The Digital Equity Act: More of The Great Wireless Swindle.
Pennsylvania has received $2.75 billion from Washington to fund PA’s portion of the Digital Equity Act (DE). PA is hosting community comment meetings around the state to ask how this money should be spent to get more people connected to the internet. There is no indication that Fiber to the Home (FTTH) is even being considered.
It appears that most of this money will be gifted to wireless providers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T to help build out their cellular networks, which, thanks to 5G, are doing double duty as internet infrastructure.
Since wireless technology is noticeable harmful to approximately 5% of the population and acutely damaging to nearly 2%, it should be a matter of fact that a project with equity at its core would place FTTH at the forefront of this effort. Fiber optic internet connections are not only free of harmful radiation emissions but also provide unrivaled speeds while giving users extremely strong cyber security, plus they use nearly zero energy compared to energy-guzzling wireless network systems. So why isn’t this option on the table?
Wireless radiation effects us all, but to what extent this is so is actively being obscured by Telecom and its agents at the FCC. The tobacco industry exposed how this game is played. Is wireless radiation making you sick?
That is where your input is important. Please try to get out to these public comment meetings and let the public know that the Digital Divide is a product of Telecom’s doing. If Pennsylvanians do not receive FTTH, we are owed in excess of $18 billion in public funds Verizon collected for this infrastructure, or over $1000.00 per household.
PUBLIC MEETING SCHEDULE
- Digital Equity Plan Public Comment Session – Washington County – Dec. 14, 2023
- Digital Equity Plan Public Comment Session – Philadelphia County – Dec. 16, 2023
- Digital Equity Plan Public Comment Session – Statewide – Dec. 18, 2023
- Digital Equity Plan Public Comment Session – Allegheny County – Dec. 18, 2023
Wireless providers have routinely engaged in fraud against the American public and its government. During the COVID crisis, Verizon defrauded the Federal Government over cyber security contracts and paid a criminal settlement this fall.
A $17 billion government program to help low-income people afford wireless during the lockdowns was robbed of 100s of millions and perhaps billions by wireless providers who created 10s of thousands of phantom accounts. Schools in high-poverty areas were a primary target; providers overenrolled for accounts in numbers that often exceeded the enrollment of the school by five times. The FCC and DoJ are investigating.
But the mother of all frauds is the one committed by Verizon, the successor of Bell Telephone, the once-steward of the public’s telephone infrastructure. In 1993, the Clinton Administration announced the Information Superhighway. The October 26, 1993 issue of the New York Times described it thusly: “One of the technologies Vice President Al Gore is pushing is the information superhighway, which will link everyone at home or office to everything else—movies and television shows, shopping services, electronic mail, and huge collections of data.”
The main thrust of this plan was to replace all copper phone wires with its 21st century upgrade, fiber optic cable; this was referred to as Fiber to the Home (FTTH). The FCC allowed major concessions to telecoms handling the legacy landlines and allowed significant surcharges on phone bills to pay for FTTH. As part of the agreement in Pennsylvania, Verizon is supposed to have had their entire territory completed by the year 2015.
Now politicians are crying about the digital divide, and the federal government is going to ride to the rescue to help fill the gap. The fact that Verizon has not fulfilled its contractual obligation has been quietly forgotten. And if you do not have fiber optics connecting your home, you are owed over $1,000, which is what the average household in Pennsylvania has paid into this project through their phone bills over the past thirty years.
For terrific background on the Fibergate fraud, read the work of The Irregulars and check out their legal victory that opened the pathway for any municipality to sue Verizon for restitution in this breach of contract.