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AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

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Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#21
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe they're using Monster cables, for a better digital signal? (Kidding, hopefully obviously)

Nay, ATT would need 2x the GDP of the entire universe to acquire enough Monster Cable for that.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#22
post #19
post #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 standpo…

The $200 Billion Rip-off: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... The telcos have already promised to lay fiber, received concessions for it, and delivered little to nothing. Google may start ripping off taxpayers like that, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until I see it.

I'm sometimes amazed how otherwise competent adults take seriously anything that ATT or VZN say. It takes a tabula that is particularly rasa to just ignore the last three or four decades of behavior from these rascals. It's actually much more likely that they'll orchestrate another "rip-off", except for more money, than that Google will ever do anything even approaching that.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#23
I live in an area of suburban Dallas, TX where the city and telcos laid fiber over 7 years ago. U-verse has always been capped for us. I'm hoping we get on the list for Gigapower but any attempts to get information on this have been futile. Local reps know nothing about Gigapower and emails to corporate get no response.

I had such a poor experience with Uverse when it first came out that it made even TWC internet look significantly better so I've stuck with Time Warner.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#24
The recently deployed AT&T fiber infrastructure for U-Verse is first class and very well built. It will handle 1Gbps+ when it needs to.

But not over CAT-3 neighborhood wiring.

The fact is nobody, not AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, or anyone else, is eager to deploy fiber to each home's "de-marc." It's expensive, time-consuming, and labor intensive.

The last mile is a good place for municipalities to get involved, possibly under some form of revenue sharing plan with the carriers.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#25
post #19
post #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 standpo…

The $200 Billion Rip-off: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... The telcos have already promised to lay fiber, received concessions for it, and delivered little to nothing. Google may start ripping off taxpayers like that, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until I see it.

The $200 billion figure doesn't represent real money that changed hands. It's an estimate based on taking the actual profit margin of the telecom companies since deregulation in 1996, and calling everything over 9-10% to be "excess profits." The premise is that telcos "promised" to lay fiber in return for being deregulated, and that if their profit margins had been limited to rates typical of a regulated utility, they would've made a lot less money.

Of course, it's easy to play this game with any company. Google's profit margin is over 20%. According to this reasoning, every year Google is "ripping off" the public to the tune of $6 billion. Obviously it's ridiculous to just pick a number as the "right" profit margin for an industry and call everything above that number "excess profits." But that's precisely the premise underlying the $200 billion "rip off."

There was no "rip off." The premise of the 1996 reform was that deregulation of the industry would create an incentive for companies to invest private capital. And that has proven true. Over the last two decades, telecom and cable companies have been among those with the highest capital expenditures. What happened is that nobody predicted wireless would become such a big deal. So instead of going into fiber, all that money was invested in wireless instead. That's the major reason why fiber deployment never really materialized--spending that money on wireless made a lot more sense.

And from a consumer standpoint, it still mostly does. I don't even have internet service at my house--but I've got two different LTE subscriptions.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#26
AT&T has made it their goal to trick the average consumer by having their reps go around telling everyone in Austin they now have fiber in their area!

The reps won't even give the speed of the line until asked and the majority of responses when asked are Download Speeds of 15-30Mbps. Time Warner has cable options doubling this and the price is better.

AT&T is basically trying to confuse their customers before google fiber hits Austin and it's the most immoral thing I've seen in a long time.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#27
post #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 standpo…

Google does do this, but is also not an entrenched monopoly. They’re only -adding- to the competition in those cities.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#28
post #4

AT&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.

I would happily move to get faster internet speeds, but all of the neighborhoods AT&T are targeting seemed to be expensive when I checked them out.

This jives w/ what the article says:

>>What's actually happening is that AT&T is upgrading a few

>>high-end developments where fiber was already in the ground

>>(these users were previously capped at DSL speeds) and

>>pretending it's a serious expansion of fixed-line broadband.

On the other hand, Google Fiber seems to be planning connectivity all over the place, since they're tasked w/ providing free service to various community hubs selected by the city which are widely spread out.

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#29
post #3

I 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…

And since it's uverse, you get >=30ms instant latency YAY!

Re: AT&T's 'Expansion' of 1 Gbps to 100 Cities is a Big, Fat Bluff

#30
post #25
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $200 Billion Rip-off: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... The telcos have already promised to lay fiber, received concessions for it, and delivered little to nothing. Google may start ripping off taxpayers like that, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until I see it.

The $200 billion figure doesn't represent real money that changed hands. It's an estimate based on taking the actual profit margin of the telecom companies since deregulation in 1996, and calling everything over 9-10% to be "excess profits." The premise is that telcos "promised" to lay fiber in return for being deregulated, and that if their profit margins had been limited to rates typical of a regulated utility, the…

> According to this reasoning, every year Google is "ripping off" the public to the tune of $6 billion.

This comparison is invalid because Google's business is fundamentally different than a telecom in every relevant dimension. Telecoms sell a commodity product with technology they source entirely from third parties, the only form of product differentiation they have is geographical monopoly, and it is a zero-sum game: basically none of AT&T's budget goes to R&D [1], and all of it goes to operating AT&T's existing business exactly as it is now [2]. Meanwhile Google's core business is basically the opposite in every dimension.

A much better comparison would be to a water company or power company that has "too high" of a profit margin. And of course people do complain about that.

[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/meet-the-group-trying-to-make-at-t-...

[2] http://www.att.com/Investor/ATT_Annual/2013/downloads/att_20...

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