[shakethemonkey]

Perhaps that's not the best source to link to.

But Bell Atlantic never did live up to promises it made in 1994 to build a fiber broadband network in exchange for permission to raise its rates.

http://articles.philly.com/1994-07-16/business/25844080_1_be...

Is the amount of money they garnered from keeping/raising their rates on the order of $2B? (My guess is that it's a larger number than that)

[tptacek]

Are you conceding at this point that Verizon did not take billions of dollars in taxpayer money for a fiber network they didn't build?

[shakethemonkey]

In this one particular case, yes. But not that they did not receive indirect remuneration (rate concessions) in exchange for unfulfilled broadband promises, possibly far exceeding $2B. I'm not sure why my comment was downvoted, as the article in the Inquirer shows that such promises were indeed made by Bell Atlantic.