[antidote] Telecom Riot Act of 2004 --29 Reasons To Not Celebrate The 20th Anniversary Of The Baby Bells:
- From: "Bruce Kushnick" <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <antidote@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 04:50:28 -0500
TELETRUTH NEWS ALERT
For Immediate Release, December 29th, 2003
Telecom Riot Act of 2004
29 Reasons To Not Celebrate The 20thAnniversary Of The Baby Bells:
What You Didn't Get For Your Money.
To read this online with additional links see
http://www.newnetworks.com/TelecomRiotActof2004.htm
The Bells were created in 1984. There are now only 4 left: BellSouth, Qwest,
SBC, and Verizon.
Let's face it. When you examine the last 20 years of the Baby Bells' reign,
one thing stands out - American customers were disconnected by the
monopolies that control the wires into US homes, offices, schools and
libraries. At this 20th anniversary, it is now clear that America put its
trust in companies who essentially allowed corporate greed to overtake the
public need.
Teletruth believes the Bell monopolies stole your Digital Future, harmed
competitors that have been trying to give you new services, and overcharged
you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, in numerous ways. Prices continue
to rise even though expenses keep falling. The phone bill is still
unreadable and hiding dirty, little, secret charges all designed to nickel
and dime you. You paid for a fiber optic future on the Info-highway that you
will never get. Instead you now have a very expensive 100 year-old dirt
road. What's worse, this cartel of Bell has been able to buy and take
control of the telecom and broadband agenda through a web of skunkworks,
from lobbying and law firms to astro-turf consumer groups - all paid for by
you through excess charges on your phone bill. (Discussion and links below.)
Here's 29 Reasons to Not Celebrate The 20th Anniversary of the Baby Bells.
Phonebill Issues (Data from an upcoming report.)
* Phone bills get an "F". - You still can't read your phone bill. Teletruth
found 37 Truth-in-Billing violations on Verizon, NY and NJ bills.
* Dirty, little, secret phone charges - You know all those dirty, little
charges on the phone bill can't possibly be correct - and you are right.
* Many of the "taxes" are unmarked revenue or enrichment to the local phone
monopolies.
* Local phone service, for the exact same service, went up 409% in New York,
since 1980. - Phonebills don't lie.
* The "Taxes and Surcharges" section of the NY local phone bill is 112% more
than the cost of "Basic Service". - Phonebills don't lie.
* The FCC Line Charge, which doesn't go to the FCC but is more revenue to the
local phone company, is quintuple taxed in most states - taxes on top of
taxes.
* 15-25% of customers using a bundled package of service are on the wrong plan
and paying too much.
Cost of Service
* NO REGULATOR EXAMINES YOUR PHONEBILL FOR PROFITS ANYMORE.
* The FCC-provided statistics on phone rates is inaccurate or just wrong.
* Prices should be tumbling since the two major expenses have been slashed:
* Staff cuts for telecom have been over 65% (employees-per-line)
since 1984.
* Construction expenditures since 2000 have been slashed over
50%.
* You're owed more money for the biggest accounting scandal in history. The
* Bells' accounting books have added an estimated $50-80 billion in missing
equipment. Known as "Vaporware", this has added over $600 to phone rates per
line.
Broadband Fraud
* You're owed money for broadband scams. Why did American customers pay $120
billion in higher phone rates for networks they will never receive?
* By 2003, virtually half of American households were supposed to have been
rewired with fiber to the home. Yet, today, the Bells still can't build the
networks they promised in 1993!
* Are Pennsylvania customers owed $1135 for a fiber-optic network they never
got?
Competition and Merger Conditions - Siblings Should Never Marry.
* In order to complete their mergers, SBC and Verizon promised to compete with
each other for wireline service in 51 cities by 2003. Virtually none of it
exists today. Why hasn't the FCC or FTC broken up the mergers for failure to
deliver? Every city is owed millions.
* The Bells have been doing everything in their power to harm competitors who
are using the customer-funded networks. They are blocking Internet Service
Providers who want to resell DSL, suing over the costs of service to
competitive voice companies, as well as suing to get rid of "line sharing",
which allows a customer to use their home phone line for DSL.
* While local phone competition only has less than 10% of homes, the Bell
companies, in a few short years, have been able to garner 30 million
households for Long Distance services - about 25% of all homes, and higher
in the states they serve. Remember, the Bells were supposed to open their
networks to competitors and have competition before they entered Long
Distance.
Business Issues
* Where did all the money go? Did the excess profits from local phone service
really go to pay for the Bells' $26 billion in overseas losses and
write-offs of almost $95 billion since 2000?
* Large sums were paid to executives. From 1999-2002, the top executives from
the Bell companies received an estimated 54 million shares of stock options
with an estimated value of $1- $2.1 billion - almost 10% of all stock
options.
* "Dirty Math?" Why does the Bells' statistic for "Voice Line Equivalents"
show clear growth and not the major losses from competition that the Bells
keep talking about?
* Did Cingular, the second largest wireless provider and owned by SBC and
BellSouth, really get to use PCS licenses as a "Very Small Business"?
* Did the Bells get their cellular licenses for free and shouldn't they have
paid customers back as defacto investors when they were sold to a foreign
company?
* You still can't take your wireline phone number with you when you move.
* We live in a 24 hour, seven-day-a-week world, but most of the Bells still
don't work on Sunday.
* Did the Bells improperly use their local service to help "cross-subsidize",
pay for their other businesses, including long distance, DSL or wireless?
The Regulators and the Skunk Works?
* Is the Bells' biggest strength their ability to lobby all state and federal
regulators, Congressmen, Senators, and any one else to make sure that the
laws are written in their favor?
* Why are there multiple astro-turf consumer and research groups all working
for the Bells agenda, including Issue Dynamics and Sam Simon's "TRAC",
"APT", and "New Millennium"? Why don't they identify who funds them?
* Brain Dead Regulators? Why haven't the regulators gotten your money back?
* Why did the FCC just give the Bell companies exclusive rights to all future
upgraded networks, even though customers paid for them?
* Why did the FCC ignore the Small Business Administration's Office of
Advocacy when they pointed to the fact that the FCC was violating various
small business laws?
TO READ THE REST OF THIS DISCUSSION WITH ADDITIONAL LINKS SEE:
http://www.newnetworks.com/TelecomRiotActof2004.htm
Next Month, Part Two - Where do we go from here?
For more documentation on each of the topics discussed herein, see:
Teletruth Progress Report: http://www.newnetworks.com/Teletruthlinks2003.htm
FREE BOOK - "The Unauthorized Bio of the Baby Bells". - The book the phone
companies do not want you to read. This cult classic has had over 10,000
downloads and now you can have a PDF copy - free.
http://www.newnetworks.com/downloadbook.html
FREE ANALYSIS - "Broken Trust - Indictment of the Bell Companies" 2002
http://www.pulver.com/antitrustreport/documents/downloads/BrokenTrustRev1.2.
pdf
January, 2004, Teletruth will be releasing:
* "The Dirty Little Secrets Lives of Phone Bills", a novel.
* "Phonebill Independence". A research report on phone bills.
* "The Baby Bells: The 20th Anniversary Report"
* Complaint in Pennsylvania for an investigation of failed broadband rollouts
and refunds of up to $1135 per household.
* Complaint with the FTC to break up the mergers of SBC and Verizon for gaming
the regulatory system to gain approval for the mergers.
Teletruth is a two-year old experiment in customer advocacy and has become a
leading alliance dedicated to protecting customers' broadband and telecom
rights. Teletruth is on the FCC's Consumer Advisory Committee and has active
Public Interest complaints pertaining to telecom and broadband issues with
the SEC, IRS, FCC, numerous state commissions, active class action suits.
Teletruth offers free phone bill analysis to businesses and government
agencies, through LTC Consulting. Through New Networks Institute, a telecom
market research firm, Teletruth publishes research on the broadband and
telecommunications markets. Teletruth is independent of any phone company,
association, or lobbying group.
For more information, to join Teletruth, or work with us,
see: http://www.teletruth.org
Bruce Kushnick, Chairman, bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 212-777-5418
Daniel Berninger, dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Anti-trust, FCC Audits,
202-250-3428
Tom Allibone, tallibon@xxxxxxxxxxxx Phonebills, auditing, 609-397-2257
Joe Plotkin, heyjoe@xxxxxxxx, Broadband and Wireless, 212-982-9800
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