AT&T won't upgrade millions of DSL users to fiber despite billions in subsidies
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Satellite broadband does seem to be the "hack" for making locations that don't have broadband or really usable cell coverage in many cases practical.
My electric cooperative rolled out fiber to every address in the 3-county region it covers. It did so within a year. How? They already run poles everywhere, so they asked "why should we bury fiber?" As it turns out, it's easier to scale out on the pole!
So, in other words, my neighbors and I have two viable choices for Internet service: Xfinity and Starlink.
This infrastructure is so heavily subsidized. The FCC in 2002/2003, with some prompting from the courts, allowed fiber to be effectively an monopoly offering. Contrary to the law that Congress had passed!
> Elimination of ILEC unbundling obligation for new fiber-to-the-home loops. In order to encourage ILECs to invest in new broadband-capable facilities—fiber to the home in particular—the FCC ruled that ILECs need not provide such facilities on an unbundled basis to competitors.
https://www.dwt.com/insights/2003/02/splintered-fcc-modifies...
Even if they were taken over tomorrow by leadership that weren't crooks, they're already in a terrible position to compete as it is -- in the 20 years since they did anything, Comcast and the others have gone from the ~10Mbps connections they once offered, to 1 and even 2Gbps in many places, so I assume in nearly all the areas AT&T doesn't serve with fiber, the incumbent cable co has about 95% market share already. Tough to break into that. even though customers hate the cable companies, they know AT&T is just as slimy -- and nobody wants to set aside a day to wait for an internet installer.
It's not like we're going to start locking up executives for misappropriating public funds and defrauding the government, that's not a crime anyone cares about in this country.
I can see both approaches work.
There is no return on investment for investments in rural fiber. Infrastructure needs a high density of users to be profitable.
If we really think that the speed and reliability of fiber service is important for rural users, we should directly subsidize it - like we do for Amtrak in the Great Plains states - and stop pretending like we care by paying off the corporations and their shareholders.
You even have people telling stories where they could get fiber service, but the provider just doesn't want to.
A telecom corporation doesn't have a way of profiting from such community benefits. It only benefits if it can somehow charge a transaction tax on those benefits in the form of Internet connection fees high enough to turn a profit.
Starlink is tempting, but its $165/month versus the $50/month I pay to T-Mobile.
If anyone thinks AT&T or any service provider is going to run fiber to these communities, you are dreaming. It makes dramatically more profit for them to sell LTE/5G home internet options, even if it is not optimal for then end user.
> AT&T Refuses To Upgrade Millions Of DSL Customers To Fiber Despite Untold Billions In Taxpayer Subsidies And Government Favors
They are effectively giving away ~50% of their footprint to competitors, forever to avoid a one time capex cost.
Obviously there is going to be a portion of their network which is completely uneconomic to serve (requiring huge fibre runs for a handful of customers). But I do not think that is 50% of their userbase. Just checking a handful of 10-20k pop towns in some states they 'cover' and no FTTH is available.
So it's not unjust to call bullshit when it turns out they aren't doing that, but are still keeping the money.
Actual article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/att-says-it-wont...
Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42338721
Karl Bode in particular has been writing about bad ISP behavior for longer - and more persistently - than most anyone. He brings it to the table.
I've been reading him for 20y. Over and over he's been the sole source of sunshine on certain dark telecom corners.
Sure it does. Cleanly.
> This one doesn't add as much to the arstechnica article.
Karl's backlinks help complete (and provide further evidence of) the narrative about AT&Ts long, long history of gross unethical behavior and consumer mistreatment.
The links are the backstory that belong in ~every article about bad telecom behaviors (but are usually missing). Evidencing assertions is part of stellar journalism.
EDIT: My comment failed to account for congestion on the Starlink network which other commenters have pointed out. Honestly after reading that I've concluded this is just a shit situation, fiber is expensive as hell to lay and Starlink poses congestion issues both for customers and up in space.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/01/capacity-crunch-causes-m...
10 years ago I would never think I would say that, but I'm happy with LTE at 50MB down, 15up. The problem? No new lte equipment manufactured in western countries. You want cat 16+ modems? ZTE and Huawei are the only ones to sell you one. And their software not only spies for the Chinese Communist Party. It is also shit (I know, I bought a zte modem to marvel at my 100MB down speeds, o ly to rip it out 2 days later in discust after all my voice calls sounded as if I was on half a Meg if I didn't restart the thing daily (no, it only has automated restart as a weekly option in software). So my old tp-link was installed back in its box on the mast.
So we need more work done here to make 5g happen. Chinese will no do it for us (especially now that their economy is failing).
[1] https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-super...
Force ATT et al. to build out fiber trunks in rural areas, then allow competitive wireless offerings to connect last mile. (Excluding the trunk owner)
And if ATT doesn't want to do that, then local governments should be free to do so.
Are some satellites okay and it's just a value judgment of the clear worth of one more satellite against the unquantifiable risk of possible downside?
I'm of the opinion that commercial satellites should be required to be painted as dark as possible. If that requires extra engineering to dissipate heat, so be it.
The problem with painted satellites is instead that they're not black enough; they still produce light streaks since they're still somewhat reflective. I don't know if it's possible to make them non-reflective enough to make this a non-issue.
Ideally this sort of thing should be a public work. Operators can be private but shared infrastructure should be publicly owned seeing as we're paying for it.
But if markets have to be involved...If we're willing to pay $X per customer we should give the tax subsidy to them. The market can sort out who is actually willing to get the work done and service customers to get the subsidy.
My parents paid ~ $65 / mo for 6mb dsl for ages. They had constant outages, and ATT always stonewalled the repairs. Talking to the repair guy, he admitted that ATT basically hated supporting that DSL, and wished all their rural customers would go elsewhere. He even told them that if they canceled, ATT would not offer internet service to them again, they'd just decommission the service down their street.
They're now on starlink, despite being only a 1/4 mile outside of city limits, it's the best option they have.
I recall in 2005 in a major west coast city, having 6Mbps DSL service but it was very prone to disruption. The tech they would send out would be just trying different pairs from a big fat cable to see if he could find one that was not too deteriorated from age. Even two decades ago AT&T's infrastructure was falling apart, and again, this was in a major city everyone in the world has heard of. Even then, they didn't care enough to even fix their 50-year old copper (which is now 70 years old) let alone lay fiber. Meanwhile also in 2005 on the other side of the continent, FiOS was launched.
Really? It's not always the cheapest option but seems pretty competitive with land-based broadband generally.
I agree with the broader point though. In my experience, Starlink seems plenty good enough for most consumers. Once you get above a certain level where you can do things like video calls and stream a couple of movies with reasonable reliability, most people are just fine.
I'm sure standards will increase over time but I'd probably be just fine if Starlink were my only option today. Even considered getting it as a backup but Xfinity has been reliable and good enough of late where I live that didn't seem worth it.
For instance, a neighborhood of a few hundred houses in the mountains outside of Silicon Valley started their own fiber to the home ISP. It cost something like $10K per house to wire it up and monthly payments are much lower than starlink.
We need more of that. If some small rural ISPs decide they are better off expanding than getting subsidies, that’s fine. Stop paying future subsidies.
This. When you go on to the FCC website and look for good high speed internet, outside of major cities it's almost always available through some coop. The government should be supporting this, but it's not 'by the people, for the people' anymore, it's 'by the corporations, for the corporations'
Age old pull-the-ladder-up!
Move for good schools and extra curricular activities. Move for good sports programs. Move for after school care.
Move for better fiber though? Doubt momma is gonna be happy about that idea. If momma ain’t happy. Ain’t nobody movin nowhere.
Ultimately we switched to cable internet, but given the bandwidth I use running home servers, I expect to be forced onto a corporate plan once they notice, at $200-$500/mo. My usage is within terms of service for AT&T fiber, fwiw, but cable is a shared resource.
Today they're just operating with the most cynical approach, where they extract the maximum amount of value out of a network built by our grandfathers' generation, only doing capex in the most targeted areas where the ROI will be instantaneous. (new subdivisions, and specifically ones where they can get the HOA to bake in their services to the HOA fee). I used to live in a large urban tower and AT&T did finally come in with fiber, in 2017, on that condition. They'll be cash flow positive from Day 1 because 100% of the homes in that tower are customers, and they literally can't cancel their service (or more specifically their payment).