IRREGULATORS Slammed by USTelecom, Claiming We Are Meritless, and Procedurally Defective.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is now maneuvering to harm our democratic process with 4 deregulation orders, all tied together, so that no one would know that there is not 1, or 2 or 3 separate proceedings, but 4 different Orders, and most were passed with no comment period and no other Commissioners invited. And forget the formalities, this is being done by the Wireline Bureau, and has been presented as a press release from the Chairman, with no docket numbers or any formal normal presentation to indicate this was a package of harms and burdens on the public.
And after we filed to request for a full review of these slight of hand procedures, USTelecom, the wireline association historically tied to AT&T et al,. decided to go after the IRREGULATORS to block our call to halt these proceedings and start again so that the public and the other commissioners can add their issues, concerns, and corrections of the biased -corporate information that the FCC is quoting as being a solution set for the Digital Divide.
Let us explain and start again.
On March 20th, 2025, Chairman Carr issued a press release, that the FCC’s wireline bureau was taking actions designed to remove various obligations on the phone companies, mainly AT&T, but also is giving them the right to shut off the copper wired networks and push crap wireless on these people with no serious notifications to the FCC or even the public.
Note: “Crap Wireless” is a technical term that captures AT&T’s wireless bait and switch where the new, wireless product has ‘fine print’ in the ‘Terms and Conditions’ that claims it is not responsible if e911 doesn’t go through or the medical alert doesn’t connect. Yet, AT&T claims this is a supposed substitute for a copper wired phone service.
We filed with the FCC to halt these current Orders and require the FCC to redo this proceedings, with a comment period and full Commission review.
We also challenge the FCC and USTelecom to an open, public debate.
USTelecom, the Broadband Association, is the original wireline association for AT&T and Verizon, and they ‘served us with a notice’, and filed in opposition in an attempt too shut down our call to halt this proceeding and start again, as well as debate the IRREGULATORS.
We base our right to request a full review via § 1.115 application for review of action is pursuant to delegated authority, “DA”. (a) Any person aggrieved by any action taken pursuant to delegated authority may file an application requesting review of that action by the Commission.”
To date, we filed the original ‘Request for Review’, USTelecom replied and as of May 15th, we filed a short rebuttal (5 double-spaced pages, within 10 days of the USTelecom filing),
- Read our Short Rebuttal , May 15, 2025
- Read the USTelecom Opposition to our Request for a Full Review
- Read the IRREGULATORS FCC Application for Review
- IRREGULATORS Request Full Review of the FCC Deregulation Order — and Debate Us
- FCC Should Halt the End-Run Order from the Wireline Bureau — and Start Investigations.
- FCC Cutting Red Tape to Unleash New Infrastructure Investments
- (Includes 4 Orders and Chairman Carr Press Release, March 20, 2025)
Why is this extremely important? Because Chairman Carr has also announced Delete, Delete, Delete for massive deregulation. Anyone reading this will understand that this Deregulation plan is a model of what will come — a removal of laws and regulations that first benefits the companies, not the public.
4 Separate Proceedings Hidden in One Chairman Carr Press Release.
The public and the IRREGULATORs have been harmed 4 times, and we have been burdened, not AT&T et al. And just to make sure that the reader sees that these filings were done with an intent to help AT&T
Broadband Breakfast writes about AT&T’s CEO John Stankey comments from an investor event:
“I know Brendan pretty well,” AT&T CEO John Stankey said Tuesday of current Republican commissioner and incoming chairman Brendan Carr. “I think he’s gonna be much more market-oriented” on issues like “how to migrate away from legacy” networks, among other things. He spoke at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York.
“….The agency approved AT&T’s request to stop copper-based orders in 60 wire centers across 13 states earlier this year, which the company cited as pivotal for its decommissioning plans at its analyst day last week.”
The March 20th, 2025, order came out of the wireline bureau with no comments period, but our research over the last 2 decades showed that this would not solve the Digital Divide and there would not be proper oversight. More importantly, tracking the AT&T statements and actual deployments, we know AT&T will never do fiber upgrades of the households it claimed it would do as part of their previous state agreements.
We did not know when the orders were released on March 20th, 2025 that there was not one, not 2, not 3, but 4 separate proceedings, all tied at the hip, gifts to AT&T, Verizon and other telcos.
This means that 4 times, we have been collectively forced to take whatever these orders say and the deregulation that was granted because, as we said, there was no ‘comments period’ — and again, no other commissioners were invited.
But it gets worse when you realize that this is part of the 2025 Trump plan,
Maybe if Carr had actually put out formal descriptions of each ‘docket number of the proceeding’, it would look more like he cared about due process — but this was his own press release, giving “Brendan Carr ,himself, his own accolades or a series of corrupted, material-fact-free puffery and hype that is designed to help AT&T et al and not the public.
USTelecom wrote:
“The Wireline Competition Bureau (“Bureau”) issued four decisions that collectively represent a significant step forward in transitioning outdated copper telephone lines to next-generation networks that better meet the needs of American consumers.
“The Application is not only meritless on the substance, but also procedurally defective. Therefore, the Bureau should dismiss it.”
The USTelecom filing adds:
“The Bureau’s March 20 actions made overdue, common-sense changes that will help turbocharge investment in advanced broadband infrastructure. In each instance, the Bureau thoroughly provided a clear and compelling explanation for why its actions are justified. The Bureau’s conclusion was supported by several paragraphs of detailed analysis and the Commission’s own data.”
Claiming we violated procedural rules to dismiss our call for a full review
USTelecom claimed we missed the deadline and should be dismissed
USTelecom did not know that we had sent an email to the “Secretary” of the FCC before the deadline time — a 30 day window that was actually on a Sunday and Easter) but did could not file on the FCC’s site as it wouldn’t take our request multiple times.
This blocked attempt was April 22, 2025 at 12:16 AM, but it started the day before, and we would have been on time.
It’s too burdensome to have to post something on a web site.
“As the Commission explained in 2017, its policy is to calibrate network change requirements to only retain those “whose benefits outweigh the associated costs to incumbent LECs.” Practical experience with these rules in recent years — paralleling the marketplace developments discussed above — now demonstrate why the specific aspects of the network change rules subject to waiver represent unnecessary burdens under the framework previously laid out by the Commission.
“Over the past two years alone, the Commission has received and processed more than 400 network change disclosure filings, filings that mirror the notices incumbent LECs typically post on their websites, and not once has the Commission received a comment in opposition to the planned network change in response to the hundreds of public notices released by the Bureau.
“In fact, the last comment filed on a network change notice filed with the Commission was in 2021, further supporting the fact that these burdensome filing obligations serve no purpose but to unnecessarily duplicate the information that incumbent LECs are already required to publicly post on their websites or in other public places. Taken together, these marketplace developments and our practical experience persuade us that other procedural avenues remaining under the Commission’s rules better enable the Commission to become aware of network change developments, to the extent warranted.”
At first we thought this was a joke. Parsing this, we have:
- The 400 changes described above, with no one chiming in or objecting, clearly shows a massive failure by the FCC and the companies to properly notify the public. And the FCC, using this as an excuse to push forward these 4 orders, should be investigated.
- In just California, when AT&T proposed the shut offs of the copper wires, there were over 5,000 people who complained to the state, who voted to not let the changes go through.
- In New York, when there was a substitution of a wireless product for the copper access lines that had been damaged by the Sandy Storm, towns throughout NY and NJ. challenged Verizon. On Fire Island, Verizon was forced to put in fiber optics to the homes vs ‘crap wireless’. .
- The FCC used no scientific methodology to see if their notification process worked, and we now know it could never work because sticking something on the phone company website or notify the people being shut off is mind numbing, ridiculous only matched by the FCC claims that this burden has any serious expenses
The manipulation of the accounting of ‘access lines’..
We’ve written about the FCC and USTelecom’s accounting of access lines that is designed to:
- Make it appear that there are very few lines left,
- Hide the fact that AT&T et al. failed to properly upgrade the networks and replace the copper over the last 30 years.
- All of the fiber optic lines that they claimed they were putting in were always used to get regulatory freedoms, and once that was accomplished there was never any fulfillment that matched the rhetoric.
- Thus, we estimate that at least 40–85% of all access lines are not listed in the accounting by AT&T or USTelecom
Having tracked this issue for the last 2 decades, these recent numbers reveal:
- AT&T claims that only 5% of their wireline, residential, voice customers are still using the copper phone lines.
- AT&T’s definition is only counting a subset of all of the different uses of the copper wires.
- AT&T leaves out data lines, work at home lines.
- Most egregious, the VOIP based services, such as AT&T’s U-Verse are not counted as a line as VOIP is an ‘information’ service.
- Without an audit, America does not know the number of customers who have been harmed and burdened because they could all be forced to a wireless and inferior alternative.
USTelecom’s line accounting is even worse.
- USTelecom claims that only 1.3% of the customers have a copper only phoneline — and the ‘industry’ standard, only uses the ‘residential’, voice only, categories.
As we noted, this means that only 15–25% of the actual lines in services are being reported, a deceptive accounting which we have been documenting for decades and the FCC has never addressed or fixed this distortion of material facts.
The copper wires are part of the existing state telecommunications public utility, especially the voice lines.
While the FCC makes claims that it has the jurisdiction to shut off these copper wires, these wires are Not “interstate”, which is under the jurisdiction of the FCC. But these lines are “intra-state”, and under the jurisdiction of the state Public Service Commissions, especially when local phone customers have been paying for fiber optic upgrades and instead, the construction budgets for the networks have been mainly ‘intrastate’; in New York, Verizon’s published annual reports show that local intrastate phone service classification paid 74% of the total expenses. This is, of course ludicrous when one considers that there is no new serious construction of the copper networks, which are also poorly maintained..
This issue — that there are state telecommunications public utilities that are still in use but hiding in plain sight, must be considered and investigated.
Who do you trust?
In the end,
The IRREGULATORS Challenge the FCC and USTelecom to an open public debate. If the goal is really to solve the Digital Divide and make sure that everyone has the right to a fiber optic upgrade to their home or office if they paid for it.
It should not be that the wealthy communications companies can continue to get massive financial government subsidies as well as can take over the workings of the very government agencies that are supposed to be providing oversight to protect the public and make sure the companies compete, not collude.
How many total copper and fiber optics wired services are there in America? And how many copper-based wires have been left out of the accounting through devious means and the manipulation of material facts.
USTelecom’s claim that our research was meritless should be compared to whatever facts they can document. We look forward to letting the public decide which of us is ‘defective’.
