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AT&T's Slow 1.5Mbps Internet In Poor Neighborhoods Sparks Complaint To FCC (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is facing a complaint alleging that it discriminates against poor people by providing fast service in wealthier communities and speeds as low as 1.5Mbps in low-income neighborhoods. The formal complaint filed today with the Federal Communications Commission says that AT&T is violating the Communications Act's prohibition against unjust and unreasonable discrimination. That ban is part of Title II, which is best known as the authority used by the FCC to impose net neutrality rules. But as we've explained before, Title II also contains important consumer protections that go beyond net neutrality, such as a ban on discrimination in rates, practices, and offerings of services.
"This complaint, brought by Joanne Elkins, Hattie Lanfair, and Rachelle Lee, three African-American, low-income residents of Cleveland, Ohio alleges that AT&T's offerings of high-speed broadband service violate the Communications Act's prohibition against unjust and unreasonable discrimination," the complaint says. AT&T is not immune to the ban on discrimination "merely because its discrimination is based on investment decisions," the complaint also says.
"This complaint, brought by Joanne Elkins, Hattie Lanfair, and Rachelle Lee, three African-American, low-income residents of Cleveland, Ohio alleges that AT&T's offerings of high-speed broadband service violate the Communications Act's prohibition against unjust and unreasonable discrimination," the complaint says. AT&T is not immune to the ban on discrimination "merely because its discrimination is based on investment decisions," the complaint also says.
Bwahaaaaaaaa-hahaaaaaaaa
Go get a job and buy better internet!
My internet is just barely faster than a T1. How ever will I cope?!?!?
Imagine all the people...
Why would the internet be different
many addresses only have 1.5 Mbps like my own:
http://imgur.com/WgSvnA5
And, I don't live in a poor area. I think most of the houses on my street are worth over a quarter of a million dollars. This claim that only poor areas have slow access is a damn lie.
So companies chase profits? Wow. Heck, even if it was a public utility, not all are equal. The less density the less likely to have sewer or water, for instance.
-Daniel
there's lots of folks who learn by watching and video makes that possible for them to learn on the cheap. My brother's a lousy guitarist and while he probably never would have been great he coulda been a lot better if he had youtube back in the day. And that's just something kinda frivolous. I learned angularjs from videos because the written stuff I'd found was kind of a mess.
It's kinda tough to get tough to do all that at 1.5mbps, especially if you're sharing a connection. How many geniuses have we lost out on because they didn't have knowledge in their formative years. Despite what you want to believe adversity doesn't really make people better, it gives them PTSD. Support and nurture makes people better.
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When I had it, we were 3x as far from the branch as we were supposed to be. They claimed it would be resolved within 6 months, but we could get degraded service now, at full 1.5Mbps pricing if we so wanted.
Despite claiming they would provide us 128/768 service, our service was generously 80-120 down, and something like 16kb/s up. During some periods that connection dipped below 40 down and 8 up, and sometimes it would die completely for hours to days at a time. Sometimes a router reset would fix it, other times it was actually line issues and it would resolve on its own, putting in a complaint to the branch office making no difference.
Long story short, that was literally 18 years ago. Given the billions of dollars SBC/AT&T took to roll out fiber, they have no excuse for not having at LEAST 10 megabit service to everywhere they (or purchased entities) had coverage then. Going back to my story above, I got lucky and a startup rolled out fiber 2 years later. That connection was 10/10 symmetric, stepping up to 20 and now 30-200 megabit (depending on pricing.) They did that with a FRACTION of ATTs resources, and having to roll out entirely new infrastructure across the entire city, including areas already covered by comcast and ATT. Neither of those companies has an excuse for substandard service, but out of the two Comcast has at least invested in infrastructure upgrades. ATT on the other hand still barely has DSL out in ~80 percent of the region, many of them similiarly ekeing by on 1.5 megabit and paying anywhere from 15 to 80 dollars a month for it (depending on if they have the 'low income' plan, or the DSL+tv plan.)
Somehow, we've gone from "300 baud is the hotness" to "1.5 Mbps is so slow we should complain to the civil authorities in outrage".
1.5 Mbps isn't luxurious in this day and age, but you can get by just fine with it if you block all the advertising and tracking shit that clogs up bandwidth.
Is Lexus discriminating against me because I can't afford their cars?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
If a handful of companies can effectively prevent a person or an organization from putting legal content on the internet then we've got larger problems than Tyrone's inability to worldstar.
Would these communities get higher bandwidth by using 3G or 4G? Sounds like an opportunity to do some mesh networking if ATT could care to spin this, at least, for the PR value.
My first broadband was 1M/100Kb and I could study and do lots of things, even start a small business, then again this was 2006 and the web was lighter and simpler. It was worth the time to leave most videos buffer for a bit on Youtube, you could get content!
Now I have 60/40 Mb fiber and while I really appreciate the upload speed, the reality is that it has only served me to download games and ISOs faster than I could possibly need, also my latency increased 30%. I'd say 5/2Mb should be the very minimum for the web today.
...but AT&T's poor service also affects wealthier people who live near these neighborhoods. This article hits close to home, since I encouraged my parents who live in the near suburbs and are pretty well off to go with AT&T, since my experience in the outer suburbs was so fantastic. Boy, that was a mistake. There is not question that AT&T treated their outer suburban customers with first class care, even same day service, while totally hosing their customers closer to the city. It was like night and day. Whereas I could get someone out to my property on the same day, my parents took a week. Whereas they replaced a mile of copper transmission wire for me, my folks' squirrel chewed line was deliberately left in place. Yes, the infrastructure in the city is older, but they had no issue replacing it out here when it was needed. It's definitely willful discrimination and there is no reason for it. It's not like they are charging less for those who live closer to the city. The rates are the same. Why is the service so bad closer to the city? The plaintiff has a legitimate complaint. AT&T is a publicly regulated utility and is required to treat everyone fairly as a condition of operation,
Sarcasm aside yeah we are kind of spoiled considering some of us are old enough to remember our 56K days. The flips side which is almost as depressing is that much like computer software, the internet has become so bloated, mostly because of ads that a fast connection is needed.
They only offer 768 mbps in our neighborhood and it is wealthy
Low Income -> low Bandwidth
or is it :
Low Bandwidth -> low Income
aaaaaaa
ALL the telecom oligopolies suck puss-filled maggots. Jail all the f#cking bastards! As far as AT&T, they have telespammed me approximately 50 times in the last 2 years. They only stopped when I started answering with Trump impressions. And I won't even start on their screwy billing practices. We were forced to use some of their services because the other choice sucks more. We are in a relatively big town, but our choices are strangely limited.
Table-ized A.I.
O/p is saying the opposite but it's impossible to say whether this is a city/suburbs problem, just due to incompetent staff or a coincidence.
Have AT&T lobby the FCC to define 1.5Mb/s as High Speed Internet. Like they did to change the definition of high speef from 25 to 10 Mb/s.
Once enough money has changed hands, everyone will be satisfied.
Except of course the people who have to download everything they want to watch or access with a day or so wait for the download to complete.
Christ im Himmel... I haven't had such a speed for 15+ years and I *never* lived in rich neighborhood (moved 3 times). You are really getting shafted by your telco.
I'm absolutely certain that must be open to interpretation or just flat out misinterpreted.
I know for a fact that comcast can service a 100mb down, but doesn't offer the package in my area. Why? They are a bunch of greedy fucks as far as I can tell. No competition and no reason to actually offer competitive download speeds.
How would I know? Well, they fucked up a whole lot with my account in the past. I was hard coded to 100mb down and 10mb up with no actual account bound in the system. Multiple bandwidth tests showed the circuit was more then capable.
I only realized this was an issue when my account was closed and I could not pay the bill. They had also not registered a cable box to my name and the FCC would shut my account down due to lack of analog translation devices. Yeah, completely silly I know. I didn't want nor need a cable box, but that basic service was screwing me.
Anyhow, when I resolved all of that (just to pay them) they no longer offered that service in my area. I doubt the provision works the way the article indicates and it's just a bunch of SJW nonsense. I mean, fuck comcast, but fuck those people too. Fuck them all in their triggered goat assess. I hope they cry.
You're complaining about 1.5Mb internet when you literally have to play hopscotch sidestepping human feces and used syringes on the sidewalk on your walk to work. I'd say get your priorities in order. Or move to the Eastside where civilized society lives and the internet flows like raging rapids. Sure it's not as "fun" over here and the bars in Bellevue close at like 10pm. Not to brag or anything but personally when I get off work I'm going to use my 100Mb internet to jerk off to so much streaming porn I won't be able to walk straight for a week.
Also you can't find a home here for 250k unless you're out in like fucking Arlington. 250k might buy a 100sqft condo with a toilet in the middle of your kitchen.
20K is poor by standard of bay area, yet this will make you in the top percentage in many other countries. What count is not the absolute value of your earning, but what do you earn compared to the standard of living of your local region. So $115K could be actually not that much, if after tax you still have to pay $4K rent.
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I mean we give these poor fucks free phones and service and they are STILL not happy?
Get a fucking job... there are tons of them... they many not be the watermelon dream of hood rat to basketball star/rapper that ever cooner wants to live.. but jobs are out there.
Pull up your fucking pants.
Stop listening to with 'f uck the police', 'bitch', 'nig ga' etc as lyrics
Speak clearly and ensure every second word is not 'my nig ga' or 'mother f ucker'
Show up on time, every time.
Wow, getting a job is brutal!!!!
Poor people nowadays don't have home computers - they have cell phones.
Which, even for the lowest-price plans, have better data speeds than 1.5 mbps. And no, they're not all bandwidth-starved.
(I was in a crappy part of New Orleans recently and was getting 50 mbps on my phone... which didn't need that much to stream videos, by a long shot.)
Could it be AT&T is just bad? Are they not on the bottom all the time on satisfaction surveys? I hardly think they directly focus throttling on poor neighborhoods. They most likely spread their band speed all over the place.
Joanne Elkins, Hattie Lanfair, and Rachelle Lee, three African-American, low-income residents of Cleveland, Ohio
Aren't facebook and farmville loading fast enough?
And I'm $49/mo for the shit connection. Actually, I can get a faster connection IF and only if I buy a cable package from COMCA$T for over $100 a month and then increase $50 a year after that.
The Telcos are making it very difficult and unecessarily expensive of us cord cutters.
While AT&T is picky about where it deploys its high speed services*, if this lawsuit happens, where do you draw the line ?
Do you sue X for not building a local store in your neighborhood ?
Perhaps Y for not having local franchises of your favorite restaurant ?
*AT&T is picky about where it deploys high speed services because they know that the number of households that will be able to afford or will use said service will not justify the cost of its deployment in the first place. Contrary to popular belief, the magic fiber fairy doesn't just show up, wave her wand and presto, fiber is now in the ground ready for use. The infrastructure required to support it is insanely expensive so you HAVE to be picky about where it's deployed.
It would be like building a Whole Foods Market in the worst / poorest neighborhood of any city, then wonder why that particular store has poor sales numbers.
That said, I don't see where they can call it ' unjust ' or ' unreasonable ' discrimination. There is a very justifiable / reasonable explanation as to why companies don't spend ridiculous amounts of money to bring high end services to neighborhoods that are unlikely to utilize them.
Everyone, no matter what, should have a fast connection. Other Countries do! But us, our country, being the greedy depraved mind, keeps on hounding after the all mighty buck. Just like caught crabs trying to get out of a bucket they will pull the higher one down in attempts to get out.
Ever notice that $5 or so "internet recovery fee" on your bill. It's not for the govt taxes. It's for AT&T's shareholders. But it's not part of the advertised price even though it is part of the price. It's supposed to be for upgrading the network but that isn't happening. They should be forced to give back 20 years of internet recovery fees.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
How can Tyrone watch his 4K WorldStar Hip-Hop videos on only 1.5mbps?????
The telecoms, do this for financial reasons, understandably. A low income neighborhood is less likely to be able to afford the higher tiers of internet. However, the government knows this, and has enabled massive subsidies for decades for just this reason. The number of incentives, fees, tax.
The telecoms benefit from the extra $$$ but rarely put any good faith into the efforts.
This is what happens when government chooses the utility providers.
The situation at hand here would absolutely be solved if there were a free market in utility providers and competition were allowed to thrive.
Libertas in infinitum
this seems like redlining.
And that has cost some banks money. Let's see if this meets the courts' tests for redlining, and how much they may force AT&T to both build out and actually offer/provide equally capable services to all customers regardless of location... Fining them is not a solution, and being forced to build is a tacit fine, not allowing them to use excessive fees for inadequate services and poor physical plants to subsidize services in apparently more affluent locations.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It would one thing if they did because most residents were minorities. It is another thing entirely if they did it because not many people on in those neighborhoods can afford to pay $70/month for gigbit (or even 100 mb/s) service.
Good luck with that. In my area ( high income, beach area ) I canceled my ATT connection because, after "upgrading" and being forced to pay for under-grounding our lines, the Internet denigrated to .01Mps.
"merely because its discrimination is based on investment decisions"
At some point this framing of the word "discrimination" sort of devalues the concept.
When even logical business decisions are pushed under that umbrella, they serve as distractions from actual cases of bigoted discrimination.