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AT&T To "Pause" Gigabit Internet Rollout Until Net Neutrality Is Settled
An anonymous reader writes AT&T says it will halt its investment on broadband Internet service expansion until the federal rules on open Internet are clarified. "We can't go out and just invest that kind of money, deploying fiber to 100 cities other than these two million [covered by the DirecTV deal], not knowing under what rules that investment will be governed," AT&T Chief Randall Stephenson said during an appearance at a Wells Fargo conference, according to a transcript provided by AT&T. "And so, we have to pause, and we have to just put a stop on those kind of investments that we're doing today."
AT&T. I would hope Comcast or someone would take this news and announce they'll be expanding service to try to edge out AT&T, but we're much more likely to just end up and an announcement from Comcast that they'll do the same thing.
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AT&T has found a new excuse to not invest in their infrastructure.
I'm not an AT&T customer, so I can only assume that AT&T does not ask its customers to pay for bandwidth (e.g. it gives its services away for free), and AT&T relies on content providers for all of its profit? That's the only situation I can imagine where such behavior makes sense.
Yeah, it's hard to see this as anything other than a threat, that if the government doesn't do what AT&T wants, they might just take their ball and go home. I can see how someone would think this is fair, in the sense that businesses can't make good decisions without knowing what "the rules" are, but at the same time, you can only take that so far.
It seems like businesses and rich people are constantly pulling this act. "I'm afraid that if you tax me at all, I'll just have to pull all my money and business out of the country and operate someplace where they don't have taxes." or "Well, we can't have laws barring us from acting immorally and unethically. If we can't be completely unfettered, then we can't get anything done and our business will fail!" At some point, I think we just have to say, "Sorry, but we can't just let you do whatever you want with no boundaries. The reality is, we all operate within constraints, and we all have to cope with an uncertain future. If you can't operate with fair and honest business practices within a framework that allows our society to grow in a healthy direction, then we'll find someone else to fill your shoes." I mean, really, AT&T doesn't see the benefit in growing and upgrading their network? Fine, let's rip their network out and replace it with public infrastructure. I suspect that if those were the options, AT&T would find that it could manage to upgrade their network while operating within the principles of net neutrality.
Exactly.
It's all about politics. Even if AT&T never had any plans for gigabit internet, just saying they are "pausing" puts pressure on the government.
Because now the other party will just go and say "Look, it kills jobs and investment" even though it killed 0 jobs and $0 investment because they never intended to do it. It's just to say "look, we WERE going to, but this new legislation makes it hard for us to justify, so no".
Strictly a political play - try to call them out on it by saying "we'll refund you the cost of the equipment you already ordered when you made the announcement" and you'll find there were no POs issued, no supplier got any order from AT&T for gigabit-capable equipment, etc.
Seems to me that if ISPs want to selectively favor content, they should be held responsible for *any* content passing through their systems. Start throwing their execs in prison for distributing whatever illegal material passes through, and watch how fast they scramble to be classified as common carriers.
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Um . . no.
AT&T is NOT a proactive company. Never has been. The ONLY reason Gigapower is being deployed is due to the threat from Google deploying their own solution and whisking away all of AT&T's customers in the process. Think about the timing of it all and realize it's merely an " oh shit " reaction to Google's announcement ( bluff ? ) to introduce high speed broadband in select cities.
The recent announcement of Metros rolling out their own Wi-Fi will only hasten this along.
There is another project in progress called Velocity IP, which is the same concept only targeted at business or high density ( think apartments, condos, multi-tenant buildings ) customer sites.
This is just AT&T trying to force Net Neutrality rules into their favor by taking their ball and going home.
"False dichotomy" as in "there are more than two choices."
The parties, and their politicians, have strikingly different platforms with strikingly different historical outcomes.
Bullshit. That's only true if you concentrate on a select few issues. When it comes to getting us into war (or bombing other countries and saying it's something other than war), or violating the constitution, both parties are largely the same. You have The One Party to thank for the TSA, the Unpatriotic Act, citizen assassinations, the NSA's mass surveillance, unchecked corruption in government agencies everywhere, and a host of other freedom-violating nonsense. They're the same in pretty much all the ways that actually count. The economy is a truly minuscule issue. Both parties refuse to shrink military and defense spending as it should, and when someone shrinks it *slightly* (nowhere near as much as it should be), whichever party didn't make the decision gets angry. Both parties are in on the "The terrorists, child molesters, and other bogeymen are going to get us!" scam, as well.
But hey, feel free to pretend otherwise if it helps you justify not voting in national elections.
I strictly vote third party, because there are next to no good candidates in The One Party.
This is a joke, right?
Yes, it clearly was actually...
The vast majority of the U.S. has one, and only one, decent low-latency broadband provider.
No, the vast majority has two: cable (DOCSIS) and telco (DSL). Though currently in all but a few lucky areas with FIOS, etc, the telcos (like AT&T) are way behind cable. The point of AT&T's upgrade is to finally ditch the ancient copper lines and leapfrog cable.
The big ISPs divided it up that way on purpose where they could.
Again, no. The telcos have a monopoly because copper was installed to homes about 100 years ago via the only phone company in existence, the original AT&T. Their markets were "divided" by the antitrust breakup of AT&T, not a bunch of telcos deciding where to offer service.
Cable has a bit different history, but also had ZERO to do with "ISPs" since the Internet didn't *exist* when cable infrastructure was built into most cities. And in this case the cities are the ones who decided which cable company would get the franchise. Not to mention back then there were hundreds of smaller cable companies - it was almost the opposite of the telco evolution, probably in fact *becuase* of backlash to the AT&T monopoly. And of course it's the US government's fault as much as anyone, now, that those baby Bell telcos were allowed to recombine back into AT&T and Verizon and the cable companies to consolidate into the 5-6 that dominate the market.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the shitty policies and practices of cable and telco companies as much as anyone, but I'm also a realist. If anyone else wants to compete at this point they will either need to spend massive amounts of money to build the infrastructure (we can only hope Google can pull it off), or come up with some completely new technology/infrastructure (metro wifi, LTE+, etc) that is cheaper to deploy.