“WE FREED THE STATES FROM THE FCC”: If this legal victory is true, it’s HUGE!

Posted on May 5, 2020 by State of the Nation

IRREGULATORS BIG WIN: WE FREED THE STATES FROM THE FCC

America needs robust, ubiquitous, symmetrical, wireline fiber optic connectivity everywhere, for everyone, at reasonable rates, all the time. We paid for it.  We freed the States from the FCC. Now, let’s get the money back.

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MARCH 16th, 2020: RELEASE:  IRREGULATORS BIG WIN: We Freed the States to Get the Money Back from AT&T, Verizon & CenturyLink. 

March 13th, 2020: The DC Court of Appeals issued an Opinion.

  • SUMMARY: IRREGULATORS v FCC Moves Forward: Billions of Dollars Per State are in Play.

  • PODCASTS: WHY IRREGULATORS v FCC is Critical

Read the Details About the Case

On April 15th, 2019, the IRREGULATORS filed to appeal an FCC decision and expose one of the largest accounting scandals in American history. 19 Years ago the FCC, with the help of AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink,  and with a single stroke was able to manipulate the federal accounting rules to always make the wired utility networks appear unprofitable, and have the state utility customers fund all of the companies’ other services, from the fiber optics for FiOS, or U-verse, to the Wireless to Business Data Services. and in 2018, the FCC decided to continue these rules for 6 more years.

The IRREGULATORS  is an independent consortium of senior telecom experts, analysts, forensic auditors, and lawyers who are former staffers from the FCC, state advocate and Attorneys General Office,  as well as telecom auditors and consultants. Members of the group have been working together, in different configurations, since 1999.

New Networks Institute was established in 1992 as a telecommunications market research and consulting firm. Today it acts as the Managing Director of the IRREGULATORS.

  • STOP 5G Wireless: The New Fiber Optic Bait-& Switch: 5G is the newest in a long line of tech services that are supposed to change our lives for the better.  But this service has a range of a few city blocks, requires a fiber optic wire, and there are health concerns with small cell antennas too close to homes. Truth is, 5G is really designed to get rid of the wired regulations and obligations,  and have wireline phone customers pay — cross-subsidize, the wireless companies’  business.

  • ADVANCED NETWORKS REPORT COMMENTS: 2/20/20 The FCC Rewrote America’s Broadband History through Vigorous Ignorance: The FCC’s Broadband Reports are Useless to Fix America’s Digital Divide.

  • REPORTS & FILINGS:  We have filed at the FCC over the last 5 years and created a new report services to document all of this financial shell game. Read the new report service “The DIGITAL DIVIDE BY DESIGN”.
  • DIGITAL DIVIDE SCANDAL: FILED WITH COMMENTS: REPORT 1:  Did AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink & the FCC Intentionally Create the Digital Divide?
    • Did Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink and the FCC deliberately and intentionally make the entire US state-based, telecommunications, wired utility networks appear unprofitable?
    • Did they overcharge America $½ trillion or more?
    • Did they create the Digital Divide and has been used to restructure the America’s communications policies to help these companies against the public interest?
  • SCORE: Verizon NY Settlement: Fiber Optics to Underserved Areas; Repair of the State Utility Networks — with an Assist from the IRREGULATORS. –– While other groups talk, our groups helped to create an investigation with a settlement estimated at $300-500 million and 30000+ lines of fiber

NO MORE: Taxes, Fees and Surcharges on Communications Bills are Out of Control. Who’s kidding who? The Cable Triple Play is filled with made up fees, taxes and surcharges.The advertised price goes up 100+% after the promotion, the wireless services are some of the most expensive, per gig, in the world, and prices of wireline services went up over 500% since 1980, while it should have been going down.

  • Broadband Scandal: In state after state, customers paid billions to have their networks upgraded to fiber optics. Over $500 billion in excess profits has been collected, but America is not a fiber optic nation. The Book of Broken Promises, 3rd is a trilogy that spans 2 decades, is the most controversial and well read telecommunications books — now FREE.

 

  • OUR 2017 VIDEO SAYS IT ALL: The FCC is Out of Control and Needs to be Taken to Court: Since the beginning of 2017, the FCC has been a path of destruction with the overarching theme to erase all laws, regulations and consumer protections and to let a few very large monopolies/duopolies – Verizon, AT&T, Centurylink, and the cable companies – do what they want at your expense.

ACTIVITIES

  • SCORE: Verizon NY Settlement: Fiber Optics to Underserved Areas; Repair of the State Utility Networks — with an Assist from the IRREGULATORS.

    New Networks Institute (NNI) & the IRREGULATORS just helped to get 32,000 fiber optic lines installed by Verizon New York in underserved areas as well as have the state utility be required to do long needed repairs of the copper networks — that are still in use. The State claims that there are still 2.14 million ‘voice-only’ access lines in service. (Note: This number of copper-based access lines is low for multiple reasons.) We estimate that this settlement is valued at $300 million to $1/2 billion in additional spending by Verizon in New York State over time.

  • In 2010, we uncovered what appeared to be a massive cross-subsidy scheme where Verizon NY, state utility was acting as a cash machine for Verizon’s other lines of business, including Verizon Wireless. Instead of upgrading the cities with fiber, much of the work was now moving to wireless — but much of this was being charged to local phone customers via Title II.
  • The Connect New York Coalition, filed a Petition with the New York State Public Service Commission to do a formal investigation of Verizon New York. July 1, 2014. The Petition is based, in part, on NNI’s continuing research.
  • We Filed in FCC’S “Net Neutrality” Proceeding: The Book of Broken Promises Can Disrupt the FCC’s Plans
  •  New Report: Solving Net Neutrality: We Found a Fatal Structural Flaw in Every FCC Proceeding”, February 26th, 2018

The FCC claims that Net Neutrality and something called “Title II” harmed investment.  And the FCC wants to preempt the states from taking actions. Unfortunately for the FCC, we have found a structural flaw — The FCC has never examined  the state-based fiber optic broadband commitments, and Title II is used by Verizon to make to divert billions of expenses from their other businesses into the wired networks. The Book of Broken Promises shows we paid for networks we never got– and proves the FCC is trying to manipulate Net Neutrality.

  • We Filed in FCC’S “Shut Off the Copper” Proceeding

History shows that “Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment”, the focus of this proceeding— has virtually never worked and neither the FCC, the state commissions, the ILEC phone companies AT&T, Verizon or CenturyLink, or their funded-groups has ever discussed this fact.

Public Knowledge, Consumer Federation of America, and New Networks Institute filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit requesting the Court to overturn and remand the Federal Communications Commission’s recent Business Data Services deregulation Order.

This FCC shut down proposed privacy laws, which lets the companies sell your browsing history and track you on all devices. Their next act is attempting to eliminate Net Neutrality. Worse, the companies can raise your rates at will, and there will be no requirement to even provide or fix your service, much less make sure that there is serious competition. It is going to get a lot worse and this problem is happening across America.

FCC Filings and Related Reports

New Networks Institute & the IRREGULATORS filed in over 35 separate FCC  proceedings and created “Fixing Telecom” series.

Partial List of the Proceedings We Filed In:

  • Net Neutrality Internet Order –Restoring Internet Freedom WC 17-108
  • Section 706 —Inquiry Concerning Deployment of Advanced Telecom Capability to All Americans GN 17-199
  • Shut off the Copper Proceedings —Accelerating Wireline Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment   Report and Order, Declaratory Ruling, and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking – WC Docket No. 17-8
  • Technology Transitions, GN Docket No. 13-5
  • AT&T Petition to Launch a Proceeding Concerning the TDM-to-IP Transition, GN Docket No. 12-353
  • Wireless Replacement of Wired Services Wireless Infrastructure NPRM WT Docket Nos. 17-79 and 15-180
  • FCC Cost Accounting Rules Review of Part 32 Uniform System of Accounts Docket 14-130
  • Jurisdictional Separations and Referral to the Federal-State Joint Board CC Docket No. 80-286
  • Business Data Services (Special Access)   Docket No.16-143;WC Docket No. 05-25;

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http://irregulators.org/

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