Read these articles and didn't realize some of this, kind of glad I'm aware of these things, but also kind of p*ssed off. Bolded parts are my emphasis.

The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal and Free the Net*|*Bruce Kushnick (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394.html)

"By the end of 2014, America will have been charged about $400 billion by the local phone incumbents, Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink, for a fiber optic future that never showed up. And though it varies by state, counting the taxes, fees and surcharges that you have paid every month (many of these fees are actually revenues to the company or taxes on the company that you paid), it comes to about $4000-$5000.00 per household from 1992-2014, and that's the low number."

"In fact, in 1992, the speed of broadband, as detailed in state laws, was 45 Mbps in both directions -- by 2014, all of us should have been enjoying gigabit speeds (1000 Mbps).

Instead, America is not number 1 or 2 or 5 or even 10th in the world in broadband. As of Monday, September 15th, 2014, one of the standard testing companies of the speed of broadband, worldwide, Net Index by Ookla, pegged America at 25th in the world in download speeds and 40th in upload speeds."

Fast Lane, Slow Lane -- "No Lane" -- End Game in Telecommunications*|*Bruce Kushnick (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/fast-lane-slow-lane--no-l_b_5865996.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business)

"While Net Neutrality focuses on important issues, it doesn't address or cure anything to do with stopping the "No Lane"-- the end game if AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner continue on their path. These companies are the incumbent wireline and cable companies that control most of the wires in the US and that also means that they control all wireless services. Control of the wires also gives them control over all services, including competitor services, but more importantly it gives them the ability to control who gets upgraded and who doesn't, or what prices customers' pay, or worse, who will be 'shut off' and end up in a 'Digital Dead Zone'."

"We've explained this elsewhere, but simply put-- "Title II" is a classification of telecommunications services, and it was applied to broadband for decades. Telecommunications services have obligations like "carrier of last resort," meaning that if your line breaks they fix it as everyone is entitled to phone service. Also, the networks are 'common carriage', meaning, like roads, anyone can use the wires; there's no gatekeeper to block someone from using a public road.

Then, around 2005, the FCC decided that broadband and Internet service, which was classified as an "information service" (Title I), should now be one service -- classified as an information service. An information service doesn't have the telecom requirements, so simply changing the classification, even for the exact same wire, changes the laws and regulations.

And right now the entire US is a battleground as whole areas of America are being targeted to get 'shut off' or 'migrated' -- with or without the customer's consent, and much of this has been about reclassifying services to get rid of regulations."

"Working through a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), AT&T and Verizon have been running campaigns to remove regulations where they created model legislation that is given to ALEC state legislator members, (most of whom are funded via AT&T, Verizon and the cable companies), to pass odious deregulation bills to strip-mine the Title II obligations."

<font size="6" color="red">WARNING:</font> The Internet Might End in December*|*Peter Schwartz (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter_schwartz/end-of-internet_b_5856168.html?utm_hp_ref=world)

"The next battle will be fought in Busan, Korea in a few weeks at the meeting of the International Telecommunications Union, a body chartered to technically regulate the interconnection standards of telephone and telegraph networks and assign parking spots in Earth orbit for communications satellites. At that meeting the challenger countries will once again, as they tried to do last December in Dubai, try to wrest control from the multi-stakeholder coalition that has been governing the Internet under a contract with the U.S. government.

If they succeed, it very well may lead to the end of the world as we know it. There will be no Internet. There will be many nets: ChinaNet, Euronet, maybe Deutsche Net and France net and Brazil Net and Russia Net. It will resemble the world before the Internet with many private networks and a constant challenge of interconnection."

Read another article by the same guy that wrote the first two, did not know this, not sure if many other people do...

AT&T U-verse Is a Copper-Based PSTN Service: Lawmakers and the Media Were Duped.*|*Bruce Kushnick (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/att-uverse-copper_b_2522703.html)

"I just made a rather disturbing finding. AT&T's U-verse service -- its broadband, internet and TV service -- is a copper-to-the-home service. More importantly, it is a fiber-to-the-press-release. Going though hundreds of blogs and articles as well as AT&T's state and federal testimony and filings -- including AT&T's recent FCC petition to close down the Public Switched Telephone Networks, (PSTN), AT&T never once mentioned that AT&T's U-verse is a copper-based PSTN service. U-verse uses the same, exact wires that have been in homes and offices for decades, even though AT&T is claiming that the PSTN is "too old" and needs to be "retired," closing down about 50 percent of their 22 state territories' utility networks.

AT&T has also told anyone who will listen that the company needs to "transition" the PSTN networks to an "all Internet protocol network" to make "Voice Over the Internet Protocol" (VOIP) work.

And yet -- AT&T has pulled off a massive deception: The PSTN is the U-verse delivery vehicle for cable, broadband, internet and phone and yet AT&T has never disclosed this fact and, in fact, has hid the truth."

Not to be a jerk, but I read a long time ago that U-verse was not what it's advertised because while the main trunk lines are fiber optic, the lines leading to each individual home are nothing but old school copper, thus pretty much nullifying any "upgrade" from the fiber.

Yeah, anybody in the tech industry has known U-Verse was NOT FTTP service. That's why Internet speeds have always been a joke compared to true fiber services like Verizon FiOS. U-Verse is basically rebranded DSL.

Yeah, anybody in the tech industry has known U-Verse was NOT FTTP service. That's why Internet speeds have always been a joke compared to true fiber services like Verizon FiOS. U-Verse is basically rebranded DSL.

I'm not that involved in that kind of tech, and since U-Verse was never in my area, I didn't care that much about it (still don't 'cos Cox is serving my needs quite well at not too horrible of a price). The biggie, I think, is that AT&T lied about it all over the place. I know, we're all shocked...