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Saul Hansell's NY Times article last year was critical in killing a $1B pure giveaway to Verizon that was added to the stimulus by the Senate Finance Committee. Saul's moved on, and Cecilia Kang at the Washington Post can become a leader in U.S. telecom reporting if she follows up her story on universal service. David Cameron has killed off the despised broadband tax that was really a giveaway to British Telecom, but the FCC is considering a multibillion dollar levy on broadband that will almost all go to the companies in return for very little investment. The big telco lobbyists expect a windfall of at least $1B/year and more likely $3-4B from ICC & USF changes.

“Over the past three years, AT&T received $1.3 billion in funds to deploy phone lines to rural areas [and] Verizon got $1.27 billion,” Kang reports. V&T have invested virtually nothing in expanding broadband. They are treating rural customers the way the Romans treated the Sabine women while they try to sell off the lines. Bell broadband coverage in rural areas is among the worst in the developed world.

There's plenty of muck to rake if Kang's editors give her enough time to do some investigation. There's the $91K/line giveaway to Sandwich Islands, part-owned by Democratic politicians. There's $B or so in savings possible in the schools and libraries program if they efficiently and publicly sought the lowest prices. There's the “for-profit” subsidiary of NECA, a huge conflict for a non-profit that distributes what's ultimately public money. It's rumored to be making the officers rich, but refuses to give me any information. An FCC Chief of Staff told me the ICC calculations are obviously illegal because they are not based on the costs of terminating the calls as the law requires. No one reporter can cover all of this, and I'll happily share files and sources with anyone interested.

If any of my readers know Marcus Brauchli at the Post, can you forward this to him and suggest it's time to make stars on the technology desk? D.C. needs that reporting. The $150B Woman, Carol Mattey, is doing her best to rationalize the system, but the political pressures are brutal. It's literally impossible to satisfy the $20B+ of demands with the $7B available. Everyone in the system knows these issues. Without press coverage, lobbyists are able to rip off the system.

Truth to power, anyone?