Category: Actions

Civic Hall Book Day — Tuesday, April 28, 2015

NOTE: Other speakers include Susan Crawford, Astra Taylor, Allison Fine, Micah L. Sifry, and Alissa Quart — (See below)

New Expose Released: About the Book: Fact Sheet, Table of Contents, About the Author, About the Trilogy. Now available in paperback, ebook for Kindle, or an inexpensive PDF

It Is Time to Start Fixing What’s Broken with Communications in America.

With the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger now dead in its tracks, and weeks earlier, the FCC released its new Open Internet/Net Neutrality decision only to be greeted by an onslaught of legal challenges that will continue for years, The Book of Broken Promises emerges to expose the sad truth about communications services in America and to answer a fundamental question — How did we get into this mess and what can we do to fix it today?

Bruce Kushnick, author, senior telecom analyst and industry insider, lays out, in all of the gory details, how America paid over $400 billion to be the first fully fiber optic-based nation yet ended up 27^th in the world for high-speed Internet (40^th in upload speeds). But this is only a part of this story.

It is Time for Audits, Investigations, Accountability, Oversight, Enforcement, Un-Manipulated Data, Transparency and Ethics.

• SPECIAL: How to Get New York City and New York State
• Competition Now: Re-open the phone networks (as well as the cable networks) to direct competition. Customers should regain the right to choose their own ISP (Internet), cable, broadband and phone provider over the wires coming into homes and offices — that they paid for.
• Broadband Scandal: Start immediate investigations into the commitments that were made to upgrade homes, offices, schools and libraries with fiber optics, replacing the aging copper wires, as well as the billions charged to customers per-state.
• Deceptive Billing: Everyone reading this knows that their bills are littered with ‘made up’ fees, pass-through-taxes, and the advertised price means nothing. Let real competition and ‘choice’ lower rates and fix deceptive sales practices.
• Investigate the Time Warner and Comcast Social Contracts; actual agreements with the FCC to wire schools and charge customers.
• Investigate the massive financial shell game and cross-subsidies we uncovered between and among the wired networks and the companies’ wireless services and other lines of business.
• Separate the companies’ control of the wires and airwaves because— “The Companies that Control the Wires Control Access & America’s Communications Future.”.

Everyone Gets Upgraded: How Do We Get There? Broken Promises provides extensive documentation and a proactive plan, a road-map on how states and cities can take advantage and leverage the companies’ failed broadband commitments and the companies’ questionable financial and business practices. The goal — Move America to an open, very fast, fiber optic-based, yet affordable, broadband, Internet, and cable service for everyone — since everyone paid for it over and over and over.

Check Out the Details: The Book of Broken Promises is the third in a trilogy spanning 18 years. See the Fact Sheet, Table of Contents, details of “$200 Billion Broadband Scandal” featured on Bill Moyer’s PBS “The Net at Risk”, in 2006 (with over 730,000 downloads) and “The Unauthorized Bio of the Baby Bells”, (with Foreword by Dr. Bob Metcalfe), published in 1998.

NOTE: WE ARE ALREADY WORKING ON CHANGE

Broken Promises is based on over 20 years of research and analysis. However, it is not just a history book; it has been enhanced by the work of New Networks Institute’s team of independent experts, analysts, auditors and lawyers who have been working on projects together over the last decade.

From helping to get communities upgraded to fiber optics in New Jersey or in New York, (in 2012-2014), filing complaints at the FCC and at the state commissions, or helping to develop current and successful, settled class action suits (getting customers back tens of millions of dollars), Broken Promises uses this wealth of expertise to create an active guide for real change and it documents, in detail, the reasons why fixing communications is now an imperative.

New Networks’ Current Activities:

Want to be part of the change? [email protected]

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Civic Hall Book Day — Tuesday, April 28, 2015

156 Fifth Avenue, Second Floor, New York City

Other authors and speakers include:

• 8:30 AM – Susan Crawford, author, Captive Audience and The Responsive City
• 12:00 PM – Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power
• 2:00 PM – Afternoon snack with featured authors
  Bruce Kushnick author of The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal and Free the Net
  Allison Fine author of Matterness: Fearless Leadership for a Social World
• 5:00 PM – Micah L. Sifry, The Big Disconnect, Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics
• 6:00 PM Poetry in the Café, Happy Hour with Alissa Quart, author of Monetized