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Ameritech/SBC, now AT&T, received, IIRC, circa $750 million in incentives to deploy universal access to high speed Internet throughout Illinois. The ink was ha

Ameritech/SBC, now AT&T, received, IIRC, circa $750 million in incentives to deploy universal access to high speed Internet throughout Illinois. The ink was hardly dry when they turned around and lobbied the Illinois legislature to let them out of their side of the deal -- while keeping the incentives. The current Foxcon deal in Wisconsin is looking more and more like Foxcon won't be coming through on all their rosy prognostications. Meanwhile, the SE corner of Wisconsin is all torn up, being rebuilt to accommodate them. In addition to all the other incentives. And again, it will end up a struggle as to how much they get and what their ultimate deliverables will be. And often as not, the public side of the equation is far outgunned in terms of very expensive and specialized lawyers. I'd prefer my communities not even engage in this. Don't open that door. Focus on the people and businesses you already have, and on not screwing them for the sake of some outsider's "vision" -- especially when that "vision" is making said outside, and the local "development" talent they've recruited, very much richer.

rayiner 8y ago
> Ameritech/SBC, now AT&T, received, IIRC, circa $750 million in incentives to deploy universal access to high speed Internet throughout Illinois. Are you talking about the Ameritech/SBC merger?
- pasbesoin 8y ago
  It was around that time; I no longer remember what name they were carrying at what points during that process. They subsequently acquired the remains of AT&T; a few other things, and the name with which they subsequently rebranded themselves. My point was more the "money for nothing" aspect; I merely don't remember off the cuff what exact name/branding they had at that point in time. Ameritech got bought out by ("merged with") SBC. Then the "merged" SBC bought the remaining piece of AT&T that included the name. A lot of the tech stuff, that had ended up in Lucent, went instead to Alcatel, IIRC (making a hole in the Omaha tech scene, among other things). P.S. That's how I remember it, now. I wasn't involved -- well, other than being rather thoroughly shafted by then Ameritech/SBC (and now I seem to recall their carrying such a combined name, during the transition) on a home DSL deployment. I ended up learning from their own rather thoroughly demoralized tech support that almost all of that was outsourced: Installations, IT, etc. One actual Ameritech/SBC employee (or was it before the SBC "merger"?... sigh) told me that all they could do was file tickets. Those went to third parties, and they couldn't do a damned thing about following up on them. Doing a tracert showed over ten hops -- sometimes well over, before your packets even left their "network" to the wider world. And that was the least of the customer's problems...
  - rayiner 8y ago
    I ask because I can't find anything about the "money for nothing" aspect. From the contemporaneous news articles, I see there was a lawsuit with Illinois over merger conditions. Governments don't typically give "money for nothing" for a merger in a regulated industry--regulatory bodies basically have veto authority over the merger (they can blow the whole thing up by denying transfer of various licenses) and use that power to extract various concessions. I mean it could be some other program, of course. I'm just trying to figure out the history.
    - pasbesoin 8y ago
      No, this wasn't with regard to merger approval, as far as I recall. This was a separate negotiation: State level tax breaks and other concessions, in return for the commitment to deploy "universal" high-speed Internet access throughout Illinois via their network, where "universal" was something in excess of 95% of the population with exclusions only for exceptional circumstances, e.g. extreme isolation. I seem to recall a percentage deployment they agreed to reach, over 95%, with discussion if not language about what might constitute the demographics of that bit that they would be allowed to fail to cover. "High-speed" was some not-too-aggressive throughput level commensurate with speeds in those days. "Money for nothing" was my quip, regarding the company's apparent attitude. The company agreed to it all, then started lobbying to get out of their commitments under the deal -- while not giving up the tax breaks and other concessions they'd gained by making said commitments. The agreement bound them to do these things; they turned around and lobbied the Illinois legislature to "unbind" them, while leaving the rest in place. Anecdotally, even in Chicagoland, they continued to drag their feet until the cable TV companies starting deploying wholesale. Depending on location, this often was some years later. Then, suddenly. the now-AT&T would get serious about their own deployment. Well, kind of serious: Technically, it often still sucked, by comparison. This is, in my view, analogous to the failures of big ISP's, in various states, until they face competition, for instance by communities finally just rolling their own municipal and/or cooperative broadband. Then, these big ISP's go to the legislature of whatever state and cry (i.e. lobby), "Unfair competition!" One has to keep telling these stories, so that maybe voters will pay enough attention to their state politics to vote out their elected officials who participate in these giveaways, that someone at sometime conveniently nicknamed "corporate welfare". Maybe even vote in and support a state attorney general willing to initiate investigations and, where evidence of corruption can be found, send a few of those officials to jail.
- gorgonical 8y ago
  I was interested in this story and did some digging. I managed to find a WSJ article detailing it from 2000, but it was behind a paywall. I found another website duplicates the article "A Year After Merger With Ameritech, SBC Still Hasn't Met FCC Conditions" https://www.barrons.com/articles/SB971041139934224266 https://www.barrons.com/articles/SB971041139934224266 I didn't look much for articles about when, if, or how SBC got out of these FCC requirements.

rayiner 8y ago

> Ameritech/SBC, now AT&T, received, IIRC, circa $750 million in incentives to deploy universal access to high speed Internet throughout Illinois. Are you talking about the Ameritech/SBC merger?

pasbesoin 8y ago
It was around that time; I no longer remember what name they were carrying at what points during that process. They subsequently acquired the remains of AT&T; a few other things, and the name with which they subsequently rebranded themselves. My point was more the "money for nothing" aspect; I merely don't remember off the cuff what exact name/branding they had at that point in time. Ameritech got bought out by ("merged with") SBC. Then the "merged" SBC bought the remaining piece of AT&T that included the name. A lot of the tech stuff, that had ended up in Lucent, went instead to Alcatel, IIRC (making a hole in the Omaha tech scene, among other things). P.S. That's how I remember it, now. I wasn't involved -- well, other than being rather thoroughly shafted by then Ameritech/SBC (and now I seem to recall their carrying such a combined name, during the transition) on a home DSL deployment. I ended up learning from their own rather thoroughly demoralized tech support that almost all of that was outsourced: Installations, IT, etc. One actual Ameritech/SBC employee (or was it before the SBC "merger"?... sigh) told me that all they could do was file tickets. Those went to third parties, and they couldn't do a damned thing about following up on them. Doing a tracert showed over ten hops -- sometimes well over, before your packets even left their "network" to the wider world. And that was the least of the customer's problems...
- rayiner 8y ago
  I ask because I can't find anything about the "money for nothing" aspect. From the contemporaneous news articles, I see there was a lawsuit with Illinois over merger conditions. Governments don't typically give "money for nothing" for a merger in a regulated industry--regulatory bodies basically have veto authority over the merger (they can blow the whole thing up by denying transfer of various licenses) and use that power to extract various concessions. I mean it could be some other program, of course. I'm just trying to figure out the history.
  - pasbesoin 8y ago
    No, this wasn't with regard to merger approval, as far as I recall. This was a separate negotiation: State level tax breaks and other concessions, in return for the commitment to deploy "universal" high-speed Internet access throughout Illinois via their network, where "universal" was something in excess of 95% of the population with exclusions only for exceptional circumstances, e.g. extreme isolation. I seem to recall a percentage deployment they agreed to reach, over 95%, with discussion if not language about what might constitute the demographics of that bit that they would be allowed to fail to cover. "High-speed" was some not-too-aggressive throughput level commensurate with speeds in those days. "Money for nothing" was my quip, regarding the company's apparent attitude. The company agreed to it all, then started lobbying to get out of their commitments under the deal -- while not giving up the tax breaks and other concessions they'd gained by making said commitments. The agreement bound them to do these things; they turned around and lobbied the Illinois legislature to "unbind" them, while leaving the rest in place. Anecdotally, even in Chicagoland, they continued to drag their feet until the cable TV companies starting deploying wholesale. Depending on location, this often was some years later. Then, suddenly. the now-AT&T would get serious about their own deployment. Well, kind of serious: Technically, it often still sucked, by comparison. This is, in my view, analogous to the failures of big ISP's, in various states, until they face competition, for instance by communities finally just rolling their own municipal and/or cooperative broadband. Then, these big ISP's go to the legislature of whatever state and cry (i.e. lobby), "Unfair competition!" One has to keep telling these stories, so that maybe voters will pay enough attention to their state politics to vote out their elected officials who participate in these giveaways, that someone at sometime conveniently nicknamed "corporate welfare". Maybe even vote in and support a state attorney general willing to initiate investigations and, where evidence of corruption can be found, send a few of those officials to jail.
gorgonical 8y ago
I was interested in this story and did some digging. I managed to find a WSJ article detailing it from 2000, but it was behind a paywall. I found another website duplicates the article "A Year After Merger With Ameritech, SBC Still Hasn't Met FCC Conditions" https://www.barrons.com/articles/SB971041139934224266 https://www.barrons.com/articles/SB971041139934224266 I didn't look much for articles about when, if, or how SBC got out of these FCC requirements.