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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.
Go get a job and buy better internet!
The complaint is that they *can't* buy better internet. Being a rich white guy in an area where 1.5M is the fastest available, I feel their pain. No reasonable amount of money can get me faster internet. Less than 5 miles away, I can get 100M but it would costs 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands for me to personally have a line ran. There *might* be some esoteric solutions. My brother was in a similar situation and put a 100 foot tower at his in-town office and beamed internet to a 100 foot tower at his house in the country several miles away but this cost him several thousand dollars and is out of the price range of even most middle class people.
Lexus does not have a contract that gives them exclusive rights to your area on the condition that they sell to everyone in the area, not just the poor.
If you insist on getting a monopolistic contract with conditions, then you damn well better abide by those conditions, even if costs you some money.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
$250,000 right now in Seattle is literally a shitty ass shack considering the current housing market there. (and yes, I'm local to the area too)
But seriously, I came in to bitch about CenturyLink too. For the longest time, they'd only offer 3mbps service to my location. Luckily, for a very short period of time, they offered their gigabit fiber service to my location, I signed up, and still have it over a year later. Even after ALREADY HAVING IT INSTALLED, a couple months later, they claimed I could only get 3mbps in my area. It is total bullshit how they discriminate against certain neighborhoods.
Wycliffe didn't say he couldn't afford it. Rather he stated the price. That's the best way I know of to stay rich: Don't assume that everything you can afford is worth the price.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
That's partially because it usually ends up costing the telco MORE money to provide slow DSL than faster DSL. If the fastest available at any price is 768k/128k, you're already running on the bleeding edge of what ADSL can handle at that distance... your line is going to require more tweaking to get working, and is probably going to require more follow-up service over the long run compared to someone with 18mbps/1.5mbps U-verse VDSL2 from a VRAD that's 500 feet away.
That's part of the reason why AT&T used to not allow people who were too far from the CO to qualify for 1.5mbps/128kbps g.LITE ADSL to get it AT ALL... they didn't want to deal with people bitching about how they were paying the same amount for 420kbps/80kbps that others were paying for 1.5mbps/128kbps. So if AT&T said 'no', but you were technically close enough to get 420kbps/80kbps, your basically had three options:
a) go around AT&T and pay a company like Northpoint roughly $200/month to lease a "dry pair" of wires from AT&T and wire it up to their DSLAM (at the time, AT&T hadn't yet installed a DSLAM at MY local central office, so the only way to get anything faster than ISDN or dialup was to pay Northpoint to connect me to the next-nearest CO, which had a DSLAM about a year before my own did).
b) settle for 112kbps ISDN (112kbps, because with Florida ISDN, local "voice" calls were free, but local "data" calls were 3 cents per minute per 64kbps channel... with a little tweaking, you could get the modem to fake two voice calls with 56kbps data and spend unlimited amounts of time online for free). This is what I ended up doing.
c) pay for two voice lines, use it with a shotgun modem, and pray to ${deity} the phone company didn't just throw a PairGain line concentrator on your original pair to get two useless phone lines that maxed out at ~31kbps apiece. With shotgunning, you could get about 107kbps down and 48kbps up. Thankfully, I didn't have to go with this option.
For what it's worth, NorthPoint no longer exists, I don't think anybody supports shotgun modems anymore, and given that a regular landline is now almost $50/month after taxes, I'd be afraid to even ask how much ISDN now costs per month (I think I paid around $100/month just for ISDN circa 1997, back when landline phone service cost about $30/month after taxes).
I am going to be a little tougher, those end users, well, they are poor and poor people do not own houses, they rent them. Now those houses are owned by investors and crappy internet services devalues a house by quite a lot. Best internet to worst internet is now some thing like 5% to 10% drop in property value. Now that loss is being created purposefully by the service provider as a choice to save money, regardless of the losses incurred by property owners (not occupiers, owners). Those owners have every right to consider legal action against those companies provided degraded services which devalue the properties and we are talking tens of thousands of dollar per property. Interesting thing here, is no contract and hence no arbitration clauses and so class action law suit by property owners as a result of the purposefully provision of degraded internet services which in turn devalue a property, due to reduce market access, having to compete with properly provisioned properties with actual high speed internet access. They are choosing to attack the value of peoples assets by purposefully providing degraded services.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I live in an urban area. At the library while standing in line I see people checking out dozens of DVD's. I talk to the librarian and he says "Books are out!" Here is a self-fulfilling prophesy of low income people having every last TV show or movie they want to watch for FREE, who sit in front of the boob tube with their children 24x7, and I do not know what is in their minds but most likely they wonder why they do not have a better life.
Such is the fallacy of this "Internet for the poor." A large percentage of any average person's time is spent watching YouTube videos. The claim by modern liberals that low bandwidth means taking away opportunity is one more claim without a single data point of proof, and simply sophistry and nonsense.
We have rabbit ears. I have a $5 cell phone plan and I only have it because I am on call and get reimbursed. I have a seventeen year old car. Some of my urban friends who make a fraction of what I make, their jaws drop to the floor when they hear how old the car is. I, like you, can afford better in all of these regards. However, all of that extra monthly spending goes right to the mortgage, and to an early retirement. My wife and I have a poor material life as we have fewer goodies than many of the so-called "poor", but we are closer to freedom than most people.
Funny with all this talk about slavery on my TV set, it is ironic to see a large number of people shackling themselves for life with monthly payments.
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.