Delete, Delete, Delete? FCC Massive Deregulation Created a Massive Ongoing Accounting Scandal: The Burdens are on US.
Read the Full Filing: EXCERPT FROM IRREGULATORS FILING
THE TELCOS GOT THE COST BENEFITS; THE AMERICAN PUBLIC GOT THE BURDENS, THE BURDENS, WE REPEAT, THE BURDENS.
BEFORE THE FCC STARTS DELETING THE RULES, REGULATIONS, OBLIGATIONS, COMMITMENTS, CONSUMER SAFEGUARDS, AND GIVING THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY, (AT&T ET AL) WHAT THEY WANT THROUGH OBVIOUS REGULATORY FAVORITISM, (ALSO CALLED REGULATORY CAPTURE). THE FCC NEEDS TO FIX THE BURDENS ON THE PUBLIC. THE FCC MUST HALT THE CONTINUOUS OVERCHARGING, THE MASSIVE CROSS_SUBSIDIES, AND A LACK OF COMPETITION THAT THE PREVIOUS MASS DEREGULATIONS HAVE CAUSED, INCLUDING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE.
NOTE: This is an excerpt from the Verizon NY 2023 Annual Report, New York State’s largest telecommunications public utility, published May 2024. We assume you didn’t know that there are still state telecommunications public utilities — or that these networks are not the copper wires alone but also fiber optic wires or that there are millions of access wired phone and data lines, both copper and fiber, that are not counted but are hidden due to a massive deregulation plan. And this is happening in 2025, not a history tale. And it is happening in every state in America. And it is really a massive financial and economic burden placed on the American public, which we will discuss.
In April, 2025 FCC Chairman Brendan Carr started a new proceeding to do “massive deregulation”. And the agency is asking the public to give the FCC a list of regulations that should be erased.
“In re: Delete, Delete, Delete,” in which the agency seeks comment on every rule, regulation, or guidance document that the FCC should eliminate for the purposes of alleviating unnecessary regulatory burdens.”
And the claim is that this will speed up innovation and build infrastructure.
Introduction
- How many times have the FCC plans that included Massive Deregulation harmed American telecommunications subscribers?
- Why is this all about removing regulations when one of the largest accounting scandals in American history is underway, caused by massive deregulation?
- Where is any history of how massive deregulation was supposed to deliver the fiber optic future, the information superhighway, but over decades, was a no show and even helped to create the Digital Divide?
- There has been a rewriting of history that hides basic material facts like the accounting of the number of actual telecommunications and broadband lines in service to all of telco’s subscribers.
- How is it that most American subscribers are still on copper wires for home use because the largest former Bell telecommunications companies have failed to upgrade their telecommunications utility networks to fiber infrastructure.
- NOTE 1: I.e.; Verizon New Jersey was to have 100% of their copper infrastructure removed, starting in 1993 and replaced with a fiber optic wire — deregulation was granted for more profits for construction that did not happen. Then in 2006, Verizon NJ was supposed to put in FiOS to most of the state, but not the entire state, even though the previous agreement was still in place. In the end, we estimate that 40–60% of the Verizon NJ territory was completed, and rccent surveys show that cities were never properly completed, especially in low income areas.
- NOTE 2: These former Bell companies were supposed to bring direct competition to the cable companies; I.e., we should have had fiber- phone and cable wires competing but the telcos did not show up.
- The FCC keeps telling us that America’s communications prices have gone down, when their analysis is based on only using telco supplied information, not actual bills. In fact, the prices are continually going up.
- In fact, the prices of communications services overseas are a fraction of what we pay in the US. The overseas markets have significant competition that results in lower prices.
- Garbage in Equals Garbage Out. The FCC’s data and analyses are biased, mostly quoting the industry’s data or that it leaves out basic material facts.
- The Government supplied data is not based on actual surveys of actual bills, so even the CPI-BLS numbers can leave out various taxes, fees, surcharges or added made up fees, or even more common, charges on the bill that the customers did not order, And we called all of these issues to the attention of the FCC over the last 2 decades
The opening excerpt is from Verizon NY 2023 Annual Report and Verizon NY 2024 is supposed to be published May 22, 2025. We will explain how, instead of properly upgrading New York state, these financial reports show a massive cross-subsidy shell game — billions of dollars that should have upgraded the copper wires to fiber wires and never happened, even when customers have paid thousands of dollars..
The FCC’s massive deregulation — in this case, removed the obligations to give the FCC the state utility financial books, and the FCC and the states stopped doing audits. New York is one of the only states still requiring annual reports from Verizon. But these books are also cooked. Across America, then, the audit trails were killed off when the FCC removed ‘the burden’ of giving financial reports to the FCC. These books also contained all of the dark fiber in the ground, as well as the actual construction budgets that were diverted away from the network upgrades causing the Digital Divide. In fact, all of these maneuvers has been creating fake financial burdens so that the government would give subsidies to very wealthy companies.
We lay bare how this current accounting scandal — was created by the previous massive deregulation plans.
We include this analysis of this Verizon NY 2023 Annual Report as well as a link to the report.
These comments are tied to other FCC proceedings including our call for a full review of the order presented by the Wireline bureau. There is also a comments period for the Joint State Board overseeing the jurisdictional separation issues, the allocation of expenses of the state utility to be charged to the different lines of businesses and it has been a total mess.
25 Years of Neglecting the Expense Allocations for Each Line of Business that was Set for the Year 2000.
The expenses in this Verizon NY Annual report were set to mimic the allocation of expenses in the year 2000 and it has never changed for 25 years. In 2000, Local Service was 65% of the revenues and 65% of the expenses; in 2023, Local Service was only 18% of the expenses but paid 65% of the expenses.
This next chart is the ultimate snapshot of just how broken these books are as we tracked and submitted this information for over a decade, detailing this ‘freeze’. In 2023, Local Service was charged almost $800 million dollars, 62% of the total, against revenues of $631 million, creating an artificial loss that has been used to give Verizon rate increases of all wired services, even the copper wired basic phone customers in rural areas.
Corporate Operations Expenses are the lawyers, lobbyists, corporate jets and even the golf tournaments — all being charged to the basic local phone service line of business, and since it creates losses, then it also creates rate increases.
Thus, the line at the top is the percentage of expenses charged, around 62% of the total expenses, but the revenues, the other line, is now at 18%. This charge should not be applied with the amount of money, as local service did not create these expenses and worse, the service is not even for sale anymore.
There is a current FCC proceeding to examine this whacky mathematics. The FCC will claim that Verizon NY and the large state utilities have already been exempt from examination with a 2017 Order, under FCC Chairman Ajit Pai; and then FCC General Counsel Brendan Carr.
But the states and companies are still using these accounting rules with the same ludicrous accounting, while the current remaining group are the ‘rate-of-return’, smaller companies. Our take is that the FCC should be reopening these issues with all of the telcos and fix this mess.
The FCC has requested that the data be supplied for all cost benefits. — We supply some details in the filing.
And about Delete, Delete Delete.
Repeat 3 times:
The burdens are on us, The burdens are on us, The burdens are on us,
and more massive deregulation without a full investigation of the impacts of what was started over the last 2 decades, needs immediate attention.
- CONCLUSION: We use this overall tale of massive deregulation that was created to benefit the companies’ interest and not the Public Interest.
