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Ajit Pai apparently mismanaged $9B fund–new FCC boss starts “cleanup”

256 points by LinuxBender 5y ago

whoomp12342 5y ago
explains why my internet is twice as expensive and the same speed!
atlgator 5y ago
Is it odd they are going after SpaceX? The funding they received was earmarked to support unserved census blocks. If any company is in a position to help unserved rural areas it is SpaceX, no?
- giacaglia 5y ago
  Not odd. Expected
- drooby 5y ago
  It only effects something like 6% of blocks that SpaceX would get the funds for… so basically instead of SpaceX getting $880m they’ll get $825m.
- SloopJon 5y ago
  If up to $100 million of that was to places like highway medians and a "parking garage ... surrounded on all sides by multiple companies offering gigabit service," then no, it's not odd at all.
  - TheParkShark 5y ago
    If I understand correctly SpaceX internet is from a satellite. Surely it would would in a larger area than a parking garage or a median right?
- ogjunkyard 5y ago
  I feel like the lean on SpaceX in this article is because it's a popular name at the moment. In the article, it mentions that SpaceX received grants for urban areas for things like airport parking lots. Also mentioned were areas already served by one or more companies with 25/3 broadband. Those were the types of locations that funding was being pulled for.
- josefx 5y ago
  Maybe they currently don't meet all the requirements?[1] [1] https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904/factsheet https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904/factsheet
- simiones 5y ago
  > If any company is in a position to help unserved rural areas it is SpaceX, no? Not really - it is very unlikely that SpaceX will be able to cost-effectively serve high-speed internet for any interesting amount of people in a relatively small geographic area, such as the United States, as at any one time only a very small number of satellites can serve a particular area. This becomes especially problematic with any realistically achievable size of the constellation, which is going to be much closer to the current size (~1700 satellites) than to the "promised" size (~42k satellites). Laying cable seems much more achievable and maintainable than launching 42k satellites every 2-5 years as Elon is "promising" (remember that the maximum life span of any satellite in LEO, as mentioned by SpaceX, is 5 years, after which it will de-orbit naturally).
  - kaiju0 5y ago
    The new starship platform should be able to launch 400 satellites per launch. They would only need 30 launches a year to support the constellation.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Sure, and each launch will only cost $2 million, and the same rocket will do earth-to-earth travel. In 10 years they'll have 3 colonies on Mars connected by hyperloops, and they'll rescue those kids with the mini-sub. I'm sure Starship will fly in a few years and carry more satellites at a better cost per ton than existing rockets, but there is no reason at all to believe anything close to the announced timelines, sizes, and costs. At any cost per launch per ton that is even somewhat comparable to any existing rocket (say half of), 42k satellites is far too expensive.
    - vincnetas 5y ago
      "Only 30" launches :) this reminded me about factorio where it takes you 95% of the game to launch first rocket, and then if you built your automations right, just sit and relax and watch rockets ascend one after another without you doing anything :)
- g_sch 5y ago
  It looks like they're only trying to claw back a small portion of the overall award to SpaceX ($111m out of $885m), so on its own, this doesn't look like a move to kneecap SpaceX. At least not on the scale of what we see with AWS vs. Azure on the JEDI contract.
  - TheParkShark 5y ago
    Compared to others (Charter) they are having a larger portion pulled back from them. They didn’t even receive the largest contract.
- duxup 5y ago
  Is it 'gong after SpaceX' or just a case of questioning if they should have gotten the money or not? I'm not sure any contact or such is 'going after'.
beauzero 5y ago
This is unfortunate. The service maps they are using are extremely poor, being charitable. Anecdotally our area is supposed to have 25/3 and I haven't met anyone that has achieved that speed from our DSL provider. Most go with Hughes, etc. Yet our entire service area shows up as 25/3 serviced. On the other side of that there are several areas that are served with cable and a couple with fiber...none of those areas show in the over generalized 25/3 DSL service area. This feels like part of a larger game. Someone is going after SpaceX, in the government space, is the general feel. First Bezos says that he will discount the moon contract by $2B...and now this. My opinion is that lobbyists are being employed to turn money away from SpaceX and move it back towards more "traditional"/entrenched government contractors across several fronts.
- gpm 5y ago
  This is my feeling too. Was this contest run poorly? Definitely. Is the claim that SpaceX is getting funds for census areas that really shouldn't have funds attached true? Almost certainly. Are they the primary beneficiary of the contest being poorly run? That seems very unlikely. The FCC and Ajit Pai attempted to exclude them from this competition entirely [1], it seems pretty clear from the start that this competition was designed to give too much money to the incumbents, not SpaceX. Do I think that the FCC would be trying to clawback money if SpaceX hadn't won? I wish I did, but the fact that they're primarily trying to clawback money from SpaceX makes me skeptical. It seems much more likely that this is just corruption in action trying to stop money going to the "wrong" recipient. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/elon-musks-promise-of-low-latency-broadband-meets-skepticism-at-fcc/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/elon-musks-promi...
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Do I think that the FCC would be trying to clawback money if SpaceX hadn't won? Looking at this as a clawback attempt is the wrong framework. The awards are tied to contract terms with clawback-with-penalty provisions. The FCC has identified cases where it is unlikely that the contract terms could be met and provided an opportunity for those with grants to surrender them without penalty if they feel they could not meet the award terms. No effort is being made to undo awards, and if winners think they can meet the terms, they can keep the money. Its win-win if award winners avail themselves of this opportunity, where they can't meet the terms, because it avoids an after-the-fact clawback with penalty which is good for the winner, and enables the funds to be redirected in advance rather than recovered in arrears, which is good for the government. The mismanagement is that the places where it is almost certaibly impossible for the terms to be fulfilled, the FCC should not have granted the awards in the first place (of course, it is also true that applicants should have done their due diligence and not applied, so its not exclusively the FCC at fault.)
easton_s 5y ago
TLDR: FCC used outdated maps to award funds. They updated the maps and are now awarding companies based on revised maps.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  This always leaves the regular issue we have when it comes to Ajit Pai; was this incompetence of corruption? Always a close run thing with that dude. Edit: surprising number of Ajit Pai defenders here. Didn’t see that coming.
  - strbean 5y ago
    I think the more appropriate question is: Was this corruption intended to benefit specific players, or just general sabotage of our government institutions?
    - Seattle3503 5y ago
      Ajit Pai rushed to the finish line without performing due diligence, all so he could claim a personal victory. It is not even corruption, it is petty pride.
    - asdff 5y ago
      His job history explains his motives perfectly. Worked for ISP -> ran the FCC -> now works for firm lobbying for and investing in ISPs.
  - fitzie 5y ago
    it was neither, there was a process to fix the map but not wait for a perfect map before the grants could occur.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Sounds incompetent to me.
ccleve 5y ago
This is an absurd hit piece. I promise you that Ajit Pai did not personally review each census block to determine if it needed service or not. That happens at the staff level. Plus, the assertion in the headline that Pai "mismanaged $9 billion fund" is bloviation -- the FCC is simply asking some grant recipients to return a small portion of the money (6%) based on revised maps. Honestly, do we need to politicize everything?
- duxup 5y ago
  That sounds more like a great method of deflecting any criticism rather than actually talking about what happened. I feel like 'that's political' or similar sentiments have been used lately to just deflect criticism. It seems like it could be used endlessly.
  - ccleve 5y ago
    Um, what? I am talking about what happened. It is others who are motivated to criticize Pai not because of what happened in this specific instance, but because of general disagreement with him over other issues (like net neutrality).
    - duxup 5y ago
      It couldn't be that funds were directed to places that they shouldn't go, like the article notes?
- trentnix 5y ago
  It's Ars.
- drzaiusapelord 5y ago
  >Honestly, do we need to politicize everything? The FCC is a political organization, so yes, it should be politicized. It often makes decisions due to politics, and in this case the Republican ideals of business being more powerful than the government and monied interests and capital owners being more powerful than democracy and working people. >I promise you that Ajit Pai did not personally That's not how leadership works. They can't fail and then say "Oh well I wasn't reviewing every little thing." I'm not sure why you're carrying water for a crony like Pai, but its not convincing in the slightest.
samstave 5y ago
Ajit Pai is an ultra-douchebag. He deserves prison for how he mishandled the FCC. I met him twice back in the day and he was so slimy and douchey each time, it was sickening to talk to him.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
vernie 5y ago
Just get used to the fact that the vast majority of Trump appointees will suffer no professional or personal consequences and move on.
- genericone 5y ago
  Yes DJT appointed him Chairman, but I recall his name from the earlier 2010's and wikipedia confirms he was initially appointed Commissioner unanimously by the Senate in 2012.
  - tl 5y ago
    From Wikipedia: In 2011, Pai was then nominated for a Republican Party position on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Minority leader Mitch McConnell. Mitch is the real enemy of the US here -- a tyrant of a sham election who continues to wreck havoc on attempts to run a healthy democracy.
LightG 5y ago
That muckerfother ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J02-BtZ1bxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J02-BtZ1bxE
99_00 5y ago
The headline sounds scandalous, but the article leaves me thinking that the system works. They allocated funds based on data, and made small course corrections based on better data. Better to move it forward with good enough data and course correct than to wait for perfect data.
mrtweetyhack 5y ago
Mismanaged into his pockets
inetknght 5y ago
I have been watching the housing market in Texas (rural areas around Houston, Dallas, and Austin) for a while. I've been actively looking at homes for the past few months. I'm closing on a home in a week assuming it all goes well. As a software developer one of my criteria for buying a home has been "fast" internet. FCC's website [0] is the absolute opposite of reliable. Information there is, at best, not up to date. There are some cases where I'm convinced that the internet service providers are maliciously claiming service in an area that they do not actually provide. Then there's the internet service providers themselves. They'll offer fast service on their website just because they offer it in the zip code. Then you call to order, spend an hour on the phone, and discover that they don't provide service to that address. Sometimes it's because the telephone pole is too far by a few feet or a few miles. Or sometimes it's because they don't provide service to that zip code at all. And then if you ask how much it will cost to build service to that address... you're lucky if they'll give you a quote. Most of the time they'll refuse to build. Some of them will tell you to go to their "partner" [19] who will figure out who your ISP is... and that partner will then send you right back to that same ISP who will deny service. I have documentation. Would the Texas AG file a criminal complaint? No, I don't trust he would. The Texas AG is demonstrably as corrupt as the rest of the current Texas government. There are some regional ISPs that are "better" because they don't seem to employ the scummy tactics about zip codes... but they also don't provide a wide service area and often won't build out. The FCC's website is so unreliable that I'd end up just having to call every ISP and asking whether they service the address. And even more importantly is I'd have to ask specifically about serviceability of that address and beware of the representative just parroting the zip code offer. I'd end up spending multiple hours to check a single address for internet service. Then I'd end up trying to filter a dozen addresses a week. It's fucking infuriating. [0]: https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/ https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/ [1]: Altice (Suddenlink): https://www.suddenlink.com https://www.suddenlink.com [2]: Altice (Optimum) https://www.optimum.com/alticeone https://www.optimum.com/alticeone [3]: CableOne (Sparklight, NewWave): https://www.sparklight.com https://www.sparklight.com [4]: Windstream: https://www.windstream.net/high-speed-internet https://www.windstream.net/high-speed-internet [5]: Comcast: https://www.xfinity.com/learn/offers https://www.xfinity.com/learn/offers [6]: AT&T: https://www.att.com/buy/bundles https://www.att.com/buy/bundles [7]: Entouch https://www.entouch.net/ https://www.entouch.net/ [8]: Frontier https://frontier.com/ https://frontier.com/ [9]: GCTR (Vyve) https://vyvebroadband.com/ https://vyvebroadband.com/ [10]: Spectrum (Charter) https://www.spectrum.com/ https://www.spectrum.com/ [11]: Consolidated https://www.consolidated.com/ https://www.consolidated.com/ [12]: CenturyLink https://www.centurylink.com/ https://www.centurylink.com/ [13]: EarthLink https://internet.earthlink.com/ https://internet.earthlink.com/ [14]: Livingston Communications https://livcom.us/ https://livcom.us/ [15]: Lake Livingston Telephone Company https://lakelinkgstontel.com/ https://lakelinkgstontel.com/ [16]: Colorado Valley Telephone Co-operative https://www.cvctx.com/ https://www.cvctx.com/ [17]: People's Telephone Co-operative https://peoplescom.net/ https://peoplescom.net/ [18]: Eastex https://www.eastex.com/ https://www.eastex.com/ [19]: SmartMove.US is fucking trash https://www.smartmove.us/ https://www.smartmove.us/

256 points by LinuxBender 5y ago

explains why my internet is twice as expensive and the same speed!

Is it odd they are going after SpaceX? The funding they received was earmarked to support unserved census blocks. If any company is in a position to help unserved rural areas it is SpaceX, no?

giacaglia 5y ago
Not odd. Expected
drooby 5y ago
It only effects something like 6% of blocks that SpaceX would get the funds for… so basically instead of SpaceX getting $880m they’ll get $825m.
SloopJon 5y ago
If up to $100 million of that was to places like highway medians and a "parking garage ... surrounded on all sides by multiple companies offering gigabit service," then no, it's not odd at all.
- TheParkShark 5y ago
  If I understand correctly SpaceX internet is from a satellite. Surely it would would in a larger area than a parking garage or a median right?
ogjunkyard 5y ago
I feel like the lean on SpaceX in this article is because it's a popular name at the moment. In the article, it mentions that SpaceX received grants for urban areas for things like airport parking lots. Also mentioned were areas already served by one or more companies with 25/3 broadband. Those were the types of locations that funding was being pulled for.
josefx 5y ago
Maybe they currently don't meet all the requirements?[1] [1] https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904/factsheet https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904/factsheet
simiones 5y ago
> If any company is in a position to help unserved rural areas it is SpaceX, no? Not really - it is very unlikely that SpaceX will be able to cost-effectively serve high-speed internet for any interesting amount of people in a relatively small geographic area, such as the United States, as at any one time only a very small number of satellites can serve a particular area. This becomes especially problematic with any realistically achievable size of the constellation, which is going to be much closer to the current size (~1700 satellites) than to the "promised" size (~42k satellites). Laying cable seems much more achievable and maintainable than launching 42k satellites every 2-5 years as Elon is "promising" (remember that the maximum life span of any satellite in LEO, as mentioned by SpaceX, is 5 years, after which it will de-orbit naturally).
- kaiju0 5y ago
  The new starship platform should be able to launch 400 satellites per launch. They would only need 30 launches a year to support the constellation.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Sure, and each launch will only cost $2 million, and the same rocket will do earth-to-earth travel. In 10 years they'll have 3 colonies on Mars connected by hyperloops, and they'll rescue those kids with the mini-sub. I'm sure Starship will fly in a few years and carry more satellites at a better cost per ton than existing rockets, but there is no reason at all to believe anything close to the announced timelines, sizes, and costs. At any cost per launch per ton that is even somewhat comparable to any existing rocket (say half of), 42k satellites is far too expensive.
  - vincnetas 5y ago
    "Only 30" launches :) this reminded me about factorio where it takes you 95% of the game to launch first rocket, and then if you built your automations right, just sit and relax and watch rockets ascend one after another without you doing anything :)
g_sch 5y ago
It looks like they're only trying to claw back a small portion of the overall award to SpaceX ($111m out of $885m), so on its own, this doesn't look like a move to kneecap SpaceX. At least not on the scale of what we see with AWS vs. Azure on the JEDI contract.
- TheParkShark 5y ago
  Compared to others (Charter) they are having a larger portion pulled back from them. They didn’t even receive the largest contract.
duxup 5y ago
Is it 'gong after SpaceX' or just a case of questioning if they should have gotten the money or not? I'm not sure any contact or such is 'going after'.

beauzero 5y ago

This is unfortunate. The service maps they are using are extremely poor, being charitable. Anecdotally our area is supposed to have 25/3 and I haven't met anyone that has achieved that speed from our DSL provider. Most go with Hughes, etc. Yet our entire service area shows up as 25/3 serviced. On the other side of that there are several areas that are served with cable and a couple with fiber...none of those areas show in the over generalized 25/3 DSL service area. This feels like part of a larger game. Someone is going after SpaceX, in the government space, is the general feel. First Bezos says that he will discount the moon contract by $2B...and now this. My opinion is that lobbyists are being employed to turn money away from SpaceX and move it back towards more "traditional"/entrenched government contractors across several fronts.

gpm 5y ago
This is my feeling too. Was this contest run poorly? Definitely. Is the claim that SpaceX is getting funds for census areas that really shouldn't have funds attached true? Almost certainly. Are they the primary beneficiary of the contest being poorly run? That seems very unlikely. The FCC and Ajit Pai attempted to exclude them from this competition entirely [1], it seems pretty clear from the start that this competition was designed to give too much money to the incumbents, not SpaceX. Do I think that the FCC would be trying to clawback money if SpaceX hadn't won? I wish I did, but the fact that they're primarily trying to clawback money from SpaceX makes me skeptical. It seems much more likely that this is just corruption in action trying to stop money going to the "wrong" recipient. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/elon-musks-promise-of-low-latency-broadband-meets-skepticism-at-fcc/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/elon-musks-promi...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Do I think that the FCC would be trying to clawback money if SpaceX hadn't won? Looking at this as a clawback attempt is the wrong framework. The awards are tied to contract terms with clawback-with-penalty provisions. The FCC has identified cases where it is unlikely that the contract terms could be met and provided an opportunity for those with grants to surrender them without penalty if they feel they could not meet the award terms. No effort is being made to undo awards, and if winners think they can meet the terms, they can keep the money. Its win-win if award winners avail themselves of this opportunity, where they can't meet the terms, because it avoids an after-the-fact clawback with penalty which is good for the winner, and enables the funds to be redirected in advance rather than recovered in arrears, which is good for the government. The mismanagement is that the places where it is almost certaibly impossible for the terms to be fulfilled, the FCC should not have granted the awards in the first place (of course, it is also true that applicants should have done their due diligence and not applied, so its not exclusively the FCC at fault.)

easton_s 5y ago

TLDR: FCC used outdated maps to award funds. They updated the maps and are now awarding companies based on revised maps.

ashtonkem 5y ago
This always leaves the regular issue we have when it comes to Ajit Pai; was this incompetence of corruption? Always a close run thing with that dude. Edit: surprising number of Ajit Pai defenders here. Didn’t see that coming.
- strbean 5y ago
  I think the more appropriate question is: Was this corruption intended to benefit specific players, or just general sabotage of our government institutions?
  - Seattle3503 5y ago
    Ajit Pai rushed to the finish line without performing due diligence, all so he could claim a personal victory. It is not even corruption, it is petty pride.
  - asdff 5y ago
    His job history explains his motives perfectly. Worked for ISP -> ran the FCC -> now works for firm lobbying for and investing in ISPs.
- fitzie 5y ago
  it was neither, there was a process to fix the map but not wait for a perfect map before the grants could occur.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Sounds incompetent to me.

ccleve 5y ago

This is an absurd hit piece. I promise you that Ajit Pai did not personally review each census block to determine if it needed service or not. That happens at the staff level. Plus, the assertion in the headline that Pai "mismanaged $9 billion fund" is bloviation -- the FCC is simply asking some grant recipients to return a small portion of the money (6%) based on revised maps. Honestly, do we need to politicize everything?

duxup 5y ago
That sounds more like a great method of deflecting any criticism rather than actually talking about what happened. I feel like 'that's political' or similar sentiments have been used lately to just deflect criticism. It seems like it could be used endlessly.
- ccleve 5y ago
  Um, what? I am talking about what happened. It is others who are motivated to criticize Pai not because of what happened in this specific instance, but because of general disagreement with him over other issues (like net neutrality).
  - duxup 5y ago
    It couldn't be that funds were directed to places that they shouldn't go, like the article notes?
trentnix 5y ago
It's Ars.
drzaiusapelord 5y ago
>Honestly, do we need to politicize everything? The FCC is a political organization, so yes, it should be politicized. It often makes decisions due to politics, and in this case the Republican ideals of business being more powerful than the government and monied interests and capital owners being more powerful than democracy and working people. >I promise you that Ajit Pai did not personally That's not how leadership works. They can't fail and then say "Oh well I wasn't reviewing every little thing." I'm not sure why you're carrying water for a crony like Pai, but its not convincing in the slightest.

samstave 5y ago

Ajit Pai is an ultra-douchebag. He deserves prison for how he mishandled the FCC. I met him twice back in the day and he was so slimy and douchey each time, it was sickening to talk to him.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

vernie 5y ago

Just get used to the fact that the vast majority of Trump appointees will suffer no professional or personal consequences and move on.

genericone 5y ago
Yes DJT appointed him Chairman, but I recall his name from the earlier 2010's and wikipedia confirms he was initially appointed Commissioner unanimously by the Senate in 2012.
- tl 5y ago
  From Wikipedia: In 2011, Pai was then nominated for a Republican Party position on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Minority leader Mitch McConnell. Mitch is the real enemy of the US here -- a tyrant of a sham election who continues to wreck havoc on attempts to run a healthy democracy.

LightG 5y ago

That muckerfother ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J02-BtZ1bxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J02-BtZ1bxE

99_00 5y ago

The headline sounds scandalous, but the article leaves me thinking that the system works. They allocated funds based on data, and made small course corrections based on better data. Better to move it forward with good enough data and course correct than to wait for perfect data.

mrtweetyhack 5y ago

Mismanaged into his pockets

inetknght 5y ago

I have been watching the housing market in Texas (rural areas around Houston, Dallas, and Austin) for a while. I've been actively looking at homes for the past few months. I'm closing on a home in a week assuming it all goes well. As a software developer one of my criteria for buying a home has been "fast" internet. FCC's website [0] is the absolute opposite of reliable. Information there is, at best, not up to date. There are some cases where I'm convinced that the internet service providers are maliciously claiming service in an area that they do not actually provide. Then there's the internet service providers themselves. They'll offer fast service on their website just because they offer it in the zip code. Then you call to order, spend an hour on the phone, and discover that they don't provide service to that address. Sometimes it's because the telephone pole is too far by a few feet or a few miles. Or sometimes it's because they don't provide service to that zip code at all. And then if you ask how much it will cost to build service to that address... you're lucky if they'll give you a quote. Most of the time they'll refuse to build. Some of them will tell you to go to their "partner" [19] who will figure out who your ISP is... and that partner will then send you right back to that same ISP who will deny service. I have documentation. Would the Texas AG file a criminal complaint? No, I don't trust he would. The Texas AG is demonstrably as corrupt as the rest of the current Texas government. There are some regional ISPs that are "better" because they don't seem to employ the scummy tactics about zip codes... but they also don't provide a wide service area and often won't build out. The FCC's website is so unreliable that I'd end up just having to call every ISP and asking whether they service the address. And even more importantly is I'd have to ask specifically about serviceability of that address and beware of the representative just parroting the zip code offer. I'd end up spending multiple hours to check a single address for internet service. Then I'd end up trying to filter a dozen addresses a week. It's fucking infuriating. [0]: https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/ https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/ [1]: Altice (Suddenlink): https://www.suddenlink.com https://www.suddenlink.com [2]: Altice (Optimum) https://www.optimum.com/alticeone https://www.optimum.com/alticeone [3]: CableOne (Sparklight, NewWave): https://www.sparklight.com https://www.sparklight.com [4]: Windstream: https://www.windstream.net/high-speed-internet https://www.windstream.net/high-speed-internet [5]: Comcast: https://www.xfinity.com/learn/offers https://www.xfinity.com/learn/offers [6]: AT&T: https://www.att.com/buy/bundles https://www.att.com/buy/bundles [7]: Entouch https://www.entouch.net/ https://www.entouch.net/ [8]: Frontier https://frontier.com/ https://frontier.com/ [9]: GCTR (Vyve) https://vyvebroadband.com/ https://vyvebroadband.com/ [10]: Spectrum (Charter) https://www.spectrum.com/ https://www.spectrum.com/ [11]: Consolidated https://www.consolidated.com/ https://www.consolidated.com/ [12]: CenturyLink https://www.centurylink.com/ https://www.centurylink.com/ [13]: EarthLink https://internet.earthlink.com/ https://internet.earthlink.com/ [14]: Livingston Communications https://livcom.us/ https://livcom.us/ [15]: Lake Livingston Telephone Company https://lakelinkgstontel.com/ https://lakelinkgstontel.com/ [16]: Colorado Valley Telephone Co-operative https://www.cvctx.com/ https://www.cvctx.com/ [17]: People's Telephone Co-operative https://peoplescom.net/ https://peoplescom.net/ [18]: Eastex https://www.eastex.com/ https://www.eastex.com/ [19]: SmartMove.US is fucking trash https://www.smartmove.us/ https://www.smartmove.us/