Why Are We Giving Billions in Government Subsidies to Wealthy Phone and Cable Companies for Broadband?

PART I: Welcome to the Questions Nobody Wants to Talk About.

New Series — The New and Improved 2025 Plan for Our Digital Future — 2025 Is Our Year — Not Theirs.

This new series by the IRREGULATORS poses some basic questions that boggles the mind that they have not discussed or vetted properly, but are critical for solving the digital divide, much less have competition that lowers prices.

1) Again, why are we giving billions in government subsidies to wealthy phone and cable companies billions for broadband?

2) How is it possible that prices in America for broadband and wireless are excessive and a large segment of America can afford basic broadband?

Or worse,

3) How is it possible that high speed broadband services may not even be available in rural areas?

WARNING: All those who take blood pressure medications may want to take precautions.

4) Why is America throwing billions more to companies that failed to bring in a fiber optic future?

5) Why are the prices overseas, especially the EU countries, a fraction of America’s wireless or broadband services?

6) The regulators have been captured by the corporations that are receiving billions in return, so any expectation that they will do the right thing — is wrong headed.

7) The data and analysis being used by the FCC, including the new chairman Brendan Carr, is based on the companies’ own information or mostly the coin-operated analysis that publish information to help the telco lobbying, pr, and public policy issues

And it is the use of the corporate funded, coin-operated research and consulting that pump out and parrot the telecom and cable party-line, including wireless statistics that are now the commonplace ‘answers’ as they sound plausible.

Meanwhile, the phone and cable companies have been able to say almost anything they want without repercussions, so AT&T can leave out, or manipulate the numbers presented about everything from the shutting off of the copper wires to even an accurate accounting of the number of lines or customers harmed

In this let’s be blunt world — this is not ‘the emperor has no clothes’; this is now ‘the emperor is naked’ — and basic obvious questions have been obscured from view, or worse, the history has been ignored or hidden.

With the ACP low-income government subsidies having ended and the BEAD money may or may not be secure over the next 5 years, we will go through some of the basic questions we posed and what next steps should be taken.

The IRREGULATORS take is, history predicts that none of the plans, even if they go through, will solve the digital divide — and that is because there has been a rewriting of history and most reading this quote the imaginary sources.

So, please put your snack trays in an upright position and fasten your seat belt, as this may be a bumpy ride.

Those poor phone and cable companies need government subsidies — nah.

We will be focusing on the profits and, at the same time, the cost of service and the data the FCC has been using, but first:

AT&T’s 2024 year-end results; we don’t need to give AT&T money.

AT&T is the holding company that controls 21 states’ primary telecommunication public utilities and is one of the 3 largest wireless companies with over 110 million subscribers

AT&T’s 2024 revenue and profits show.

§ Revenues of $122.3 billion

§ Net income of $12.3 billion

§ Cash from operating activities of $38.8 billion

§ Capital expenditures of $20.3 billion; capital investment* of $22.1 billion

In short, the last thing America needs to do is to give these companies more financial perks, etc. Instead, where are the calls for investigations. AT&T is a $122 billion dollar holding company with profits of $12 billion and a whopping $38 billion in cash.

And this is just AT&T; the other holding companies that include Verizon, control not only their state territories but have used them as cash machines to find their other lines of business instead of focusing on their primary customers — the state-based wireline customers that have been the defacto investors.

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This started with a recent series of government subsidies, known as BEAD, that went to Verizon MA, the incumbent state telecommunications public utility and some of the other companies, including Comcast.

And every other state appears to be giving the incumbent phone and cable companies the contracts to do upgrades and new services, extending their monopolies and worse, as we will discuss, rewarding the companies who have kept prices inflated, have collusive deals — Comcast resells Verizon Wireless, and worse, Verizon in MA was supposed to upgrade the state and got paid to do so through rate increases that started in 1995; continuous rate increases even when the fiber optic services were never provided and the fiber optic wires went to the wireless subsidiary it appears.

We address these issues in an upcoming story, but lets examine the failure of the FCC and regulators to collect accurate data about the charges on our communications bills,.

Click for PART 2: FCC Claims Prices for Broadband, Wireless and Internet Went Down. Garbage in Equals How to Manipulate Public Policies