Second, they were able to 'accelerate' depreciation, meaning write off the networks faster, regardless of the life of the network product, such as the copper or fiber wires.
Depreciation, in this case, lowers the taxes paid as it is an expense, but in the old days, it was part of the calculations of the costs to offer service, so more expenses would mean -- oh, we're losing money, give us more rate increases.
I don't have problems with accelerated depreciation -- if they actually were doing what they said which was replacing the aging copper utility wires with fiber optics -- but in most of these cases, they didn't replace it but took the deductions and got the benefits.
Go into an audit with the IRS and tell them you wrote off equipment that you didn't buy or that you didn't replace-- see how that works for you.
[1]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decad... [2]http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/downloads/pdf/verizon_nyc_fran...
As I have described before, there never was any "massive amounts of money" paid by state governments. What Kushnick calls "subsidies" was just agreements that allowed the phone companies to increase their prices. To Kushnick, that's a "perk."