6 ms·

I am not a fan of AT&T, but it appears what they didn't want included was their ADSL1 speeds, which are probably utter rubbish for obvious reasons. The problem

by dylz 7y ago

I am not a fan of AT&T, but it appears what they didn't want included was their ADSL1 speeds, which are probably utter rubbish for obvious reasons. The problem here is that there are people still on those plans.

Nextgrid 7y ago
Rubbish or not, the speeds should be included to give AT&T an incentive to move these customers to something more modern.
- dylz 7y ago
  Agreed. Honestly, (plain) ADSL shouldn't even be a thing anymore.
  - zmzrr 7y ago
    Why not? I have a 14 Mbps stable ADSL connection and it suits my needs. Why should I pay more for something I don't need?
    - ahi 7y ago
      I suspect you're paying more than what I pay for gigabit FTTH, $50.
      - zmzrr 7y ago
        I pay 23€ a month. I could pay roughly what you pay for gigabit, I just don't need it
    - dylz 7y ago
      Who said anything about you having to pay more? At least here, in the market that I can choose between FTTH and ADSL1 from the same provider, there's a 990 Mbps difference for the _same price_. Though - my personal opinion is that old copper that no one really wants to maintain is wasted space for cabling that could support significantly higher bandwidth at lower latency. Telcos are already refusing to replace destroyed landlines and instead substituing LTE service or otherwise instead for a decade now.
    - kristopolous 7y ago
      It shouldn't be more. Heck, your local tax dollars probably paid to lay the cables anyway. It should probably be 1/4th of what you're paying
      - zmzrr 7y ago
        I am not in the US. And yes, fibre costs more, even double sometimes. I don't need fibre, I don't want to pay double. Leave my ADSL alone.
        noxToken 7y ago
        Then you're likely in a very different situation. A condensed version of the US situation is that telcos here were incentivised through subsidies to upgrade and update the networking infrastructure to deliver more speeds and bandwidth to existing customers as well as connection to more rural customers. By and large, the telcos did not do that in spite of receiving the money.
        Jonnax 7y ago
        You're not in the US, so why did you bring up Google Fiber? Also if you're not in the US why are you talking about AT&T being forced to take away your ADSL? Also the poster you replied to specifically said ADSL1 which has been superceded more than a decade ago by ADSL2, ADSL2+ and VDSL. These aren't fibre technologies and in most countries are sold at the same price.
      - rhino369 7y ago
        ISPs don’t make 75% profit margins, so that’s really not possible.
        kristopolous 7y ago
        Profit is a matter of accounting. The telcos specifically are incentivized to have as little calculated profit as possible. Their subsidies and ability to charge different rates is partially based on their accounting. So they play Hollywood accounting tricks (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting). They have been chastised on this repeatedly. For instance, "The FCC Had To Remind ISPs Not To Spend Taxpayer Subsidies On Booze, Trips To Disney World" (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-has-to-remind-isps-not-to-spend-taxpayer-subsidies-booze-trips-to-disney-world.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-h...) here, the $1,300,000 spent by an executive to buy a house for their children's use as college housing wasn't part of the profit. That's simply the cost of running business, as essential as keeping the lights on ... nothing wrong with the twice a week $96,000/year massages either, I'm sure that's got a lot to do with FTTH residential deployment. Oh wait, the taxpayers built that. This has happened a few times, such as with verizon (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/are-the-salaries-of-veriz_b_9815496 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/are-the-salaries-of-veriz_b_9...) where the 4 top executive pay (without benefits) was $41 million ... which would have been fine if it was in their operating expense and they could afford it. But they did this because it wasn't and they couldn't. If the telcos make something called "Local Service" unprofitable when compared with "Corporate Operations Expense" (which includes jets, multiple homes, multi-million executive pay, etc) and technically run "at a loss" they can legally raise prices and reduce service. Because they can make things look unprofitable, federal regulation permits them to raise prices to make up for it. It's an perverse incentive, an executive spends $100,000 a year on pet care to make sure local service becomes unprofitable and then they can use a legal procedure to raise prices. rinse, wash, and repeat. So yes, it could be 1/4th the price but no, the free market is the most efficient allocator of goods, we're told. They do things the cheapest we're told, there is no alternative ... yeah, bullshit. High speed internet is $7.67/month in Russia, $5.41 in Ukraine, $6.12 in Venezuela and $63.07 in the USA. Ah, the magic of trusting the market. Can you feel it!?
    - toast0 7y ago
      ADSL1 from at&t tops out at 6Mbps, and 8Mbps generally, so you're most likely on ADSL2 (probably not VDSL, unless you're just plan limited, and not distance limited)
    - axaxs 7y ago
      I feel like this is some form of Stockholm Syndrome. You shouldn't pay more. You should be getting better speeds for the same or lesser price. Technology is advancing and the carriers are purposely holding us back, for exactly the reason you gave.
      - zmzrr 7y ago
        ISPs should lay out an expensive fibre network (so expensive that Google Fiber had to give up on it) and I should pay less money? That's just crazy.
        kstrauser 7y ago
        Why? We already paid them $400 billion dollars to get you decent Internet access (see: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5...). I think that gives us the right to expect you to have something better than 14Mbps DSL at a decent price.
        axaxs 7y ago
        Absolutely! Even ignoring all the stimulus money and tax breaks probably given, municipalities all over the US are building out their own fiber that is blowing the others away in performance and even price usually.
        keanebean86 7y ago
        > so expensive that Google Fiber had to give up on it Part of that cost comes from ATT and Comcast using their government sugar daddy to make running fiber as expensive and difficult as possible. Example: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/att-and-comcast-finalize-court-victory-over-nashville-and-google-fiber/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/att-and-comcast-...
      - takeda 7y ago
        If ADSL is cheap I actually would prefer to have it for redundancy. Phone line and cable is generally the only lines that are routed to a home that can be used for Internet.
    - ac29 7y ago
      In my market ATT fiber is cheaper than ATT DSL, and obviously quite a bit faster.
- jedberg 7y ago
  Or just drop them as customers altogether. It may have actually been wise for the FCC to exclude them instead of forcing the company to drop them.
zmzrr 7y ago
How come speeds are not segregated depending on technology? Seems like a shortcoming of this "speed-test program". No wonder they left.
- Avenger42 7y ago
  From the article: > The 2017 report includes two categories for AT&T, one for its oldest DSL technology and another for its DSL-based IP broadband with speeds of up to 45Mbps. [...] The 2018 report only includes AT&T's IP broadband category, leaving out the company's worst results.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  They fought to have anything faster than ISDN classified as "broadband". Now they get to pay the price for letting the copper rot.
  - zmzrr 7y ago
    Broadband has always meant "faster than dial-up".
    - tastyfreeze 7y ago
      The FCC has defined broadband as 25/3 Mbps since 2015. Prior to that it was 4/1 Mbps. The first FCC definition of broadband was established in 1996 as 200/200 Kbps. You can't really play loosey goosey with the definition. The service is either fast enough to be considered broadband or it isn't. The delivery method is irrelevant.
      - dylz 7y ago
        Honestly, by 2018 it should be something like 50/50 or 100/50 as a minimum.
      - zokula 7y ago
        Broadband has nothing to do with speed.
FireBeyond 7y ago
AT&T: "We don't want these plans included because they're obsolete and they're not the ones we are actively marketing". Also AT&T: "But we are absolutely selling them, obsolete or not, and signing up new customers in areas where that's their option, because we've decided it's not viable to upgrade them. We just don't want them counted."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Spivak 7y ago
  Is there a good solution for areas where it will never be profitable to run lines? I mean my company is getting a big local subsidy for a short distance point-to-point connection and it’s still costing us about a million dollars for construction and we still have to pay a monthly maintenance fee.
  - mrkstu 7y ago
    Fixed wireless.
  - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
    They were given $Billions to run those lines anyway. And they didn’t.

by dylz 7y ago

Nextgrid 7y ago

Rubbish or not, the speeds should be included to give AT&T an incentive to move these customers to something more modern.

dylz 7y ago
Agreed. Honestly, (plain) ADSL shouldn't even be a thing anymore.
- zmzrr 7y ago
  Why not? I have a 14 Mbps stable ADSL connection and it suits my needs. Why should I pay more for something I don't need?
  - ahi 7y ago
    I suspect you're paying more than what I pay for gigabit FTTH, $50.
    - zmzrr 7y ago
      I pay 23€ a month. I could pay roughly what you pay for gigabit, I just don't need it
  - dylz 7y ago
    Who said anything about you having to pay more? At least here, in the market that I can choose between FTTH and ADSL1 from the same provider, there's a 990 Mbps difference for the _same price_. Though - my personal opinion is that old copper that no one really wants to maintain is wasted space for cabling that could support significantly higher bandwidth at lower latency. Telcos are already refusing to replace destroyed landlines and instead substituing LTE service or otherwise instead for a decade now.
  - kristopolous 7y ago
    It shouldn't be more. Heck, your local tax dollars probably paid to lay the cables anyway. It should probably be 1/4th of what you're paying
    - zmzrr 7y ago
      I am not in the US. And yes, fibre costs more, even double sometimes. I don't need fibre, I don't want to pay double. Leave my ADSL alone.
      - noxToken 7y ago
        Then you're likely in a very different situation. A condensed version of the US situation is that telcos here were incentivised through subsidies to upgrade and update the networking infrastructure to deliver more speeds and bandwidth to existing customers as well as connection to more rural customers. By and large, the telcos did not do that in spite of receiving the money.
      - Jonnax 7y ago
        You're not in the US, so why did you bring up Google Fiber? Also if you're not in the US why are you talking about AT&T being forced to take away your ADSL? Also the poster you replied to specifically said ADSL1 which has been superceded more than a decade ago by ADSL2, ADSL2+ and VDSL. These aren't fibre technologies and in most countries are sold at the same price.
    - rhino369 7y ago
      ISPs don’t make 75% profit margins, so that’s really not possible.
      - kristopolous 7y ago
        Profit is a matter of accounting. The telcos specifically are incentivized to have as little calculated profit as possible. Their subsidies and ability to charge different rates is partially based on their accounting. So they play Hollywood accounting tricks (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting). They have been chastised on this repeatedly. For instance, "The FCC Had To Remind ISPs Not To Spend Taxpayer Subsidies On Booze, Trips To Disney World" (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-has-to-remind-isps-not-to-spend-taxpayer-subsidies-booze-trips-to-disney-world.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-h...) here, the $1,300,000 spent by an executive to buy a house for their children's use as college housing wasn't part of the profit. That's simply the cost of running business, as essential as keeping the lights on ... nothing wrong with the twice a week $96,000/year massages either, I'm sure that's got a lot to do with FTTH residential deployment. Oh wait, the taxpayers built that. This has happened a few times, such as with verizon (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/are-the-salaries-of-veriz_b_9815496 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/are-the-salaries-of-veriz_b_9...) where the 4 top executive pay (without benefits) was $41 million ... which would have been fine if it was in their operating expense and they could afford it. But they did this because it wasn't and they couldn't. If the telcos make something called "Local Service" unprofitable when compared with "Corporate Operations Expense" (which includes jets, multiple homes, multi-million executive pay, etc) and technically run "at a loss" they can legally raise prices and reduce service. Because they can make things look unprofitable, federal regulation permits them to raise prices to make up for it. It's an perverse incentive, an executive spends $100,000 a year on pet care to make sure local service becomes unprofitable and then they can use a legal procedure to raise prices. rinse, wash, and repeat. So yes, it could be 1/4th the price but no, the free market is the most efficient allocator of goods, we're told. They do things the cheapest we're told, there is no alternative ... yeah, bullshit. High speed internet is $7.67/month in Russia, $5.41 in Ukraine, $6.12 in Venezuela and $63.07 in the USA. Ah, the magic of trusting the market. Can you feel it!?
  - toast0 7y ago
    ADSL1 from at&t tops out at 6Mbps, and 8Mbps generally, so you're most likely on ADSL2 (probably not VDSL, unless you're just plan limited, and not distance limited)
  - axaxs 7y ago
    I feel like this is some form of Stockholm Syndrome. You shouldn't pay more. You should be getting better speeds for the same or lesser price. Technology is advancing and the carriers are purposely holding us back, for exactly the reason you gave.
    - zmzrr 7y ago
      ISPs should lay out an expensive fibre network (so expensive that Google Fiber had to give up on it) and I should pay less money? That's just crazy.
      - kstrauser 7y ago
        Why? We already paid them $400 billion dollars to get you decent Internet access (see: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5...). I think that gives us the right to expect you to have something better than 14Mbps DSL at a decent price.
      - axaxs 7y ago
        Absolutely! Even ignoring all the stimulus money and tax breaks probably given, municipalities all over the US are building out their own fiber that is blowing the others away in performance and even price usually.
      - keanebean86 7y ago
        > so expensive that Google Fiber had to give up on it Part of that cost comes from ATT and Comcast using their government sugar daddy to make running fiber as expensive and difficult as possible. Example: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/att-and-comcast-finalize-court-victory-over-nashville-and-google-fiber/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/att-and-comcast-...
    - takeda 7y ago
      If ADSL is cheap I actually would prefer to have it for redundancy. Phone line and cable is generally the only lines that are routed to a home that can be used for Internet.
  - ac29 7y ago
    In my market ATT fiber is cheaper than ATT DSL, and obviously quite a bit faster.
jedberg 7y ago
Or just drop them as customers altogether. It may have actually been wise for the FCC to exclude them instead of forcing the company to drop them.

zmzrr 7y ago

How come speeds are not segregated depending on technology? Seems like a shortcoming of this "speed-test program". No wonder they left.

Avenger42 7y ago
From the article: > The 2017 report includes two categories for AT&T, one for its oldest DSL technology and another for its DSL-based IP broadband with speeds of up to 45Mbps. [...] The 2018 report only includes AT&T's IP broadband category, leaving out the company's worst results.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
They fought to have anything faster than ISDN classified as "broadband". Now they get to pay the price for letting the copper rot.
- zmzrr 7y ago
  Broadband has always meant "faster than dial-up".
  - tastyfreeze 7y ago
    The FCC has defined broadband as 25/3 Mbps since 2015. Prior to that it was 4/1 Mbps. The first FCC definition of broadband was established in 1996 as 200/200 Kbps. You can't really play loosey goosey with the definition. The service is either fast enough to be considered broadband or it isn't. The delivery method is irrelevant.
    - dylz 7y ago
      Honestly, by 2018 it should be something like 50/50 or 100/50 as a minimum.
    - zokula 7y ago
      Broadband has nothing to do with speed.

FireBeyond 7y ago

AT&T: "We don't want these plans included because they're obsolete and they're not the ones we are actively marketing". Also AT&T: "But we are absolutely selling them, obsolete or not, and signing up new customers in areas where that's their option, because we've decided it's not viable to upgrade them. We just don't want them counted."

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 7y ago
Is there a good solution for areas where it will never be profitable to run lines? I mean my company is getting a big local subsidy for a short distance point-to-point connection and it’s still costing us about a million dollars for construction and we still have to pay a monthly maintenance fee.
- mrkstu 7y ago
  Fixed wireless.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  They were given $Billions to run those lines anyway. And they didn’t.