A NEW e-book tells a "sordid story" of business fraud, according to one reviewer. The book's author says it is "the largest fraud case in American history."

Enron? WorldCom? No. It's much, much larger than either of those, though the use of the word "fraud" in this case is more a literary device than a legal definition. The book is "The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal" (newnetworks.com). The author is Bruce Kushnick, a longtime irritant to the telecommunications industry.

His targets are the Baby Bells, which he contends owe every American household about $2,000 because they reneged on their collective promise to deploy ultra-high-speed broadband Internet access via optical fiber to millions of homes.

By now, according to Mr. Kushnick, 86 million homes should be wired at 45 Mbps -- at least 15 times as fast as the best commonly available D.S.L. service. The count of homes wired at that speed so far is zero.