from the ill-communication dept
4 years years in the past AT&T, an organization that, for years, cheapened out on upgrading its broadband strains to fiber, effectively stopped selling DSL. Whereas that’s comprehensible given the constraints of the dated copper-based tech, the issue is that because of concentrated telecom monopolization, many of those prospects have been left with none alternative choices because of a scarcity of competitors.
There are different points at play too. AT&T has, for many years, obtained numerous billions in tax cuts, subsidies, merger approvals, and regulatory favors (bear in mind how killing internet neutrality, broadband privacy rules, or approving a wave of doomed mergers have been all presupposed to unleash untold innovation, job creation, and fiber community enlargement? Yeah, AT&T doesn’t both).
In lots of states, AT&T has managed to foyer lawmakers into eradicating any requirement that the corporate proceed servicing these customers, lots of whom are aged of us nonetheless utilizing conventional landlines used for 911 entry. That’s been simpler in some states than others. It was caught bribing Illinois lawmakers to cross such “reform.” California’s also been resistant to letting AT&T off the hook.
Final week, AT&T extra formally introduced what was already clear: it acknowledged it might not be upgrading tens of thousands and thousands of copper-based cellphone and DSL prospects to fiber. The numbers aren’t insignificant:
“AT&T’s wireline footprint has 88 million places, stated Susan Johnson, an AT&T government VP answerable for provide chain and wireline transformation.
About 21 million of these have entry solely to voice service. The opposite 67 million are eligible for Web entry, and 29 million of these have entry to fiber already. AT&T plans to spice up its variety of fiber places to 45 million by the tip of 2029 however says it isn’t worthwhile sufficient to construct fiber to the opposite elements of its previous landline cellphone and DSL networks.”
Once more, when AT&T says it’s going to deploy fiber to 45 million folks, it is best to at all times take these guarantees with a grain of salt. They’re specialists at one thing I affectionately name “fiber to the press launch.” AT&T insists that much less inexpensive, dearer, and extra capacity-constrained satellite tv for pc or wi-fi should be “ok” for customers left simply out of attain.
It’s important to notice that AT&T has obtained untold billions of {dollars} in subsidies and tax breaks in change for near-Utopian guarantees of latest fiber deployment. It obtained $42 billion alone from the final set of Trump tax cuts. It has spent untold thousands and thousands of {dollars} lobbying to efficiently defang the FCC and remove no matter’s left of shopper protections. It’s been accused of ripping off low income programs for the poor and rural school broadband projects.
No person’s ever performed an audit of AT&T’s fraud, waste, and abuse as a result of AT&T’s a trusted domestic surveillance partner successfully immune from significant authorities accountability. AT&T’s about to get a significant chunk of the $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies included within the 2021 infrastructure invoice.
Ars Technica kind of just floats over all of this as if it’s sort of an afterthought. The issue isn’t simply that AT&T has refused to improve thousands and thousands of places regardless of already getting paid for it. It’s additionally been on the forefront of lobbying for state laws banning towns and cities from building their own affordable fiber networks, even in cases the place AT&T refused to.
So superficially you’ll see folks say issues like “in fact AT&T doesn’t wish to spend cash to improve getting older strains to fiber, it’s costly!” However they ignore a really lengthy historical past of the corporate endlessly defrauding taxpayers, ripping off subsidy applications, and simply typically taking untold billions of {dollars} for networks that routinely, mysteriously, wind up half completed.
Filed Below: deployment, digital divide, dsl, fiber, high speed internet, ma bell, subsidies, upgrades
Corporations: at&t
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