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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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T are having a contest
1. Who can be the biggest dick to their customer.
2. Who can screw over local governments the most.
3. Who can screw over State governments the most.
4. Grand Prize, screw over the Federal Government and ALL taxpayers.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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
Counteroffer should be that AT&T pays back the BILLIONS in subsidies they have already received and actually builds out the fiber that they've already promised to build!
And then the state should confiscate it and then use competitive bidding to decide who gets to manage it. Why? Because FUCK YOU, AT&T, that's why!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz