Trust Us; We’re the Phone Company…FCC Deregulation Backfired. The Burdens are on America.

In 2025, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr keeps telling America we need to shut off the copper wires as they are such a burden, and the cost savings will be used to build new high-speed networks. But this is a massive bait and switch to get rid of any obligations and regulations so that companies, including AT&T, can get government subsidies, BEAD money, for wireless and satellite services and make the existing data networks private property for the wireless company.

We write this to show that this is shut off the copper wires scheme is not new. In 2017, Chairman Ajit Pai made similar claims and as we will demonstrate — it was all make believe and the current 2025-Brenden Carr plans are a copy and a continuation of the previous plans and claims; in fact, using the same 2017 proceeding,

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First, this chart shows that there has been no major push for fiber to the home services and that while AT&T claims it is going full steam ahead on their fiber plans, and even though in 2021 AT&T claimed it would be doing 3 million new fiber lines a year, the company only added about a million a year.

And on top of this was the requirement by DirecTV merger for 12.5 million fiber to the home lines by 2019, and the fiber lines for the FirstNet emergency networks and by 2019, to be used by wireless

From the Annual Reports

• As of December 31, 2017, we market our fiber-to-the-premises network to 7.4 million customer locations and are on track to meet our FCC commitment of 12.5 million locations by mid-2019. An ultra-fast 100% fiber network that we’re now marketing to more than 7 million customer locations in parts of 67 metros nationwide. High-speed fiber connections to more than 1.8 million U.S. business locations. Plans to expand high-speed internet to reach more than 50 million U.S. customer locations.
• 2018 Annual Report: Our fiber deployment is driving momentum in our broadband business. Fiber is the backbone of our network and key to our plans for 5G. We’re on track to reach 22 million consumer and business locations with fiber by the middle of 2019.

Where’s the beef? The opening chart are the total broadband connections and the fiber optic to the home or business, but in 2017 there are only. 1.7 million lines, but the write up claims that these may all be business lines. The are no details.

This chart shows that the new additions to the fiber customer base were never more than 1.5 million additional customers a years. And the claims of going to 3 million households appear to be a fairy tale.

8 Years of Big Hype, No Fiber.

In 2017, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai claimed that shutting off the copper wires would yield billions which could be used to do upgrades of the cities and rural areas with the extra money from the copper retirement. — and he granted deregulation to the companies in 2017–2018 timeframe.

In 2017- FCC Chairman Ajit Pai put through proceeding 17–84 and others to remove the burdens of the expenses caused by the legacy copper wires.

“And expediting the copper retirement process could contribute to 26.7 million incremental premises being passed by fiber over a five-year period.”

“This decision will especially benefit rural America. As it is, the business case for installing infrastructure in low-density areas can be hard. Forcing companies and their capital through a government-controlled bottleneck makes it even harder. Promoting more market-based decisions will improve business cases for rural broadband, helping rural communities. One study found that a package of reforms — including many we adopt today — would make it economically viable for the private sector to deploy fiber to the premises in millions of additional rural locations.”

In fact, as we discussed, AT&T claimed it cost 45–50 dollar a year per line to maintain the copper networks.

AT&T covers 21 states with an estimate of 80 million business and residential locations, but with only 9 million at the end of 2024, this means AT&T only has bit over 10% covered.

Conclusion, the deregulation in 2017 to shut down the copper wires did not generate any serious fiber to the home deployments.

The FCC 8 years later

Chairman Carr is using basic information about the number of legacy copper lines AT&T has and how much money the company claims it is spending on maintenance. However, each number has major discrepancies

• Instead of 5% of the lines being the legacy copper, there are 50+ missing lines in the equation as 100% of lines is 66 million, based on 3.3 million lines detailed in the ATT 2024 annual report
• 50 Million Copper Access Lines Appear to be Missing from the FCC’s Analysis. Who Does It Benefit? Why It Matters? Where’s the Audits?
• Instead of $6 billion in maintenance, the 2017 FCC order showed only 45–50 dollars a line — totally about $150 million, leaving our 5.8 billion
• $5.85 Billion Dollar Discrepancy in FCC Chairman Carr’s New Investments when the Copper is Shut Off.

But there is a twist: The FCC Chairman Brendan Carr writes:

“Today, the FCC is taking an initial set of actions that will help accelerate the transition from aging copper lines to modern network infrastructure in communities all across the country. These actions will help ensure that providers roll out upgraded, high-speed networks to more Americans on a faster timeline — rather than requiring providers to keep pouring resources into maintaining decades-old and increasingly expensive copper line networks.”

The twist is Chairman Carr has no interest in fiber to the home or high speeds, so elsewhere, the FCC puts forward the idea of an alternative replacement test that is designed to allow for satellite or crap wireless that may or may not even work

“The removing the burdensome and lengthy testing process that is specified in the Technical Appendix to show that a service meets the network performance criteria. Indeed the Commission explained in adopting the test that “[t]here are two ways of demonstrating adequacy.”33 The Adequate Replacement Test permits providers to choose whether to commit to performance testing consistent with the Technical Appendix to the 2016 Technology Transitions Order or, instead, to show, under the totality of the circumstances, that the service it claims will be an adequate replacement either meets the network performance and other criteria specified in the rules or nonetheless provides substantially similar performance and availability.34 The latter showing would be based on some other type of testing, for example, results of internal network testing routinely undertaken to measure performance in rolling out a new product or service. …10. We thus clarify that a carrier seeking Commission authorization to discontinue a legacy voice service pursuant to the Adequate Replacement Test’s totality of the circumstances with respect to its own replacement service need only show, based on the results of the carrier’s routine internal testing or other types of network testing, that “the network still provides substantially similar performance and availability” as the service being discontinued.”

What these 2 paragraphs say is lawyerly gobbledygook — but

• The FCC came up with a total kludge that a service “in totality’ and is ‘substantially similar performance and availability — — i.e., if it looks like it should be a substitutive for the copper landline service — regardless of it works in a specific location — that’s OK
• Second, there is no mention in this proceeding of a replacement of copper to a fiber to the home service,
• Deceptive use of “High Speed” — -And you will notice the term “high speed” — actually means that the FCC wants to abolish the 1Gig speeds for a slow service that can be used to get BEAD government subsidies or state funding

This FCC never bothered to mention that America’s ISPs are at the bottom of consumer satisfaction — And AT&T’s hype is deceptive.

And how well are the telcos doing in their fiber build out.

AT&T wrote: September 09, 2024

“The Company already serves more than 8.8 million AT&T Fiber customers and passes 28 million+ total consumer and business fiber locations. Customers continue to show they love AT&T Fiber. AT&T is rated number one in customer satisfaction according to the 2024 American Customer Satisfaction Index…”

The word disingenuous comes to mind when we find that ISPS are nearly at the bottom of the other 40 industries ACSI tracks.:

“INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS Despite remaining near the bottom of approximately 40 industries in the Index, internet service providers overall improve customer satisfaction 4% from last year. This gain is fueled by increases for both fiber and non-fiber providers. While both fiber and non-fiber customers generally have the same rate of complaints (22% for fiber customers and 25% for non-fiber customers), fiber customers are significantly more satisfied with the way their complaint was handled than non-fiber customers.”

The new calculus of deception, count numbers of line rentals from others or buy existing networks.

“AT&T Strengthens Fiberleadership with Plans to Bring High-Speed Internet to More People Through New and Expanded Third-Party Relationships Continued expansion at Gigapower and new agreements with commercial open-access providers will deliver world-class broadband access to new service areas.”

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“To bring fiber to more Americans, AT&T is pursuing a variety of economically attractive models that complement its primary focus of growing its organic in-footprint fiber network. These other models include: its Gigapower joint venture with BlackRock, through a fund managed by its Diversified Infrastructure business, commercial open-access agreements, and public-private partnerships supported by federal infrastructure funding through programs like BEAD.

“AT&T is the proven leader in fiber and the clear provider of choice for commercial open-access fiber builders. AT&T provides fiber builders with a winning fiber formula. It is able to offer commercial open-access providers a unique combination of network architecture expertise, a cost-effective growth path, and an agile go-to-market approach to efficiently penetrate fiber builds with a wireless cross-sell base and more distribution points than any competitor.

“In order to reach even more people with AT&T Fiber in geographies not served by AT&T’s network or Gigapower, AT&T is announcing four new agreements with commercial open-access providers: Boldyn Networks, Digital Infrastructure Group, PRIME FiBER and Ubiquity. These fiber agreements provide AT&T with wholesale access to these fiber broadband networks, enabling the Company to offer both AT&T Fiber and 5G wireless services to more customers.”

And in what could be one of the largest deceptive acts possible, AT&T figured out a way to increase the number of fiber optic lines in service by counting lines that it is renting or that a partner has already built and count theirs.

All this can then also include and make up claims that open access’ lines — that the line is being rented to a competitor, when in fact it is adding the wireless lines because it uses the fiber of some other company or makes claims of coverage areas of company ie companies they partner with

It is like saying that they are Number One when they are number 41 as there are 40 other industries with higher customer service ratings, AT&T should just use a ‘gazillion’ when it is supplying info to the states or the FCC or reporters.

And finally, the FCC and FTC should be investigating how the ISPS and AT&T have 1/5 of customs with complaints while or to get break outs of all of the actual copper lines or the actual construction expenditures being spent on fiber optic broadband or even the number of copper lines left in service. …

Dear FCC, The Burdens are On America and the public. Maybe you should examine the facts and the failed previous deregulatory gifts before you continue tyo give more and harm America more.

Adding a million lines a year sounds great, until you realize that the AT&T territories will take 70 more years.

Next Up: MISSING QUESTIONS: