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.

Comments

Not a dime up front

[twotacocombo]

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.

Re:Universal Service

[mwvdlee]

Does that mean the $100 million DSL lines will be property of the taxpayers, and AT&T will merely provide the labor without getting any ownership?

Or does AT&T want us to buy their cake, eat most of it and rent the remaining crumbs back to us at a profit?