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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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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.
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.