Synopsis
With the FCC’s Net Neutrality decision, (and the legal challenges to follow), The Book of Broken Promises emerges to expose the sad truth about communications services in the U.S and delivers a fact-based history of broadband in America that you were never told about. The third book in a trilogy spanning 17 years, senior telecom analyst and industry insider Bruce Kushnick lays out, in all of the gory details, how America paid over $400 billion and counting, to be the first fully fiber optic-based nation yet ended up 27th in the world for high-speed Internet. While over four million people filed with the FCC to ‘Free the Net’, one thing is abundantly clear— You know something is terribly wrong. Every time you pay your bills you notice that the price of your services keeps going up, you don’t have a serious choice for Internet (ISP), broadband or cable service, or maybe you can’t even get very fast broadband service. Broken Promises is not just about broadband, Net Neutrality, or some cautionary tale. It reveals new damaging facts about the underbelly of our communications providers, AT&T and Verizon, not to mention the cable companies, and why it’s time to restructure communications if we want the future we paid for. Most importantly, Broken Promises answers a fundamental question: How did we get into this mess and what can we do to fix it today? And don't worry; all of this jargon will be explained in plain English. First, Broken Promises thoroughly documents the failure to upgrade America’s networks. Starting in the 1990’s, the companies asked state regulators to grant rate increases and tax perks to pay for replacing the existing, utility copper wires connected to homes and offices, (and schools and libraries), with a fabulous fiber optic future. Though it varies by state, by 2014, over $400 billion was collected, charging you thousands of dollars for services you never got. Alongside this, in 1995, the cable companies cut a deal with the FCC called the “Social Contract” to charge customers for network upgrades and the wiring of schools. While the Contract expired in 2001, the companies never stopped billing and collected about $50 billion extra and there’s no evidence that the schools were wired. And we were all charged about 9 times to wire America's schools & libraries. Adding insult to injury, Congress passed the Telecom Act of 1996, opening the networks to give customers a choice of ISPs and even cable providers. But, by 2005, the FCC reversed this ‘right’, creating Net Neutrality issues. Also, the FCC allowed the companies to consolidate power, leaving a trail of broken promises from the mergers that created AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink. Broken Promises also details what to expect from the AT&T-DirecTV and Comcast-TWC mergers. In order to keep control, the companies have an army of fake consumer groups (astroturf), paid-off politicians, corporate-funded stink tanks, co-opted non-profits, all coordinated by massive skunkworks networks that use disinformation campaigns. Broken Promises pulls back the curtain and also shines the spotlight on the ALEC/Corporate sponsored deregulation bills from hell and how this game is played. Broken Promises explains all the ‘buzzwords’ and supplies encyclopedic coverage— everything you need to know about the current, critical issues, from Net Neutrality, something called “Title II” and “reclassification”, the "IP transition", the secret ‘special access’ connections, the rise of municipalities who didn’t wait to get wired—or the plan to ‘shut off the copper’. Broken Promises ends with a proactive plan to reclaim our rights and restructure communications by leveraging the companies’ broadband commitments and business practices to bring America’s states and cities very high speed, fiber optic-based utilities that lowers your rates and delivers choices via "Open Network" competition for all services. Isn’t it time everyone got the fiber optic future we already paid for.
About the Author
Bruce Kushnick is one of America’s leading telecommunications analysts and one of the most controversial. If you have used a touchtone phone over the last three decades, odds are he had something to do with it. In 1982, Kushnick predicted that the addition of new technologies would change the way America communicated and he helped to develop numerous services that are now commonplace. As senior telecom analyst for IDC’s Link Resources, he wrote some of the seminal research reports that heralded in the “Interactive Age”. In 1992, he helped to roll out the first three digit information service, “511”, which is now common in many US cities. But in 1992, a visit to his Aunt Ethel’s home made him realize that his clients (that would become AT&T and Verizon) had a dark side. He founded New Networks Institute, (NNI) to document and expose the companies’ plans and excesses. For example, America should have been the first fully fiber optic-based nation as customers paid over $400 billion extra in rate increases and tax perks by 2014 . Instead, the companies diverted funds to overseas investments or the executives’ compensation. In 2002, Kushnick helped to create Teletruth, a telecom advocacy group. Teletruth was a member of FCC Consumer Advisory Committee and helped to create proposed legislation, the Broadband Bill of Rights, a precursor to the Net Neutrality rules. And over the last decade, Teletruth’s phone bill auditing services has led to multiple, successful class action suits and major refunds for phone customers. In 2015, NNI and Teletruth have multiple, active complaints against the phone and cable companies at the FCC and state commissions. Kushnick’s books include $200 Billion Broadband Scandal, which was featured on Bill Moyer’s Emmy-nominated, The Net at Risk, and The Unauthorized Bio of the Baby Bells, with foreword by Dr. Robert Metcalfe (co-inventor of ‘Ethernet’). His work has been featured by almost all major US media outlets and blogs, from The New York Times and Washington Post to Ars Technica and Broadband Reports. Kushnick has had a lifelong addiction to sound and technology. He has a degree in music composition from Brandeis and was a special graduate student at both Harvard and MIT, combining artificial intelligence, psychology and music in a program that would become part of MIT’s Media Lab, not to mention working in MIT’s psychoacoustics labs. An accomplished composer and musician, Bruce has been playing the piano for 58 years.
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