The following video gives a history of telecom policy. It’s (probably overly) simplified. It shows in seconds what happened over years so the causality is perhaps also overstated. But it makes a few important points:
- Telephone customers have paid taxes intended to support deployment of broadband
- Telephone services remained regulated while wireless weren’t regulated
- Some areas got fibers, others did not
- Telephone (and their customers) paid for infrastructure; wireless benefited
Description from Bruce Kushnick’s site…
This video was created to explain as simple as possible how the Digital Divide was really created and what the IRREGULATORS and New Networks Institute have been working on to fix this mess over the last decade.
Note: Aunt Ethel is a legendary figure in the history of telecommunications. While she passed away two decades ago, The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net, published 2015, is dedicated to her. It is the 3rd book in a trilogy; the series started with an examination of her phone charges in 1992.
