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AT&T Building Massive Fiber Network That Barely Exists (techdirt.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the on-paper-it's-huge dept.

An anonymous reader writes: An article at TechDirt points out that AT&T's big fiber deployment project isn't yet adding up to much. They posted a press release last week saying how they've launched fiber internet in Los Angeles and West Palm Beach, and how they also plan to bring it to 38 other metro areas. But TechDirt notes a few parts they left out: "Nowhere does the company state when these connections will be delivered. Similarly nowhere does the company make clear that it's targeting mostly high-end housing developments where fiber is already in the ground, making costs negligible (the only way you could technically accomplish a deployment of this kind and magically have your CAPEX consistently drop). And while AT&T claims these improvements will reach 14 million residential and commercial locations, AT&T gives no timeline for this accomplishment. That means it could cherry pick a few hundred thousand University condos and housing developments per year and be wrapping up this not-so-epic fiber deployment by 2040 or so. "

17 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Headline by rossdee · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Building Massive Fiber Network That Barely Exists "

    Thats why thyre building it, becausr it doesn't exist (yet)

    Or did I miss something?

    1. Re:Headline by jandrese · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The story is basically about how they're talking up their massive Fiber network, but have actually been cutting back on expansion for several years. It's like when politicians name bills for the opposite thing they're doing. Like the Clean Air Act that allowed more industrial pollution into the air.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    2. Re:Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The telcos have have over $2 billion from our tax money to build these new networks. They're not doing it, or are doing it so slow, they'll take centuries to complete.

      It's time they returned our money. Anyone else would be persecuted for not delivering after being paid. Perhaps it's time for CEOs and the boards to do some hard-time.

    3. Re:Headline by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2

      Yeah the part where the article mentions that AT&T *ISN'T* building a network but says it is. Reading is fundamental moron.

    4. Re:Headline by boristdog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Kind of like the $9 billion they took in the 00's to provide rural broadband to the country.

      They just pocketed it and did basically nothing.

    5. Re:Headline by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The press and public aren't the only ones being conned. AT&T has consistently used its phantom fiber deployment as a carrot on a stick with regulators, at one point threatening to stop making these barely-there investments unless regulators walked back net neutrality. AT&T backed off the claim when the FCC asked for hard data, but this kind of telecom theater works exceptionally well in state legislatures. Last week AT&T claimed net neutrality prevented them from innovating, and this week they're portraying themselves as the innovator of the century (even though the only actual innovation here is in misleading PR).

      See, they're not building very much, but they're using it to claim how they'd be forced to stop spending money on improving their infrastructure if those pesky regulators made them follow any rules.

      It's more like they're picking the low hanging fruit along the side of a road, but are claiming to be building orchards and highways.

      They're dinosaurs sitting on a business model by which they keep charging more money for the same thing, while ultimately NOT investing in new infrastructure and instead acting like they deserve money for doing nothing.

      What you're missing is they're not really building it. They're adding a small amount of capacity in places where it is super easy and to do it because someone already built the infrastructure, and then pretending they're some kind of cutting edge innovators of the network of the future.

      So, just how much of the money they've collected and said it's for improving infrastructure has actually been used to that end, and how much has just been skimmed off as profits to ensure the stock stays high and executive bonuses keep going up?

      When they don't invest in real infrastructure and adding new capacity, it's just a shell game to pretend they're not just leaving the existing stuff to rot.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    6. Re:Headline by plover · · Score: 2

      I think you've missed the even-more-sinister plot afoot. By announcing their intent to build a network, they're sowing confusion among under-served communities that have been considering building their own networks. The cities that have already built their own municipal networks have been extremely happy with them; they cost far less than a private network, and service is much more responsive than with the big network providers. The experiences are so good that more and more cities are considering them. Municipal networks are such a threat to the network providers that the telco lobbyists have gotten them outlawed in several states. By promising that a new network is underway, they are shutting down the discussions in the city councils in these cities so they won't even consider building their own.

      Without a description of coverage and no completion date, they basically bought themselves five years of non-competition with little more than a press release. How's that for a return on investment!

      --
      John
  2. I was skeptical, too. by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've seen quite a bit of Fiber To The Press Release, but here in the RTP area of North Carolina, they're digging like crazy. Our decidedly-not-upscale neighborhood has already received the doorknob hang-tabs about excavation, and the Miss Utility painters have been around.

    Probably helps that Google Fiber has named us as part of their next round of deployments, although they seem to have put things on hold until the new year.

    I'm unimpressed with AT&T's advertising, monitoring and capping policies, but they're already having a positive effect -- last time I threatened to drop TWC, they bumped me to 50/5, which is now 200/20, all at less than $40/month. Competition rocks.

    1. Re:I was skeptical, too. by Rob+Lister · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Verizon laid fiber in my neighborhood about two years ago. I was impressed with the technology to mole cable between two holes fifty feet apart. The cable company suddenly doubled their speed to remain competitive. I didn't switch because in the long run, the cable company is cheaper.

      It is easy to understand why the cost of running that fiber in an existing neighborhood makes the margins pretty slim. They have to promise the world to get their mergers and acquisitions. Seems they only have to deliver Pluto.

    2. Re:I was skeptical, too. by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2

      I've had AT&T U-verse, Verizon FIOS, Comcast and TWC cable.

      Comcast has always sucked, it's great when it works but is so flaky you can't even rely on it for home use, at least where I was. I think a finch landing on the cable would knock it out.

      TWC was better, but when it rained, well, see Comcast's finch report.

      U-verse in their FTTH (fiber all the way to the box on mounted to my house) was initially awesome in the days of DSL, but was so oversubscribed in my area after a few years that you could not get more than 1Mbps up, no matter what plan you wanted to buy. In fact they were happy to "upgrade" me to any plan so they could split my then current 2Mbps up between me and someone else, as they were not about to even give me a new plan with 2Mbps. To top it off, that area was not going to get upgraded in any form, at all, despite obviously being a money maker for them. And I'm 99% sure I only got 2Mbps up during certain hours. The "competition" there was the old Comcast cable network, which I don't believe had any significant investment since the 1990s.

      FIOS is the only one that has truly delivered with 50/50 connections life is good network wise. TV wise, FIOS is better than U-verse or TWC, but still has significant short-comings in the consumer friendliness department. It's obvious it's a marketing platform to sell more services, and little else.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  3. FttPR by matthaak · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, this technology is called Fiber-to-the-Press-Release

  4. What is the solution? by AmazinglySmooth · · Score: 2

    So, what should we do about it?

  5. Screw AT&T by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They yanked my chain for 7 years teasing us with UVerse. It finally came and was teh same shitty 3.0/.384 speeds that their DSL was. Charter finally ran cables down my street and I got hooked up this last weekend. Went from 3 down to 66 down. And dropped $5/month (after the initial signup deal expires!) from my bill.

    AT&T is a shit company that can't die fast enough.

  6. Re:They did for me. by Guyle · · Score: 4, Informative

    A guy from AT&T knocked on my door and said the same thing. "Really? Sweet! I've been waiting for ages." I took him into my backyard and said "Show me where." I don't have an alley and everything is aerial, so for them to bury fiber in the backyard would be a pain in the ass and waaaaay more expensive than just hanging it on the poles. He looked around on the ground for peds anyway, didn't see any, then stared up at the poles with a confused look on his face. "See that? *points* That's a 50 pair copper cable running down those poles serving my street and the street over there *waves*. That terminal there *points* feeds the copper drops going to those four *points* houses. The cable above that *points* is Charter's cable, and then I really hope you know that those cables up top *waves* are power lines. So tell me.. where's your fiber?"

    He stood silent for a few seconds and said "I apologize for disturbing you sir" and walked off.

    From my days as a premise tech for Uverse I'm 99% certain he was a contractor paid to sell door to door. They like to bend the "truth" that fiber does, indeed, serve a DSLAM somewhere in your neighborhood so therefore you have fiber service. However, I'm not paying AT&T's prices for bonded pair VDSL on old aerial cable to get 45 megs with bandwidth caps when I can get 60 megs from Charter with no bandwidth caps for less. If and/or when AT&T actually does run fiber down my poles, I'm pretty sure I'll notice, and I'll decide if the cost is worth the megabits and limitations then.

  7. you don't know how hard this is by swschrad · · Score: 2

    why, it will take until the FCC crawls their back, and about 6-8 months longer, to meet their goals. seriously. it's just so hard when it's only for money, not for a reason to still live.

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
  8. Exactly--Fraud on the taxpayers by Etherwalk · · Score: 2

    Kind of like the $9 billion they took in the 00's to provide rural broadband to the country.

    They just pocketed it and did basically nothing.

    Almost certainly *exactly* like that. They're probably doing it to pick up money they've gotten from the public through Congress, most likely in the term of tax breaks. It turns out that when you call something a "tax cut," the public usually doesn't notice when Congress gives a company or industry a couple of billion dollars from the public's taxes.

  9. For real in Durham, NC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Shortly after Google announced the decision to install their fiber in Raleigh-Durham area, AT&T planted the big orange conduit, then the black fiber bundles all over our neighborhoods this past summer (mostly standalone houses, about "middle income"). I even had to roll an empty cable spool out of my yard down the street to where some of their equipment was parked for a while.

    U-Verse became available shortly thereafter - had an AT&T guy come to our door to offer it. Some neighbors have gotten it, and are commenting about it on a local listserv type web site, especially the ones annoyed by sloppy installations that ruined landscaping and even sprinkler systems, plus trash left by the installers. The city of Durham has contracted with a guy to chase down complaints by residents with AT&T. We still see some of the individual cables from junction boxes to houses lying alongside some streets, and a few even crossing the street. Not surprisingly, some of the listserv discussion included accounts by some of those cross-street cables being damaged by traffic, and thus losing phone/TV/Internet - duhhh.

    Meanwhile my TimeWarner cable Internet speeds have gone from 30/10 Mbps this past May, when first installed, to over 200/30 Mbps - love that competition.

    FWIW