Dark Fiber in America? What happened to the 48 million kilometers that was installed but not in use as of 2007?
How much more fiber was installed and has been dark since then? What happened in your state? Moreover, how much of the dark fiber is in the AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink (now Lumen) controlled state telecommunications public utilities? How much was laid in unserved and underserved areas and never put into use-- but paid for?
IRREGULATORS Call for an “Alternative 5-Year Plan”
Each state is supposed to create a 5 year plan based on NTIA guidelines for Bead government subsidies. And yet, the NTIA and each state are omitting critical material facts and information.
We will present a series of data-charts that lays out that there could be hundreds of millions of miles of fiber optic wires worth tens of billions of dollars that should have been put into use over the last 2 decades.-- Why not?
This first chart is the last available data from the FCC's “Statistics of Communications Common Carriers”, (SOCC) report in 2007. .It shows, state-by-state, 73.4 million KM of fiber optic wires that had been laid throughout the America, with a whopping 48 million KM, ?66%, ?was “DARK”, meaning it was installed but not in use. (1 Kilometer is 62% of 1 mile.)
Almost all of these fiber optic wires were put as part of the state telecom public utility, and as "Title II", common carrier networks. Moreover, they were put in as part of various commitments to do upgrades of the state’s infrastructure, replacing the copper wires with fiber optics. Worse, customers not only had rate increases to do these upgrades, multiple times, but the fiber optic wires and the construction budgets were mostly used by wireless post 2010--a bait and switch.
Not a history lesson. America's municipalities should have the right to take over these wires in 2023. The companies should be investigated, especially if the wires that go through unserved or underserved areas, or worse, were diverted to the other lines of business, like wireless. Questions abound.
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Yet, not one state gov. broadband office has acknowledged that there is a state telecom utility, and so the funds to ‘solve the Digital Divide’ have turned into a new revenue center for the companies, many of whom are using the state utility fiber networks and not paying market prices. Worse, the companies never did the upgrades; they created the Digital Divide.
What happened in your state? ?
Reading across, we have the "State", the amount of fiber (in KM), that is “Lit” and the "total" that combines Lit and “Dark”. Next is the holding company in charge of the state utility and the % of coverage that is part of the utility franchise. (Note the data from the FCC is filled with mismatches, or it left out Alaska.) Note: Each state's % of dark fiber to Lit should be investigated for redlining-- Why did some communities get service?