AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#2I hear it's actually going to be 1.21 Jigga-bps.
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#3I had an AT&T salesman come to my door just a few days ago to try and sell me their new "fiber" they had just installed in my area (I'm in a large city mentioned in the article), telling me all of the benefits of having fast internet. I had to lie and tell him I didn't own a TV in order to get him to stop talking about the 300 channel TV/internet bundle.
When I finally squeezed the actual speed of it out of him the answer was 18 Mbps, for $60 a month (of course he could get me a special deal of $40 for the first 3 months, which is the same deal as on their website).
I've used them before (AT&T Uverse) and they require an ATT router/modem, for an additional fee of course, even though using their hardware is technically completely unnecessary.
I actually told him that Time Warner was currently cheaper and more reliable than what he was offering, which is true unfortunately.
AT&T is a joke.
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#4AT&T's door-to-door salespeople told me that my 30-year-old single-family house in Austin will be eligible for GigaPower in the summer, so maybe it's not quite as bad as the article says.
Charging $30/month to not spy on me is bullshit, though.
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#5I had an AT&T salesman come to my door just a few days ago to try and sell me their new "fiber" they had just installed in my area (I'm in a large city mentioned in the article), telling me all of the benefits of having fast internet. I had to lie and tell him I didn't own a TV in order to get him to stop talking about the 300 channel TV/internet bundle. When I finally squeezed the actual speed of it out of him the a…
They run fiber to their Uverse nodes and then apparently tell their salespeople to sell this as a feature. I remember one telling me the benefits of a "fiber optic signal" somehow going to my house over copper. I still ended up switching later on since they're cheaper than my local cable provider, though network performance doesn't seem to be as good.
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#6> In short, if your city plays nice and gives AT&T what they want legislatively (namely gut consumer protections requiring they keep serving DSL users they don't want so they can focus on more profitable wireless)
I think the author is being hypocritical in holding this against AT&T while ignoring the fact that Google is only rolling out fiber in cities that agree to basically leave them alone from regulatory standpoint. And while the author complains about AT&T not upgrading legacy DSL users, you don't exactly see Google or anyone else going after that "lucrative" market.[1] You don't see Google, or anyone else, jockeying to offer service in cities with insane build-out requirements.
The author, Karl Bode, clearly understands why nobody wants to roll out these services: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Baltimore-Still-Begging-V... ("Baltimore is one of many cities who simply want somebody to come in and provide better broadband service, but don't offer an attractive enough return on the investment for any large, investor-forcused private company to bother.") That's true for Google as much as it's true for AT&T. Google's ability to cross-subsidize with its advertising business changes the numbers a bit, but at scale, that's the bottom line.
That said, I think Google Fiber adds a lot of value. I don't think they're going to shame AT&T/Verizon into doing deployments that don't yield an attractive return on capital. It may have the more important effect of putting municipalities on notice that if they want fiber, from anyone, they need to cut the strings attached.
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#7> In short, if your city plays nice and gives AT&T what they want legislatively (namely gut consumer protections requiring they keep serving DSL users they don't want so they can focus on more profitable wireless) I think the author is being hypocritical in holding this against AT&T while ignoring the fact that Google is only rolling out fiber in cities that agree to basically leave them alone from regulatory standpo…
Google comes across as a hero because the end result is cheap and fast internet access.
AT&T and Google both play the regulatory game but AT&T ends up gouging their consumers and not delivering on advertised speeds.
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#8I've already seen some sites like TheVerge falling for AT&T's BS, and just parroting their press release. I don't know why anyone would take what a company like AT&T is saying for granted. You should be doing the opposite of that and question everything they're saying.
Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#9I had an AT&T salesman come to my door just a few days ago to try and sell me their new "fiber" they had just installed in my area (I'm in a large city mentioned in the article), telling me all of the benefits of having fast internet. I had to lie and tell him I didn't own a TV in order to get him to stop talking about the 300 channel TV/internet bundle. When I finally squeezed the actual speed of it out of him the a…
They run fiber to their Uverse nodes and then apparently tell their salespeople to sell this as a feature. I remember one telling me the benefits of a "fiber optic signal" somehow going to my house over copper. I still ended up switching later on since they're cheaper than my local cable provider, though network performance doesn't seem to be as good.
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Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff
#10> In short, if your city plays nice and gives AT&T what they want legislatively (namely gut consumer protections requiring they keep serving DSL users they don't want so they can focus on more profitable wireless) I think the author is being hypocritical in holding this against AT&T while ignoring the fact that Google is only rolling out fiber in cities that agree to basically leave them alone from regulatory standpo…
Google comes across as a hero because the end result is cheap and fast internet access. AT&T and Google both play the regulatory game but AT&T ends up gouging their consumers and not delivering on advertised speeds.
Is Google Fiber actually cheap or is it just passing on their regulatory savings to customers?