AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by simfree » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 7:40 PM UTC

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?

This is called pole attachment, and most pole owners offer this for tens of dollars a year per pole.

No property owner wants additional poles put up, and it certainly won't be cheaper to buy and install a pole than just paying a few hundred dollars a decade to make it the pole owners problem.

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

#182

Post by crote » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

solatic wrote: post #96

sschueller wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least every home that has copper should get fiber. The excuse that the US is too big or we can't do it is bull. You did it before for electricity and telephone. It just requires competency, money and an infrastructure that isn't for profit. Don't get me wrong, the services provided on the infrastructure can definitely be for profit but not the glass itself.

> It just requires competency, money and an infrastructure that isn't for profit. Or massive government financing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act

If I'm not mistaken, AT&T and friends got similar grants to install high-speed internet multiple times. They just... didn't do it.

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

#183

Post by simfree » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 7:44 PM UTC

onlypassingthru wrote: post #176

reaperducer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did it before for electricity and telephone. Not completely. There are still tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of Americans who never got electric, telephone, or even water service available in their homes. Every six months or so there's an article in the Navajo Times about the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority managing to hook up another couple of dozen homes to electricity, but there are still many thousands to…

If people want to live in the hinterlands and avoid the conveniences of society, well that's up to them. Why should anyone else pay for their lifestyle choices? If they want to live off the land (and off sewer, water, electric and telephone utilities) they can go do it. Otherwise, these rugged individualists need to suck it up and move closer to town.

There are plenty of places in Bellevue, Washington mere blocks from major Microsoft offices where only copper is available, and the VDSL2 on offer is intermittent due to the lead clad copper lines having water infiltration and being past their standard service life.

Getting Lumen, Astound, Verizon, Comcast or any of the other vendors who have fiber under 100 feet away to even quote a directional bore is a multi-month process, then the number they give you is a "fuck you" 6 digit price, and they certainly won't let you pull a permit from the city, hire your own contractor to do the directional bore, then pull cable through your conduit.

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

#184

Post by simfree » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

the_arun wrote: post #128

wddkcs wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a silicon valley canard to overwhelmingly expect electricity and running water in the US. The difficulties faced by the Navajo are not representative of the country at large. The major service providers have preferred to put in place regional monopolies, rather than extend their fiber capabilities, that is the root of the issue.

I did research in Silicon Valley, there is no optic fiber. We have expensive comcast, or ATT or now Starlink.. or now 5G. I wish we had more options(high speed internet) for end users.

This really depends where you are physically located, the infrastructure available varies neighborhood by neighborhood, and in some cases block to block.

Some have two GPON fiber providers, others have one XGSPON provider, and yet other neighborhoods are served only with coaxial where it was easy to get to in the 1980s when the coax networks were built out, and copper services otherwise.

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

#185

Post by crote » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 7:50 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #42

h_tbob wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that's because the USA is that stupid, or if it's just not as population dense as other countries with faster speeds? According to this statistic, it's not very dense, meaning it's super expensive to build broadband. Because it's pretty much a question of physical area covered, not number of people serviced. This stat says the USA is on the lower end of density https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.…

> This stat says the USA is on the lower end of density Yes, but America's population isn't evenly distributed across the entire dry surface area. The population is clustered tightly in cities like it is in many other countries, it's just that the cities are further apart from each other. [1] The better metric, IMO, is the percentage of people who live in urban vs rural areas. [2] The US is 85.8% urban, which is righ…

Many countries have had the trunk lines installed for over two decades now. During the dotcom bubble massive fiber trunks were installed in railway and highway rights-of-way - just in time for wavelength-division multiplexing to become economically viable and make most of them redundant.

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

#186

Post by jandrewrogers » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 7:56 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #89

reaperducer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did it before for electricity and telephone. Not completely. There are still tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of Americans who never got electric, telephone, or even water service available in their homes. Every six months or so there's an article in the Navajo Times about the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority managing to hook up another couple of dozen homes to electricity, but there are still many thousands to…

> Not completely. There are still tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of Americans who never got electric, telephone, or even water service available in their homes. … > Tens of thousands of American homes have no running water. I've visited many in Texas, West Virginia, New Mexico, and even California. > Time to get out of the Silicon Valley bubble. Only 10e4-10e5? Even writing as a Brit who chose Berlin over Silicon…

In the US people can and do choose to live many, many miles from the nearest infrastructure in remote areas, especially in the western US. I used to have a place in the mountains of Nevada originally occupied since the 19th century that was 15 miles from the nearest utility service. Many of the remaining off-the-grid places are like this and would require creating a new right-of-way across private and government lands as there are no formal roads to many of these places. The taxpayer cost would be astronomical relative to the benefit. (The established "roads" everyone uses are informal common law trails which don't exist as far as the government is concerned.)

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

#187

Post by simfree » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 7:56 PM UTC

darkwizard42 wrote: post #140

edmundsauto wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

12% in perpetuity with no stress the number will go down and lots of (imho insidious and customer unfriendly) ways for it to go up is in fact "printing money" Being able to make money risk free without risk of competition always ends up being worse for the customer and bad for the overall economy (in terms of efficiency)

This is why AT&T keeps looking for the next big thing that will net them double digit margins in perpetuity with minimal effort.

They have bought and damaged the following assets in pursuit of this goal: DirecTV, HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros and more.

AT&T has terribly mismanaged and damaged these assets, from destroying their carriage agreements with Dish and other cable companies for HBO, reducing their revenue by hundereds of millions a year, to, to more than halving the value if DirecTV by destroying its value proposition and failing to retain the customer base.

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

#188

Post by simfree » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 8:00 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #124

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won capitalism. The prize is you don't have to compete anymore, you don't have to innovate, and you get to charge more and deliver less. Getting companies to this position is foundational to the incentive structure of our economic system. Once they win, that's it. They get to stay there forever.

I worked in IT for a large telco for four years that has a monopoly on an extremely large part of Canada. After years there, learning the insides, working closely with marketing and sales and all the rest…..I agree with you 100%. They literally have guaranteed teed profits in the form of VERY large government subsides. Of course they chase them, so instead of FTTH or other interesting initiatives they were hell bent…

Canadians love their monopolies full stop. It's a cultural issue where each sector has its handful of heavyweights, of which you have a choice of 1 or 2 to use locally, and even if there is a third option most Canadians just won't consider it.

Comparatively, the US has thousands of small banks & credit unions, and tons of small and midsize ISPs that provide a 3rd or 4th option in areas like MDUs where they can make a go of it.

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

#189

Post by crote » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 8:04 PM UTC

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

About $35 / connection[0], but usually basically free because it's part of the customer's router[1]. Comcast seems to offer unlimited wired telephony for $20 / month, so it's definitely doable.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-HT801-Single-Port-Telepho...

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/ARRIS-Surfboard-Telephone-Certified-S...

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

#190

Post by crote » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 8:09 PM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #118

thelastgallon wrote: post #113

The best thing to do is for the city to own both fiber and electricity, and let providers compete for both. With Virtual Power Plants, the grid can be reimagined and it will happen faster if competing ideas/companies battle it out in the marketplace for consumers. Second best is for electric utility to offer fiber, like EPB of Chattanooga, TN.

I would not want PG&E (northern CA power company) in charge of any more infrastructure in California. They already have shown incompetence by shifting maintenance funds into bonuses instead of actual infrastructure maintenance.

The trick is to make the power companies non-profits: split the network part from the generation&selling part, and give it proper oversight. It's what Europe has been doing for decades.