>The ISP's never got "$200 billion" in the 1990's. That's a total made up number, based on taking what ISP profits would >have been had they been regulated as a utility, and calling everything over that "money given to ISPs."
>The premise of deregulation was that it would lead to increased infrastructure spending. And it has: the late 1990's and >the 2000's saw massive investment into cable and wireless. People assumed at the time the money would go into fiber, but >demand exploded in wireless so investment went there instead.

let's start with this-- The reference to ISPs. In the 1990's, the largest group of Internet service providers was not the incumbent phone companies, but entrepreneurs-- by 2001 there were 9335 independent ISPs and they handled the majority of the traffic-- it was only after 2004-2005, when the FCC killed the right of competitors to use the copper wires for line sharing did this definition change-- and what is now AT&T (then SBC) stole the business from the ISP.

Second, I never said anything about ISPs -- as, well, I was a research analyst for the competitors-- the ISP associations, like the Texas ISP association, TISPA, or CISPA, or the Competitor associations like ALTS or Comptel. And we filed to protect the ISPs from the harms caused by those who controlled the wires. We filed at the FCC, we were working with Congressmen Nadler to create the "Broadband Bill of Rights" and created a small ISP summit with the Small Business Administration -- Read our impact study.

https://newnetworks.com/smallbusinessimpactstudy.html

Let me address this quote--its hard to know where to start. In 1991, when the info highway was proposed by the Clinton-Gore ticket, the telephone companies were still state utilities, controlled by holding companies. They were regulated, and the profits were regulated. They received alternative regulations in almost every state from 1992-1995. -- i.e., PA, CA, IA, OH, NY, NJ, KY, TN-- all had primary state-based public utilities and all had state laws changed.

And the investments were supposed to replace the existing copper wire with fiber. And laws were changed to pay for these fiber build outs. And phone rates went up, and profits went up, but virtually nothing was built; and there were others besides us tracking the amount of money collected for these utility networks. They were NOT free market companies but utilities, like water, gas, electric or roads---

So, Pacific bell (CA) claimed it would spend $16 billion and have 5.5 million households done by 2000
All of Verizon NJ. 100% was to be done by 2010-- with fiber capable of 45 mbps in both directions, starting in 1996,
All of CT was to be done by SNET, and spend 4.4 billion -- completed by 2007.

And cable? Wireless? They were and separate subsidiaries and it is illegal to subsidize these other lines of business out of the state utility budgets--it is known as 'cross-subsidies'.

Since I was actually a consultant to the companies when all of this was going down... I had a front row seat.

Think of this as a highway plan-- you pay a contractor to build a highway and they charge the state billions, which in turn turns into additional taxes... here, the local rates and other charges were applied to customer bills as prices should have went down when there were staff cuts.

Where did the money go? As documented, they lost over $16 billion as a group overseas, and they wanted to go into the long distance market-- which was separate, but was very profitable

So, according to this, the companies were ISPS and not utilities, wrong. They were allowed to cross-subsidize all lines of business-- wrong, and there were no commitments to build out the fiber as part of these utilities-- wrong.

And might as well finish this:

1) That the internet and mobile booms are unrelated to deregulation and should not be factored into the analysis. Of course, that's ludicrous.

2) providers of the infrastructure underlying those boom industries to depreciate infrastructure and invest in new infrastructure faster than before?

The book is about the wired infrastructure of the state utilities -- a fact that the commentor appears to not understand, and the 'deregulation' that was granted was based on the utilities who control the wired infrastucture to not lie to the public and not charge them for other lines of business that are supposed to be paid for by INVESTORS, not the utility customers.

Ironically, most of the wireless networks were subsidized, which shouldn't have occurred because, well, starting in 2010, the telcos started to divert the funding to wireless -- not legal in most states, to fund wireless, instead of upgrading the cities and rural areas. -- See, utilities are based on serving the territory they cover... So, Verizon and AT&T took billions and moved them to these other lines of business but then left the copper to deteriorate and not upgraded to fiber..

And that is 'ludicrous that the critic doesn't understand telecommunications laws, or even examined the details of the financials for the state utilities -- or the consequences that occurred.

The internet occurred because we, and others, spent years get the Telecom Act passed so that the small ISPs could do what they did.

2) That 1970's-style rate-regulation doesn't have an adverse impact on capital investment.

More crap. the investment under this "1970's" regulation, not referred to as "Title II", and the manipulation of the accounting was used to allow the companies' other lines of business to cross-subsidize and not build out the states with fiber and not even maintain the networks, especially in rural areas.

We wrote an entire report on the current Verizon NY 2019 Annual Report financials and cross-subsidies

http://irregulators.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/REPORTVer...

I'll be glad to answer questions-- but it's not 200 billion... counting the cross-subsidies we uncovered over the last decade, it's over 1.1 trillion; The overcharging from changes in state laws which were based on commitmenets not met since 1993 is eclipsed by the massive cross-subsidy scheme underway playing out, today in the state utilities -- and yes, PA, CO, CA, NY, MA, all have primary state public utilities... like AT&T California or Verizon MA