‘End the Cable Monopoly’ Screams the Wireless Monopoly that is owned by the Wired Monopolies, AT&T and Verizon, that Failed to Upgrade America — and Compete.
The Dance of Monopolists that proves a Big Telco/BigCable’s ANTI-TRUST CASE — should be next. And where’s the laugh track?
A new site, Spectrum for Broadband Competition
“For decades, Comcast, Charter and other cable companies have avoided real competition and carved up the country into regional monopolies, thanks in part to exclusivity agreements created in the 1970s and 80s with local governments. What’s worse, in doing so, cable just skipped over many rural communities. Cable serves less than half of rural U.S. households today. “Not competing is central to cable’s DNA.”
We just love the CTIA rhetoric as it is laced with irony, This site is a front for the CTIA wireless association, and the 2 largest members are most likely AT&T and Verizon. These two are not ISPs, but are both holding companies that control the majority of the state telecommunications public utilities, such as AT&T California or AT&T Kentucky or Verizon New York or Verizon Massachusetts.
Didn’t know that these utilities still exist? AT&T and Verizon’s entire footpirnt s a collection of state telecom public utilities; We’ll get back to this in a second.
The new web site states:
“Spectrum for Broadband Competition is a coalition of voices advocating for the importance of licensed spectrum to advance American competitiveness and support consumer choice and innovation in the home broadband market.”
Wait, AT&T and Verizon are also cable companies so while CTIA yells about the ‘cable companies, Comcast and Charter, Verizon owns FiOS Cable and AT&T owns u-verse cable, and if you read their site these ‘cable companies’ are NOT mentioned. Huh.
But Comcast and Spectrum-Chartyer are mentioned, even though they resell Verizon Wireless and so they are also CTIA members. — one Big Happy Family.
The Site claims
“More than half of American households have only one wired broadband option today.”
CTIA just proved that AT&T, Verizon and Lumen, (originally CenturyLink) failed to properly upgrade and replace the copper wires with fiber optics. And we add; this created the Digital Divide.
Map of the Holding companies’ footprints; The Original Bell Utilities?
Let’s start: These state utilities, are still mostly copper wires that were supposed to have been upgraded to fiber optics, starting in the 1990’s, and the companies never completed most of it.
Then, in 2003–2005, Verizon announced FiOS and AT&T U-Verse and both stopped around 2010 and moved the construction budgets of these utilities to build out wireless.
These are the Verizon and ATT wireless companies in 2025, but this failure to properly upgrade the state utilities cost America over ½ trillion dollars by 2015, because in every state:
FACT: CUSTOMERS WERE CHARGED FOR NETWORK UPGRADES THEY DID NOT RECEIVE. — and worse, these rate increases are STILL GOING ON IN 2025.
But it gets worse.
Comcast and Charter resell Verizon wireless service under their own brand. And AT&T and Verizon, control the wholesale prices of all of the MVNO’s — resellers of Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile — and this includes Tracfone, or Google fi or … Xfinity from Comcast.
The AT&T and Verizon telecommunications utilities are operating with franchises that are over 100 years old. These franchises are not from the 1970’s — because these were the original MA Bell system state utilities that were transferred in 1984 into seven Holding Companies known as the Baby Bells. What is now Verizon NY started in 1896, in perpetuity.
There should be no copper wires in 2025 — yet AT&T with over 80 million locations has only has 9 million fiber optic lines. And Verizon has left over 50% of the service areas in the states it serves unserved.
This means that the state laws were changed based on FALSE AND MISLEADING INFORMATION THAT LED TO NATIONWDIE FRAUD — especially when the state local phone customers are being charged illegally for wireless upgrades.
And the real irony.. This is the President of what is now Verizon, claiming it would have half of the cable tv — and high-speed broadband by 2000.. and Verizon would have 12 million homes done with fiber by 2000. Pacific Bell ATT California, was to spend $16 billion by 2000 on 5.5 million homes
The failure of AT&T and Verizon to upgrade meant there was no cable competition — and these 2 companies.
The New Wireless Bait and Switch:
Is the CTIA really attempting a massive bait and switch by having wireless be a substitute for fiber optic wired infrastructure that should last 30–50 years vs a kludge for wireless to make the companies more profits.
CTIA: More than half of American households have only one wired broadband option today.
Answer — AT&T and Verizon failed to upgrade their networks to compete with cable — which was the reason they were granted billions of dollars in rate increases to fund vaporware — or worse, build their wireless networks.
CTIA Claims: Big Cable Responds By Preventing Competitor Access To Spectrum
ANSWER: YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. Verizon and AT&T were able to close their networks to competition — killing off over 7,000 small internet ISPs and putting AT&T and MCI up for sale, the 2 largest competitors. SBC renamed itself AT&T, and Verizon bought MCI circa, all due to the committment by now ATT to upgrade to fiber to the home — which turned into U-verse, relying on the original copper instead of replacing it decades ago.
And, it was former FCC Chair Michael Powell’s statement to close the networks that quoted now AT&T — then SBC’s commitment to fiber to the home — which did not happen. Today, Powell is the CEO of the NCTA, the cable association that Verizon and AT&T are also members of and Comcast and Charter are 2 of the largest.
“Powell claimed his reason for closing the networks (“removing unbundling obligations”) was based on ‘commitments’ for 100 Mbps, fiber-optic based services by SBC (now AT&T) in October 2004.
“In my separate statement to the Triennial Review Order and in countless other statements during my seven years at the Commission, I have emphasized that ‘broadband deployment is the most central communications policy objective of our day’. Today, we take another important step forward to realize this objective…. By removing unbundling obligations for fiber-based technologies, today’s decision holds great promise for consumers, the telecommunications sector and the American economy. The networks we are considering in this item offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps and exist largely where no provider has undertaken the expense and risk of pulling fiber all the way to a home.
“SBC has committed to serve 300,000 households with a FTTH (Fiber to the Home) network while BellSouth has deployed a deep fiber network to approximately 1 million homes. Other carriers are taking similar actions.”‘ (Emphasis added)
And this caused Net Neutrality concerns — — that the large companies now called ISPS would degrade or prioritize the networks.
So, CTIA — thank you for supplying the data showing that your wireless members, who are subsidiaries of wired networks, never competed with the cable companies, that their networks are NOT open to competition and that they are now planning to NOT roll out fiber to the home but use the utility construction budgets to build out FWA and wireless — which is being done by AT&T and Verizon — but it is a bait and switch because the networks they are using are being paid for by state utility customers and increases in all retail rates due to the manipulation of the accounting.
So, every harm that CITA claims is being afflicted on the public has been nothing compared to the continued harms caused by AT&T and Verizon, the children of MA Bell, who let the critical infrastructure in each state deteriorate with copper wires that are at least 50 years old or much older throughout their state franchised territories
And since the cable companies were latecomers, they entered into the areas that Verizon and AT&T should have been able to offer a competitive fiber broadband service.
