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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."
Yeah, right, AT&T. You were totally about to give us awesome internet but the big bad government stopped you? Please.
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.
They were never going to widely deploy 1Gbps anywhere, in the first place. They had stated to share holders that their capital expenditures would hardly go up to implement this in 35 cities, meaning they weren't really going to be doing very much anyway, other than uncapping existing fiber from dsl speeds.
http://www.dslreports.com/show...
"We're going to stop doing that thing that we've been promising for years that we were gonna get around to doing one of these days, but never actually got around to doing, because OBAMA"
It's sad, but adding "Obama" to any argument has become the modern day equivalent of the "Chewbacca Defense", and has been used to rationalize some profoundly stupid decisions. Even sadder, because it seems to work.
I'm a moderate (r)epublican, and it's *lonely* nowdays. The intelligent ones liked David Frum have been muffled or sidelined. Meanwhile, the Wingnut Brigade as personified by Ted Cruz is always on the lookout to shoot the public in the foot for the sake of rich people.
If there was any indication that their 'plans' were ever more than paper, we might not laugh so much at the concept of pausing them. That's like taking time out from your sleep to get a quick nap in.
I was going to cure cancer and create the fountain of youth today, but I had to put those plans on hold because the Easter Bunny told me that some retail stores would be open on Thanksgiving.
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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No, no one knows whats going on now legally speaking, that's why we're having this discussion. The Verizon vs FCC decision removed that certainty. They know what the regulatory regime might be, but they don't know what it is going to be. The FCC chair is looking at splitting the baby which doesn't really sound like a clear indicator of what he's going to do from a legal perspective. It appears that the FCC chair wants to allow ISPs to prioritize certain traffic for security and use (e.g. e-mail traffic doesn't need the kind of priority as streaming video) because not all traffic deserves the same level of attention from the ISP, but not do so for business reasons (e.g. Time Warner shouldn't be allowed to hobble Netflix streaming service). But at the same time, he appears to be distancing himself from Obama's plea for Title II. Writing this into law is more complex than simply saying what the FCC chair said he wanted: "What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business."
Oh my. Title II classification worked quite well until 2002 when the FCC reclassified broadband providers as "Information Services" under Title I. Which was so obviously a great move, because we had so much less competition then. Not only that, the big broadband providers were so poor before that, they were going out of business. Thank goodness for that! Otherwise, the Internet would have failed completely and we'd all be using punched cards and telexes again by now. Not.
The last twelve years have seen increasing consolidation, local monopolies and duopolies, less competition, higher prices for basic consumer connectivity, more abusive Terms of Service for consumer connections, throttling of competitive content providers who threaten the media content distribution strangleholds that the big broadband providers have.
Title II reclassification isn't the whole of the answer, just a small part. But it's a start at least. Unfortunately, if you tell the same lies over and over again ("we're so poor that reclassification will stop us from upgrading our networks" and "Forcing us to be common carriers will destroy all innovation on the Internet") people start to believe it.
It's just a smokescreen for the big ISPs to keep protecting their abusive business model and maintain their huge profits in a non-competitive marketplace. These big ISPs are holding back innovation in last-mile technologies, despite being given USD$200 Billion in subsidies over the past 18 years to do otherwise.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
"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.