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AT&T Gigabit Internet Coming To 11 More US Regions (pcmag.com)

Posted by msmash on from the aggressive-expansion dept.

AT&T is bringing its gigabit Internet service to 11 new metro areas. Currently available in parts of 29 cities around the country, the ultra-fast network -- which the company is now calling AT&T Fiber -- is expected to reach another 45 locations by the end of this year, reads a PCMag article. From the report: That includes 11 new markets: Florida: Gainesville and Panama City, Georgia: Columbus, Kentucky: Central Kentucky, Louisiana: Lafayette, Mississippi: Biloxi-Gulfport and Northeast Mississippi, Tennessee: Southeastern Tennessee and Knoxville, and Texas: Corpus Christi.

6 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. abusive monopoly by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AT&T and big cables does nothing to upgrade their infrastructure until competitors appear, then they stall them through their paid politicians. If their competitors persists, they deploy their subpar upgrades and undercut the pricing of their competitors. If their competitors withdraws from the area, they jack up their pricing and screw over the consumer. If this isn't abuse of monopoly power, I don't know what is.

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    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
    1. Re:abusive monopoly by Arkham · · Score: 3, Interesting

      AT&T and big cables does nothing to upgrade their infrastructure until competitors appear, then they stall them through their paid politicians. If their competitors persists, they deploy their subpar upgrades and undercut the pricing of their competitors. If their competitors withdraws from the area, they jack up their pricing and screw over the consumer. If this isn't abuse of monopoly power, I don't know what is.

      I don't know about that. Google fiber is technically in "Atlanta", but I live 40 miles north. There will likely NEVER be google fiber where I live, but I get Gigabit AT&T for $70/month. They ran the lines through our entire neighborhood last summer. I am sure it cost a lot to get it enabled, but because they're 20x faster than what I had before (Charter 60 Mbps) they're getting a lot of customers to help them recoup the cost.

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      - Vincit qui patitur.
    2. Re:abusive monopoly by charon69 · · Score: 3, Informative

      As of this past Monday, I have a 1GigE Fiber line into the house from AT&T. It's been available in my neighborhood for about 2 weeks.

      The tech was extremely nice. He worked with me on where the ONT would be installed outside the house. Ended up with the AT&T-provided router sitting on an upper-shelf in the pantry. Quite convenient.

      AT&T wouldn't provide any additional installation services inside the house, though. So I'm also pulling Cat6 throughout the house right now by myself.

      Also, the AT&T trencher that buried the fiber-line ended up cutting my Cable line... which was inconvenient, as the Cat6 hadn't finished being pulled yet, so I was using a hybrid setup depending on where in the house Ethernet had already been run. Had to use WiFi for Legion-gaming over the weekend. Bah!

      Install Tech actually gave me his cell number, and told me to call him directly if there were any issues rather than calling AT&T directly. Already hit him up once about a router-config-issue, and he answered immediately.

      Speed is good. I'm getting something like 600Mb down / 400Mb up on a crappy laptop hooked directly to the router. Not sure if the non-1GigE speed is a result of ONT-distance from the GPON head, limited processor/RAM on the laptop, or what... but, hey, it's a hell of a lot better than the 30Mb that I was getting from Wow (former Knology).

      And why do I have this line in my house right now? Because Google is coming in soon. AT&T just beat them to the punch. For that matter, Wow/Knology is supposed to have 1GigE service over coax in the area around the start of the new year. Everybody is racing to get 1GigE to the prem.

      Competition is nice when it actually works.

  2. I don’t see a single metropolitan area liste by plague911 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is all well and good to bring fiber to rural communities but you got to at least be honest that you are not hitting cities yet.

  3. Re:AT&T though... by sims+2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's your problem with AT&T?
    We have a 12Mbps down 1Mbps up u-verse ADSL2+ line at work only took about 6 months and 15+ service calls and modifying the modem firmware so it didn't hijack the connection whenever the connection as lost for a couple seconds to get it to work.
    Other than that and the constant abusive sales calls from telemarketers hired by AT&T (They want to save us money by switching us to VoIP) It's been great.

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    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  4. Re:Data cap in 3.7 seconds! by Archvile7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, not anymore - they removed it. I have AT&T Gigapower and no TV or phone service. It DID have a 1TB cap but they removed it a month ago. Also, this past week, they announced they are ending the "Internet Preferences" campaign - the deal that would scan your internet traffic and serve ads based on it. Before, you had to pay an additional $30 to not be subjected to the traffic monitoring; now, they are removing it entirely. So, I am paying a flat $70 a month (no taxes on fiber internet in TN for some reason) for unlimited gigabit speed with no traffic monitoring or ad serving.