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AT&T Wants $100 Million From California Taxpayers For Aging DSL (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article on DSLReports: AT&T is asking California taxpayers to give them $100 million so that it can provide several parts of the state with unreliable, slow and expensive DSL service. Under Assembly Bill 2130 (written by AT&T lobbyists), AT&T would receive $100 million from state taxpayers. In return, AT&T would only need to provide 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload and would have little to no oversight over whether the $100 million is even being used for the DSL service.
they'll get it.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Really, AT&T? You want yet more money from us, with no oversight or guarantee that you're going to use it for the purpose for which we would give it to you?
You think we don't see how poorly that arrangement has worked for us in the past? Kindly fuck off.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Please Piss up a live wire. Take your 20 year old DSL tech and cram it where the Sun cannot shine.... :-D
ATT = The Shittiest Company next to Comcast that Exists.
(Hi Comcast! YES, you are STILL the worst!)
But AT&T probably has given at least ONE or two of those millions to the people they're asking for the hundred million. It's really just an investment. The DSL has nothing to do with it.
Regardless, what AT&T is capable of delivering is unreliable DSL service.
I just downgraded to a 2 meg connection for $80 a month so I won't go over the cap with Comcast which was 30 megs. I have no choice in the matter and feel that is a good deal if AT&T won't do caps. 10 megs if fine. DSL is fine for streaming and more appropriate for geeks who do 100 gig caps easily each month. Cable operators are jerks in the matter where they sell LOOK 100 megs ... only 2 gig cap and $10 for each other gig in very small print.
I know the European readers are shocked and or laughing in disbelief at my comment but welcome to America.
http://saveie6.com/
I've been arguing with AT&T for nearly a year now about getting a faster connection to our house. We live in the "woods", but no more than 10 miles from places with enough people to provide them with pretty fast U-Verse speeds. All they can provide me is 768kbps, no amount of begging and pleading has ever even gotten a tech out to even *check* if they can give me more (our direct neighbor gets 6Mbps, still slow but nearly an order of magnitude higher than mine). They have though promised to send someone out a few times... just a technique to get you to shut up for a few weeks. We can't get cable, sat has way too high latency for what I need and cell service is shoddy at best. So, here I am paying AT&T 40 bucks a month for 768kps just to make sure I have a "reliable" connection; still goes out sometimes but way less than the cell connection.
Sigh.
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
Ummm..what about fibre optic cable. Toronto we've had fibre optic cable networks going up the last 2 years. In Tokyo, they've had a fibre optic cable network there for at least 4 years. the real issue for me is why use a dated technology when a superior one proven in the field exists? Gut feeling: it's a way of maximizing profits at the cost of speed/reliability.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Sounds like the start of negotiations. Counter offer with a dollar.
You don't "need" a land line, it's called a "dry loop". I've had one for almost five years now. It still sucks compared to fiber though lol.
The only way this will ever work is if all payment is withheld until the work is completed, and satisfactorily at that. Unless there's a risk of AT&T having to foot the bill, they'll just continue to rob us blind and shit directly into our mouths, as usual. They just paid almost $50 billion acquiring DirecTV, so I'm sure they still have a few hundred million in petty cash laying around to float this until they're finished.
In the old POTS system, there was a standard where calls in cities and business telephone services overcharged heavily in order to subsidize the much more expensive rural phone lines, so that everybody in the country had a MUCH better chance of being able to afford a phone line if they wanted to.
In theory that is probably the argument behind this--but in practice it is probably just that AT&T paid them a few million in donations and want a hundred million steered toward AT&T.
We want to give it to you in true AT&T Style! Don't worry, you'll only feel like your getting screwed....
hehehe well, you are getting screwed. Deal with it. Don't worry, your legislators are coming out ok. We've paid them well.
Signed, AT&T
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
Didn't we give these companies billions in tax credits and incentives in the late 90's and early 2000's to upgrade and expand their infrastructure? Now they want more? Dont they make any money from the fees they charge customers to pay for this sort of stuff? Why do they need the taxpayer to cough up cash for them?
Also, I live three houses down from where Century Link in installing fiber in denver. Though I can see the equipment from my window and am less than a football field away, I'm not optimistic regarding my chances for getting FTTH, or even something better than cable service.
I checked AT&T's corporate site to see how dire their cash situation is. If this company is asking the taxpayers to foot the bill for upgrading their network then they must be in serious trouble.
According to AT&T's press release dated October 22, 2015, AT&T had $39.1 billion in consolidated revenue, up 19% from the previous period (primarily due to the DirecTV purchase).
They also had $10.8 billion in cash from operations and $5 billion in free cash flow.
Apparently making a few billion dollars in a single quarter equates to not being able to spend $100 million to upgrade their own equipment. Who would have thought?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This is Business as usual in the Corporate States of America.
The companies write the laws that say we have to pay them.
profit.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Bah, we'll just raise taxes on the rich. What's another $100 million transferred from productive people to lobbyists and the coffers of a megacorp? /California
In all fairness. speaking from overseas.. this sounds like a good deal. If all rural area gets 10/1Mbit net, or better, for only 100M.. then it's a pretty good deal.
That would be a great deal. Unfortunately this is AT&T we're talking about. They'll take the money and run, like they have in the past. We'll be $100 million poorer, they'll be $100 million richer, and absolutely nothing else will change. We've been here before, and the taste hasn't quite left our mouths yet.
You miss the point entirely. The issue isn't what they can and can't afford. Why invest your own money when you can make someone else pay and you still reap the rewards (subscribers)? If there is money on the table, why would they leave it there? I don't blame ATT for this. Unless you are a holder of significant quantities of ATT stock, their job isn't to look out for your best interest. I blame the politicians for being corrupt and/or stupid enough to fall for it.
Ummm..what about fibre optic cable. Toronto we've had fibre optic cable [...] In Tokyo, they've had [...]
Yes, in large cities where the population density is measured in thousands per square kilometer, it makes a lot of sense.
The locations being mentioned are rural areas. Some have a population of approximately 0 per square kilometer, it can be 5+km between homes. Others are smaller towns where the population may be single-digit or double-digit per square kilometer.
Currently fiber doesn't make sense financially until you begin to approach 1000 per km2. Then you can have enough customers to justify the costs involved at a reasonable rate.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Isn't the issue here the extremely long ROI for rural improvements? Is AT&T obligated to build out these areas that won't be profit centers for them? I'm guessing the state throwing money at them changes that equation.
Is AT&T the only provider who can do it? Did they even bid this out? I might have to RTFA here soon. :)
http://www.ubnt.com/ + RadioMobile + Renogy solar panels and charge controller + 155Ah VMaxTanks SLA/AGM battery (or two)
I was in your situation and did a 5 mile PTP backhaul with PowerBridge M5 400mm dishes and 900MHz for PTMP. I was actually worse off with only satellite internet availability that had terrible latency (700-1500ms+) and strict bandwidth caps (38GB/month, throttled at 85%) and no bandwidth accounting reporting. I actually had to gang together two WildBlue connections to get that and was paying just over $200/month.
Fixed terrestrial wireless is amazing and it will work for you if you put in the effort. Expect to spend $1500-2000 to get the radios, solar panels, batteries, STP cables, battery boxes, masts, etc.. I enjoy 50Mbps now.
so why not run fiber OUT, too? GPON is going to be cheaper to work with in the long run, and customers could get gigabit speeds for that $100 million.
oh, that's right... almost no oversight on that deal.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
And if you talk about taxes, a vast amount of our horribly complex tax code exists solely for the purpose of keeping "the rich" from paying taxes. Tax breaks are free money, and they invariably go to the rich.
Were you born that stupid, or did you practice to lower your mental abilities?
Why is Snark Required?
After being screwed over by AT&T for several years via U-verse (over that time they were never able to synch up the billing cycles so that we received on single, unified bill) when we moved we determined to get 3rd party DSL over AT&T copper.
.com boom when legislation mandated unbundling of local exchange loops, but I was appalled at this level of dickishness. I really should have filed an FCC complaint, but I at least vowed never to use AT&T again and switched cell to Virgin.
AT&T seemed to do everything in their power to screw over the ISP (Sonic). I called AT&T multiple times and it eventually turned out that they had told us the wrong wiring closet for our circuit, so Sonic came back and rewired, but I think AT&T later came back and put a filter on the circuit or something as if it was a voice circuit only. We had it working but it kept dropping and when AT&T came over the guy refused to talk on the phone to the Sonic support guys....Sonic seemed like really nice guys and I wanted it to work. They apparently do a pretty good job up in the Santa Rosa area.
I know that AT&T pulled this kind of shit on Covad, et al back during the
Finally ended up going to Clear wireless internet for a while and it was fair, but they eventually got bought by Sprint or Verizon someone (they used cell towers for their service) and access got a lot more spotty.
Then tried Hughes or some satellite link, but found out that bouncing off a a satellite 20k miles away made VPN unusable due to lag (Duh!)
So now we (reluctantly) use comcast -albeit internet only.
-I'm just sayin'
This is just another example of Government for sale.
Having private industry write legislation would be a huge scandal in any other democracy I can think of, but it is almost unremarkable in the US.
This is interesting
I would argue that with the gerrymandering of electorates and the way money dictates outcomes in US politics, you really don't have a democracy anymore.
The devil is in the details. Saying the capital gains tax in the United States is 0% to 15% is disingenuous. The details are more nuanced. Some useful definitions are at https://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Fa....
Short-term capital gains (investments held less than 1 year) are taxed at ordinary income tax rates, which are typically higher than the special treatment given to long-term capital gains but could be lower if the individual earning the gains is in a lower tax bracket because of their overall income being low.
For the folks with high incomes, long-term capital gains are 20%. For folks with somewhat smaller incomes, the long-term capital gains rate might be 15%, and for those with incomes that cause them to have a tax rate already below 15%, the capital gains rate could be as low as 0%. The fat cats with big incomes are not paying anything like the 0% tax on THEIR capital gains, but COULD be paying less than ordinary income tax rates if most of their income is from capital gains rather than ordinary income.
In the end, the Alternative Minimum Tax can and does swoop in and raise the overall tax rate paid to 26% to 28%, again depending on overall income and how well someone has done reducing their overall tax rate with deductions and other treatments. Anyone triggering AMT also has a number of deductions taken away from them, making the 26% to 28% tax due on a greater portion of their gross income as well. More on the AMT https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/.... Oh, and, in addition to AMT, the Affordable Care Act also added an additional 3.8% net investment income tax onto both short-term and long-term capital gains for individuals making over $200,000/year, so they are likely to be paying a total of 23.8% on their long-term capital gains, not someplace between 0% and 15%.
The reason given for the lower tax rate on long-term capital gains is typically to encourage people and corporations to invest their money (put it to work) instead of just sitting on it, and to keep it invested (for at least a year) instead of being speculative and trading it in and out, disruptively.
I won't argue that the US government is corruption free, but I need to point out a few facts.
The current maximum capital gains tax in the US is 20%. The vast majority of US citizens pay less than that for income tax after deductions.
According to the IRS, IRA contribution limits are $5,500 per year and $6,500 per year for those older than 50. Mitt Romney isn't more than 15,000 years old.
"Tax breaks are free money, and they invariably go to the rich." No it isn't and no they don't. Tax break are money that is not taken away, not free money. They do not invariably go to the rich. Look into the AMT, Child Care Tax Credit and Tax Credits for education just to start. I'm not saying that international corporations and fat cats get way more than their fair share of tax relief, but tax relief does not invariable go to the rich.
Did I just hear a whoosh and miss your sarcasm or did you really mean to say those things?
If you meant to say that the concentration of wealth is historically high and will lead to unrest and instability - I could not agree more. Smart guys like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates cant give it away fast enough. The root causes of violence in many parts of the world are lack of water and poverty - things that money can solve directly.
If you meant to say that unions and corporate special interest influence politicians I'd agree completely.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Yet 23.8% is still lower than the effective 30% tax rate paid by average US citizens: http://www.oecd.org/ctp/tax-po... - and this doesn't include the sales tax.