<b><TeleTruth Wisconsin Calls for a State Investigation into AT&T's</b>

Teletruth News: Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2007

Contact: Cynthia Laitman Cynthia@teletruth.org
Bruce Kushnick, bruce@teletruth.org

TeleTruth Wisconsin Calls for a State Investigation into AT&T's
Unkept Promises of Broadband Deployment In Wisconsin Before the State Senate Passes New, Industry-Friendly Cable Legislation.

NOTE: Teletruth Wisconsin is an independent affiliate of Teletruth.

Teletruth puts up new "Failed Fiber Optic States" site:Read what happened throughout the US including Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California and Connecticut.

FEATURE Wisconsin: "SMOKE AND MIRRORS", Capital Times,
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/254557

TeleTruth Wisconsin, an alliance of statewide public interest groups, will call for an official investigation into Ameritech's (now known as AT&T) prior promises to upgrade Wisconsin's broadband infrastructure in exchange for 1994 legislation allowing them to reap billions of dollars in excess corporate profits.
Before any new bill favoring the industry is enacted (specifically, cable bill AB 207) TeleTruth Wisconsin believes that a full accounting must be made of whether or not Wisconsin rate-payers have gotten what they've been paying for over the past 13 years

An investigative report by the Capital Times ("Smoke &Mirrors?", Oct. 31, 2007) has raised serious questions about unfulfilled promises by Ameritech (now AT&T) to upgrade Wisconsin's broadband and cable infrastructure in exchange for industry-friendly legislation. As a result of Act 496 passed in 1994, Ameritech has reaped an estimated excess net profit of approximately $3-5 billion dollars from Wisconsin telephone rate-payers.

However, there is no evidence that Ameritech (now known as AT&T) has kept its part of the 1994 deal to deliver high speed internet and cable service to schools, libraries, hospitals, and residences in Wisconsin.

Fact: In their federal filings in 1994, the company made statements that it would rewire its entire territory, including Wisconsin, by the year 2000, starting with 146,000 homes in the Milwaukee area, including replacing old copper wiring with fiber-optic cable "to the doorstep". This was to have 390 channels and speed of 45 mbps in both directions --- 50 times faster than standard DSL ( and 50 times faster than the speed now being promised in the pending cable bill!).

Result: Nothing was ever rolled out in the state of Wisconsin.

FACT: On the state level, Wisconsin Bell made commitments to spend $700 million on upgrading schools, libraries, and hospitals. The Company also took a $430 million tax write-off, claiming it was replacing the old wiring.

Result 1: The $700 million promise appears to have been a ruse, with Ameritech restating a sum of operating capital that it had already earmarked for its regular expenses. The $430 million tax deduction should not have been allowed.

Result 2: Ameritech re-defined "to the doorstep" from the commonly understood meaning (i.e. directly to the premises of a building) to mean "to the general vicinity" of a building, inherently misleading the state and the general public. In The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom, author Todd Oppenheimer noted, "Schools were surprised to find that not only did Ameritech fail to run fiber-optic to what they understood to be their "doorstep", but that it cost them plenty to connect from Ameritech's line [off the premises] to internal systems."

Fact: As part of the merger conditions, during the merger of SBC and Ameritech, the company made commitments to spend over $6 billion to rewire their territories.

Result: This was again a ruse. The money was never spent and the upgrades never happened in Wisconsin.

Fact: Despite prior promises, AT&T is seeking to perpetuate their outmoded copper wire technology via their U-Verse system, instead of upgrading to fiber-optic cable.

Result:
We believe that billions of dollars in excessive charges have been foisted on Wisconsin telephone customers for fiberoptic services that were promised but never delivered, and that Ameritech aka SBC-Ameritech aka AT&T has harmed the entire state of Wisconsin. However, without audits, it is impossible to know just how much money was collected by Ameritech in the name of upgraded broadband. We do know, however, that the company's net income in Ameritech climbed from $2.2 billion in 1994, before deregulation, to a post-deregulation $4.2 billion by 1998 - a net profits increase of 97%. Despite this, Ameritech actually decreased its Wisconsin workforce from 1992 through 2004 by 48%!.

If an investigation confirms that AT&T has failed to fulfill its prior obligations under previously passed legislation, AT&T must either return the excess profits or must immediately commence broadband deployment without additional charges to its Wisconsin customers. In effect, Wisconsin customers may well have already paid for a multi-billion dollar product they've never received.
The State Senate should delay a vote on pending cable legislation until an investigation can show whether or not AT&T has fulfilled its prior obligations.

For more information about other states: http://www.newnetworks.com/failedfiberstates.htm

Bruce Kushnick