Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

cbsnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 217 posts

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#151

Post by kalleboo »

fragmede wrote: post #32
foolfoolz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for the most part, things are much better than they were 10 years ago. you can go to a baseball/football game and your phone works. you can go to a concert and your phone works. a big part of this has been capacity upgrades, protocol upgrades, and a shift from telecom traffic to internet traffic it has always been difficult to contact emergency services following an earthquake / massive fire. it might actually be mor…

it works at a football game because they know about it and send in extra equipment to handle it.

My test always used to be midnight, new years eve, when everyone wanted to say happy new year at the same time.

On 2G/GSM, the whole network would drop for 30 minutes, just zero reception on the phone.

On 3G, you'd have reception but calls were impossible and texts mostly failed.

On 3G+HSDPA, texts also worked fine but data became unusable as people sent fireworks photos

On early 4G, not much changed from HSDPA since the networks were busier from more people using smartphones and social media

On LTE Advanced and 5G it's all a non-event now, everything works fine

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#152

Post by kyrra »

josh2600 wrote: post #30

I'm fine with AT&T no longer supporting landlines if they start supporting fiber to every household. US broadband is a joke compared to many other parts of the world.

I wonder if it's the difficulty of laying wires. The number of permits that need to be pulled when wiring a city just makes it prohibitive.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#153

Post by solardev »

dsr_ wrote: post #104
solardev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it'd be cheaper for AT&T to just partner with Starlink and pass through a part of the subsidy?

The more people who use Starlink, the worse it performs and the higher their profits.

Why couldn't they just add more satellites like we do cell towers?

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#154

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

edmundsauto wrote: post #138
rconti wrote: post #85

I'm lucky that I am in Sonic's service area and get 10Gbps symmetric fiber service for $50/mo. It exposes the lie of the incumbents slow-walking new tech and bandwidth increases. They _just don't want to_ because they _don't have to_ compete with anyone, and they'd rather print cash for their shareholders. They have the capital to build these networks far faster than a small regional ISP can. Multi-gig speeds, FTTP a…

Att made around a 12% profit margin, which seems reasonable if a bit high. Would you consider 12% == “printing money”? I usually think of 25+% margins like in big tech that way. Not arguing just trying to understand how much money these companies are actually making.

Compared to what? Food retail is generally at 2% ...

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#155

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gustavus wrote: post #141
KerrAvon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, you can’t the-free-market-will-fix-everything this one. The telco lobbyists wrote the government regulations. Wireless is slow and coverage is spotty. Satellite is unreliable, expensive, and has a fixed latency cost that can’t be eliminated.

> Nope, you can’t the-free-market-will-fix-everything this one. The telco lobbyists wrote the government regulations Just a point of clarification, the free market generally means independence from government regulation. This isn't the free market failing so much as incumbents using the power of government to force their advantage, part of the argument of the free market is that by not allowing the government to inte…

The definition of "a free market" you're offering here is one that has never existed. So we can either talk about the free markets we have (which compared to markets in other places and at other times are stupendously free) or we can talk about, yes, spherical cows.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#156

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #150
gustavus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nope, you can’t the-free-market-will-fix-everything this one. The telco lobbyists wrote the government regulations Just a point of clarification, the free market generally means independence from government regulation. This isn't the free market failing so much as incumbents using the power of government to force their advantage, part of the argument of the free market is that by not allowing the government to inte…

Even in this version of the free market, monopoly is still the incentive and end goal. Eventually, either a single player wins out (possibly by buying or merging with previous competitors) or a few big players agree that colluding with each other is more profitable then competing (remember there is no government interfering in this free market to prevent this). Once this happens, new players won't enter the market be…

Monopoly is only an incentive if it is clear that it will be permitted.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#157

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gessha wrote: post #132
Apes wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite that simple. Sonic focuses their fiber services only in areas that are most profitable to install fiber. As far as I know, they only install fiber on telephone poles that have free space, in areas that are high density. The cheapest install option for the highest possible revenue. I live right next to an area that has Sonic fiber, but there's no telephone poles, and an install would require an expensiv…

Stupid idea, I know, but what do you think of Telephone-pole-as-a-service TPaaS What are the regulations in place for putting up telephone poles and what are the associated costs?

The costs include loss of service in every third major storm.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#158

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

iknowstuff wrote: post #149
josh2600 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never forget the story of Paul Bunyan telecom out in I believe it was Montana who used federal funds to build to cabins at a cost of like $10,000+ per cabin to lay copper (back when that was a lot of money) under the right to service clauses of the FCC. It turns out that servicing 100% of the population isn't practical when people choose to live in very remote areas. I agree that it would be onerous for carriers…

> It biases too hard towards city living, especially as we are seeing more and more people move away from cities Urbanization is progressing. Suburbia are not sustainable and should not be encouraged. As you just noticed, it takes way more money to service their infrastructure, and they bring in far less tax revenue to pay for it than dense mixed use developments.

I think some clarity in terminology may be required here.

Those cabins in MT are not in anything that could ever be called "suburbia".

Suburbia has its problems (many of them), but we're talking about a different class of living here: actual rural living, with neighbors a mile (or miles) away, no infrastructure other than dirt roads etc.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#159

Post by iggldiggl »

fundatus wrote: post #70
fmajid wrote: post #26

The companies that used to make phone switches (Nortel, Lucent) went out of business over 2 decades ago and they are unmaintainable. Building modernized VoIP-based landlines that still offer the 48V analog POTS interface would be phenomenally expensive, and the market of Luddite little old ladies like Pereira who cling to landlines is just not large enough to make it financially viable, unlike the market for broadban…

> Building modernized VoIP-based landlines that still offer the 48V analog POTS interface would be phenomenally expensive Not sure about that, this was done for the whole German phone network a couple of years ago. People can still have their analog phone directly connected to the socket in their house but now their call will be a VoIP call. Not sure where the transition from the analog signal to VoIP happens, but I…

> People can still have their analog phone directly connected to the socket in their house but now their call will be a VoIP call. Not sure where the transition from the analog signal to VoIP happens, but I guess it's a the end of the customers copper line.

The transition happens at the telephone exchange, or possibly occasionally in a FTTN/FTTC outdoor cabinet. And it only works that way if you're really only using a plain phone line without internet access. Otherwise, the transition needs to happen in your router.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#160

Post by [deleted] »

KerrAvon wrote: post #133
xhkkffbf wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won capitalism? The government regulations are entirely responsible for the lack of competition. As it stands, competition found away around the wired line regulations. The wireless devices came along. And soon the satellite networks will give the cellphone carriers a real kick in the pants.

Nope, you can’t the-free-market-will-fix-everything this one. The telco lobbyists wrote the government regulations. Wireless is slow and coverage is spotty. Satellite is unreliable, expensive, and has a fixed latency cost that can’t be eliminated.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN