snabb-bredbandsutbyggnad-med-fiber--och-mobilnat/ https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2016/Snabb-br...
- johansch 9y ago
  > The best numbers I could find was ~60% for Sweden A year later (October 2016, rather than October 2015): 66.4% https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2017/Sju-av-tio-har-snabbt-bredband-till-foljd-av-fortsatt-fiberutbyggnad/ https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2017/Sju-av-t...
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Looks like there was a big jump in Sweden in the last couple of years, it was under 40% in 2014: https://www.cnet.com/news/fast-fiber-optic-broadband-spreads-across-developed-world https://www.cnet.com/news/fast-fiber-optic-broadband-spreads.... I've corrected my post.
    - Retric 9y ago
      Still wrong. "the Netherlands is ranked with Switzerland in having the most broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants,[1] has no bandwidth caps,[2] and has the most homes passed in Europe in terms of connection speeds of 50 Mbit/s and higher.[3]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_Netherlands https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_Netherlands Yes, they use a lot of DSL, but you can have 20+Mbit DSL connections. The cap is actually ~120 megabit under the right conditions. Though you need a telecom willing to make a few investments which seem rare in the US.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        I said Pennsylvania has more fiber deployment (40%) than the Netherlands (33%). That's completely accurate http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/06/03/third-of-dutch-homes-connected-to-fibre http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/06/03/third-of-dutch-hom.... But even speaking about the other things, Pennsylvania is ahead on many metrics: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... In the Netherlands, average connection speed in Akamai's testing is 17.4 mbps, versus 20.8 in Pennsylvania. And 46% of connections are above 15 mbps, versus 54% in Pennsylvania. The "homes passed with 50 mbps+" statistic you cite is to a pay-walled article, but this source says https://www.telecompaper.com/research/netherlands-most-homes-passed-with-50mbps--690051 https://www.telecompaper.com/research/netherlands-most-homes... that the Netherlands, Japan, and South Korea are above 80%, while Sweden, Hong Kong, Denmark, and Taiwan are between 50% and 80%. The number in Pennsylvania is 88%: http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania.
LogicX 9y ago
Anyone know what happened next in PA after this order?
exelius 9y ago
PA also has two of the major telecoms in their backyard (Comcast in Philadelphia, Verizon's HQ is closer to Philly than NYC) and even the rural areas are relatively densely populated. The executives want to play with the shiny, new things; so their neighborhoods get implemented first (I've been involved at gigabit rollouts at both companies -- this is actually how it works). There are also a lot of very high net worth areas northwest of Philadelphia (which is all served by FiOS, as is most of the inner city). Median household income is the primary reason telecom deployment happens in one neighborhood vs. another; and the suburbs outside Philly have some of the highest-income zip codes in the country.

dustinls 9y ago

Have Frontier DSL here, the techs told me about the fiber installed just a hundred feet away, that Frontier had installed for this government program. They still don't plan on doing anything with it for another 5+ years, and will be servicing business customers first before residential. 20 Mbps is cool too I guess.

JohnJamesRambo 9y ago

This pisses me off so much. I live in a rural area and have to use a damn unlimited Sprint cell phone shared through Windows Internet Connection Sharing as my home's only source of internet. AT&T has DSL across the street but refuses to allow me to have DSL and calls to them pleading to extend service go nowhere, I may as well be talking to a chatbot. I think of this fraud the telco industry perpetrated a lot when I have to deal with the constant problems a setup like mine causes.

rayiner 9y ago
A lot of the industry's problems can actually be traced to the government's attempts to ensure service in rural areas. The government wanted rural areas to have telephone service, but didn't want to pay for it with tax dollars. So it gave various companies monopolies as a carrot in return for the obligation to serve rural areas (or rural parts of municipalities). Post-deregulation, it imposed a huge extra tax on the industry which it then diverted to phone service in rural areas. Of course there is no free lunch--the end result of all that intervention was entrenched incumbents with little incentive to upgrade their networks.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  This would be believable except that lobbyists often step in at the state level to knock out community buildouts of self-financed infrastructure at much lower costs than what the big telcos claim.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    It's important to break down barriers to community fiber deployment, but it's a footnote in the big picture. In most states, there is no restriction on such deployment, yet you still see very little of it.
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      Because all it takes is a very few public examples to discourage the activity at all. Just like businesses want stability to make capital investments, so do community projects. What happens if you get 90% of the way through, and state lobbyists make your project illegal? All the invested capital becomes stranded or lost - do you risk that in your state if there are examples of that outcome in other states?

atonse 9y ago

I read things like this and other failed infrastructure stories (high speed rail) and just get so depressed. Growing up in India, we used to read and see stories about the West (Europe and the US) and were just amazed at what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so. Now, I've lived in the US for 23 years, and I look longingly elsewhere at Europe and Asia to see what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so. From broadband, to high speed rail, to public transportation, to food safety, to medical care. The problem is, as a population, we still haven't come to terms that we're slipping behind badly. We just say "but, but, silicon valley!" or "but we innovate!" and move on.

cobookman 9y ago
I feel like our economy still hasn't fully recovered. Sure you've got an overall increase in market cap, but the common worker isn't nearly as well off as before the crash. The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3.
- mercer 9y ago
  > The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  >I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3. It's still unclear that we would need another one. Going by the WWII timeline, the invasion of Poland would be roughly in the next year.
exelius 9y ago
I find it's generally a "grass is greener" thing - we envy other countries for infrastructure but ignore the serious problems in those places like high unemployment, etc. But you're right; the US got overrun by nationalism post-9/11 which led to a feeling that because we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god -- and the rest of the world surpassed us in many ways.

23443463453 9y ago

No one talks about the far larger fraud committed by the tech companies we all love so much, who externalize the cost of maintaining and expanding the internet to end users. That ~$80 you pay for internet at home and the $100 yo pay or mobile internet per person ... yeah, that's a market distortion that comes from "Net Neutrality" (the feel good term conjured by the big tech companies, in whom's interest it is for you to continue paying for their costs and therefore their profits as they destroy and eat the economy instead of having to pay those costs). Because who would want to have to pay for a cost when you can just use some useful idiots that you already have convinced to freely be harvested of all their information value, to also defend their paying for your profits as you rape and pillage the economy.

CLGrimes 9y ago

The page mentioned that Verizon cut deployments in 13 states, and the deployments that were made were not doing equitably. What recourse is there for companies that made this commitment and still exist today? Could Verizon still be on the hook for providing these services, and if so, how can it be enforced?

banderman 9y ago

The full report appears to be available here: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/61BF.pdf https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/61B...

drawkbox 9y ago

In 2012, Goldman Sachs estimated it would cost 140 billion to fiber up the entire country[1]. Let's round up to 250 billion for corporate/politician bribery greed/pork and double it for today at 500 billion. That is about $2500 per household for fiber internet nationwide, built to be expanded later, quite affordable. With our wars for the last 2 decades coming in at 6 trillion we could have bought that 10+ times. [1] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Nationwide-Google-Fiber-Build-Estimate-140-Billion-122347 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Nationwide-Google-Fiber-B...