Slashdot Mirror
How AT&T and Verizon Rip Off DSL Customers (arstechnica.com)
A new white paper written by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance finds that AT&T and Verizon are selling slow DSL internet to tens of millions of customers for the same price as fiber customers. These customers have no choice but to pay the rate AT&T and Verizon give them because no other service is offered in their area. Ars Technica reports: AT&T has been charging $60 a month to DSL customers for service between 6 and 10Mbps downstream and 0.6Mbps to 1Mbps upstream, the white paper notes, citing AT&T's advertised prices from July 2018. AT&T also charges $60 a month for 50Mbps and 75Mbps download tiers and even for fiber service with symmetrical upload and download speeds of 100Mbps. These are the regular rates after first-year discounts end, before any extra fees and taxes. Verizon similarly charges $65 a month for 100Mbps fiber service (including a $10 router charge), and $63 or $64 a month for DSL service that provides download speeds between 1.5Mbps and 15Mbps, the white paper says. The price is this high partly "because Verizon ADSL service at any speed requires paying separately for a landline telephone account." [...] The NDIA calls the practice of charging identical prices for wildly different speeds "tier flattening." It affects both urban and rural customers who live in areas where AT&T and Verizon haven't upgraded networks because they face no competition, because the upgrades wouldn't result in higher profits, or both. These customers end up using "the oldest, slowest legacy infrastructure," while paying much higher per-megabit prices than other Internet users.
Even in second-world Spain I have 300Mbit up/down for 30 Euros/month.
No sig today...
Because it costs a metric ton of money to start a new ISP when you have to lay down cable as well. If you are allowed to at all, that depends on the local government, which curiously often thinks that one provider is enough and that they don't want many cables in their ground. The cynic in me would say that the campaign contributions of certain ISPs have something to do with it. You might have heard about communities that tried to establish a WiFi based alternative, only to have it shot down by the local government.
So, there's no need to get government involved. It already is.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, this is not true at all. Major cities have those two options. Smaller cities/towns do not have cable (people get satellite TV, and yes they could get satellite internet if they want to pay even more for high latency and slower speeds but that's not real broadband).
And even where there ought to be two options, often there isn't. The last place I lived -- which was actually a fairly dense suburb of the capitol of California -- Comcast was my only option because AT&T declared the neighborhood oversubscribed and refused to offer DSL service. And where I currently live, also, Comcast is my only option -- AT&T doesn't explain why, but I just checked their website and verified they still won't offer me DSL.
This space intentionally left blank
The vast majority of the countty (land-wise, not necessarily population-wise) only has DSL, if there is even that available. Indeed, where I live I only have CenturyLink DSL available. My vacation home also has CenturyLink DSL available, and the network there is oversaturated, leaving me with sub-1.5-megabit service with no other options. And guess what? The 10-megabit service and the service below 1.5 megabit cost the same.