$360 Billion in funny money to phone companies

[digitalbitstream]

See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kus ... r=Politics

By the end of 2012, we estimate that America was overcharged $360 billion dollars -- over $3000 per household for upgrades to the utilities, the public switched telephone networks, (PSTN) -- upgrades to critical, essential infrastructure that never happened.

[dane]

Bruce has been pushing this concept for a long, long time, an I'm not sure he's right. The incumbent LECs have made upgrades, pushing fiber deeper into their networks. AT&T first did "Project Pronto", which pushed fiber and DSL to remote terminals (RTs). Then, "Project Lightspeed", which pushed their fiber to the node, a "video-ready access device" (VRAD), which today delivers U-verse.

So, while I sympathize with the concept that the companies got away with something, I'm not clear that Bruce is right on this.