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AT&T's Gigabit Smokescreen
Yesterday AT&T announced it would examine 100 cities and municipalities in the U.S., including 21 metropolitan areas, for introduction of gigabit fiber. Taken on its face, the announcement is the company's response to Google Fiber. But many were quick to note AT&T has promised nothing. Karl Bode at DSLReports went so far as to call AT&T's announcement a giant bluff.
"Ever since Google Fiber came on the scene, AT&T's response has been highly theatrical in nature. What AT&T would have the press and public believe is that they're engaged in a massive new deployment of fiber to the home service. 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. It's not. At the same time AT&T is promising a massive expansion in fixed line broadband, they're telling investors they aren't spending much money on the initiative, because they aren't. AT&T's focus is on more profitable wireless. 'Gigapower' is a show pony designed to help the company pretend they're not being outmaneuvered in their core business by a search engine company."
If you expect me to believe this articles summary, that the worlds largest telecommunications monopoly and government spy against American citizens is lying about their services or speeds, then you clearly dont underst42t2$T%Y%[NO CARRIER]
Good people go to bed earlier.
I applaud Google for actually fixing the problem in the USA. It serves AT&T and the other telco companies in America right, for taking $200 billion of government money and delivering nothing for it.
AT&T has already been given Billions of dollars in tax incentives to deliver fiber optic cable based internet to your house.
According to the incentive plans these high speed internet connections should already be installed and functioning for pretty much every American at speeds averaging 45 Mbps upload and download. Every American taxpayer, that is not a provider of internet infrastructure, has taken on the burden of $2000.00 more in taxes in order to offset the incentives gives to AT&T and the baby bells.
Do you have your low cost, high speed fiber yet?
My favourite quote comes from Karl Bode of DSLReports:
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As I read ATT's announcement, they've committed to four cities and are in discussions with twenty one more.
The response seems to be "They haven't committed to spending any money this year in those twenty one cities, this is clearly bogus!". Geez, don't they have anything important to write about?
Google is only in a few locations - but the locations they announce they follow through on in a reasonably transparent fashion. They announced KC, then the neighborhoods, then the signups, and now they're connected and committed. They've also expanded into surrounding municipalities not initially included in the announcement. Google may not seriously expand into the ISP business but from where I sit in a connected home it's tough to call it a demo location. Basically, I trust Google's proven history and measured, careful announcements over AT&T's regular press releases stating that they might do something.
I don't know what's up with all the anti-google fiber AC posts, but here is my google fiber speed test from when they installed it a couple months back.
Like Google isn't doing the same thing. They announce years in advance and do nothing but cherry pick profitable areas. How many actual subscribers are in Google's territory?
Sorry, but I live in the hood and have google fiber, and my friends live in an even worse area (near 37th and Prospect) and also have google fiber. They aren't just cherry picking the nice areas.
I live in Austin and can order "Giga" power currently with a current top speed of 300/300. Its been available in my neighborhood, a recent development in an established area, for a few months, but I haven't ordered. They have a 1TB download cap per month and in the $70.00 variant, they are using deep packet inspection in order to send targeted ads towards you. They have a more expensive option, $99.00 a month + install, where they don't examine your packets, but they have already lost me. I am sure Google will also utilize deep packet inspection and for some reason, I trust them more. I have TWC currently with a 50/5 plan that is supposed to be upgraded this summer with no additional costs. They haven't announced speeds yet but Im guessing they are going to be close in nature. Good to see competition working in the ATX.
I know someone that recently moved to Austin. On the side of their house is a little box that says "AT&T Fiber". When they called AT&T to ask about internet service: "I'm sorry, we don't have service in your area".
I guess it could be fast if they knew where there infrastructure was in the first place...
My ISP is Federated Telephone. Small little rural cooperative in Chokio (pop. 400) & Morris (pop. 5,000), MN. They had 100% FTTP rollout to Chokio back in 2009, and they're finishing their rollout here in Morris. They're now working on Appleton, MN.
If they can do it, anyone can. You just have to stop putting profits before customers. And as the parent poster indicated, they also did it with a disproportionate amount of tax dollars going to mega-corporations that only support urban development. Encourage your local congressman to also support fiber rollout in Rural America. Your schools, libraries, and civil leaders will thank you.
So what if they got fiber to everyone, everywhere? They would still be a nightmare to deal with. Business class is a joke; slow speeds, charging the customer for an onsite visit to fix AT&T problems (assuming they don't just tell you to fix it yourself), about a dozen different phone numbers to pick from and a truly epic automated phone-tree when trying to get support, etc. Home service isn't much better. I had U-verse a couple of years ago when they first rolled it out to my neighborhood. 24mb down, 3mb up. Worked pretty well, except with streaming services. I eventually went back to the cable company (faster and cheaper). Last week, some AT&T sales reps knocked on my door, claiming they had just added new connection to my neighborhood. I asked, "U-verse?" They said yes. I told them I had that a couple of years ago and they looked totally stumped. They were not even aware that U-verse was already well established and that half of my complex already used it. Just for fun, I checked the website to see what upgrades they may have made. LOL, now the max U-verse speed in my neighborhood is *slower* than what I had previously. AT&T can promise whatever they want, but until I can see it, I will absolutely not believe it.
AT&T was given billions of dollars to deliver broadband based on at least one leg of fiber to at least one home in each census tract in the subsidized area.
My census tract has ONE subdivision where AT&T vDSL is available (DSL from a fiber-fed, single-shelf, 4-card VRAD hosting 192 homes), yet AT&T is legally allowed to shade in the entire census tract (over 2000 homes) on the map and tell government that "this census tract has fiber coverage per our agreement."
The only reason 192 homes have access is because that maximizes revenue for the smallest VRAD they install on the lowest-provision fiber feed.
Oh, yeah, this:
In February 2014, Google announced it had "invited cities in nine metro areas around the U.S.—34 cities altogether—to work with us to explore what it would take to bring them Google Fiber."
One shallow, useless promise begets another...
[fanboi]But, Google!!![/fanboi]
Ummm....
You say "One shallow, useless promise begets another..." but there simply isn't a promise in your quote.
Sounds like the way they responded to Verizon. When Verizon started bragging about their 3G coverage, AT&T started running commercials showing their own 2G coverage.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
They've been promising that one since the '70s. The closest they ever got was offering ISDN (in limited areas) for an arm and a leg that might one day be capable of carrying video (at 128Kbps max).
The accoustic modem was invented as an end run around them because they refused to allow anything to be connected to the phone line that they didn't approve, and they weren't approving modems. The modem itself was an end run around their refusal to offer data lines.
We've been sneaking the future past their gatekeeper for 50 years.
Its not talk, I just saw a speedtest for google fiber, where is a speedtest for ATT fiber?
What pisses me most about AT&T U-verse is that they do have FTTU (fibre-to-the-user) / FTTP, but they limit FTTP users to speeds that are lower than what they offer through VDSL through FTTN.
I used to live in San Jose, CA in 2010/2012, in a brand new apartment complex, had AT&T U-verse fibre strand terminated in my bedroom closet with an ONT. The line was FTTP-BPON (622/155 1:32), e.g. 622Mbps down / 155Mbps up, shared with at most 32 users, I checked with the manufacturer of my particular ONT.
But AT&T would only provision me with 18/1.5. They'd offer 24/3 to VDSL users only, supposedly too lazy to update the fibre profiles to offer it to the fibre customers. I researched it, and it was not unique to my building or to California, they were doing it all across the country with every single BPON build. My T-Mobile HSPA+ had higher upload speeds than 1.5Mbps on my top-of-the-line AT&T FTTU through BPON.
Keep in mind that the 622/155 line can only be shared with at most 32 users, and some wouldn't even want the top-of-the-line plans, either, or would not have active service in the first place, so, they're basically wasting their own capacity, and refusing an extra 10$/mo from me. Ping time was sometimes about 3ms to some locations within the Bay Area, but the 1.5Mbps bandwidth was pretty pathetic for a BPON fibre line.
I was so pissed I started a whole web-site dedicated to showing how uncompetitive AT&T internet offerings are compared to the options elsewhere in the country -- http://bmap.su/. So happy Google Fiber has finally been announced for San Jose, CA and lots of other markets now! I'm willing to be it'll be some other provider that'll offer broadband to my past place before AT&T will get to their senses and starts using at least the BPON infrastructure that they already have in place.