{"id":2154,"date":"2006-01-31T22:35:32","date_gmt":"2006-01-31T22:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2154"},"modified":"2006-01-31T22:35:32","modified_gmt":"2006-01-31T22:35:32","slug":"the_200b_broadb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2154","title":{"rendered":"The $200B Broadband Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/isen.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/book-200-billion-broadband-scandal-by.html\">David Isenberg<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>My friend Bruce Kushnick is a man on a mission. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newnetworks.com\/broadbandscandals.htm\">The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal<\/a>, he writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n. . . in the early 1990&#8217;s . . . every Bell company . . . made commitments to rewire America, state by state. Fiber optic wires would replace the 100-year old copper wiring. The push caused techno-frenzy of major proportions. By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions . . . In order to pay for these upgrades, in state after state, the public service commissions and state legislatures acquiesced to the Bells&#8217; promises by removing the constraints on the Bells&#8217; profits as well as gave other financial perks . . . The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The manipulations, deceptions and broken promises are documented in detail in New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts. Book synopsis here.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> More <a href=\"http:\/\/muniwireless.com\/community\/1023\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Isenberg: My friend Bruce Kushnick is a man on a mission. In The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal, he writes: . . . in the early 1990&#8217;s . . . every Bell company . . . made commitments to rewire America, state by state. Fiber optic wires would replace the 100-year old copper wiring. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}