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This article is pretty confusing. Are they terminating new service for all DSL based technologies, or just actual "old school" DSL? It focusses on FTTH but most

This article is pretty confusing. Are they terminating new service for all DSL based technologies, or just actual "old school" DSL? It focusses on FTTH but most of AT&Ts service area is actually FTTN. I assume FTTN service (VDSL) is not being terminated to new subscribers? If it's just DSL service then to be honest 4G is likely to be vastly better for most people. Some will be left out though, which is a real pain, but many countries are switching off new DSL connections (though probably not as quickly/aggressively in rural areas as AT&T is here) if not migrating en mass to at least VDSL. DSL requires a tonne of maintence compared to even VDSL/FTTN, as you can replace the main run of copper from the exchange to the local node with fibre and then just need to worry about the last mile connection part. In most network topologies this reduces the amount of copper in the last mile by 70%+, with significant opex savings. 4G/5G can provide better speeds in nearly all cases with none of the cost. Starlink will also be super interesting for this segment too.

wnissen 6y ago
Yeah, I wonder that, too. Best ISP in the world sonic.net is still reselling Fiber To The Node (FTTN) AT&T 50Mbps DSL in my area. It's still really unfortunate, we only have one option (Comcast) for truly fast Internet. I will say that I would rather have Sonic than Comcast, the latter is very unreliable and the DSL has been rock-solid if you reboot the router every couple months. Really, really hoping 5G creates some competition in the home Internet space.
- bogomipz 6y ago
  >" Best ISP in the world sonic.net is still reselling Fiber To The Node (FTTN) AT&T 50Mbps DSL in my area." How does this work? Is it FTTN from one ISP and then copper from the node to the home via another ISP? Is it one bill?
  - martinald 6y ago
    Not entirely sure of that exact setup but usually the "monopoly" ISP will terminate the connection to the "resselling ISP" in some sort of IP tunnel. The underlying physical connection is basically invisible to the reselling ISP and it just looks like a normal IP tunnel they can route to and from. The ISP providing the physical connection bills the reselling ISP a wholesale rate for the connection, which then bills the end customer.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  I agree that Sonic is super-great. Anywhere there is a choice between Sonic and literally anyone else, Sonic is the obvious choice.
- athms 6y ago
  > Comcast...unreliable It really depends. I have Comcast Business and it has been great. I used to have Fusion from Sonic in an apartment in Santa Clara, CA at 9Mb/s. This was acceptable and the service never felt constrained. Unfortunately, I moved to a house in the same city and the bandwidth Sonic quoted was 3Mb/s. They pitched bonded to bring it up to 6Mb/s. At that point I looked into Comcast Business which starts at 35Mb/s and the L1 support aren't idiots. Sonic has its own problems. I have been a customer of theirs off and on for over twenty years, and their support has gotten worse while their sales tactics started mimicking AT&T and Comcast. Being a scrappy underdog doesn't cut it anymore. It took three attempts to get a DSL connection at my last apartment because AT&T failed to do work on their end. Granted, Sonic is dependent on AT&T and they are treated as a customer in this regard, but it is a major weakness. A customer should NOT be informing Sonic that a scheduled activation wasn't completed; Sonic should be the party reaching out to a customer. I have had modem reboots and complete failures with Sonic equipment. Documented these incidents in excruciating detail and Sonic support responds with boiler plate, telling me to do things I have already done. I would love to buy my own equipment, but unlike cable modems, nobody makes DSL modems for the general market anymore. I never signed up for promotional email, but Sonic started sending me a sales pitch every week for DirectTV. I normally deleted these, but it got to a point that I was getting three a week. When did Sonic decide that automatic opt-in was an acceptable business practice?
  - martinald 6y ago
    The problem is that Comcast (or Comcast Business) is DOCSIS, which is shared. If you get on a CMTS which is overloaded (either through an area with higher than average usage per customer, or too many customers connected) you are pretty screwed. QoS on DOCSIS is an oversight which I've never really seen work properly (mainly it is upstream that is the problem, and it's just hard to enforce this on such a shared channel).
    - athms 6y ago
      True. However, most Sonic Fusion accounts are resold AT&T circuits, including FTTN. As long as Sonic is at the mercy of AT&T, infrastructure issues can crop up. In the late 1990s, which was pre-Fusion, my Sonic DSL service stopped working. After a week of no Internet, Sonic informed me that AT&T had used my active circuit for another customer. The DSLAM was over subscribed and AT&T took a reseller circuit and used it for a new, non-reseller circuit. Because the DLSAM had no capacity, I was SOL. I switched to Comcast. I had another issue when I lived in my last apartment a few years ago. When Sonic came out to service the line, they put a quality cable in the building's wire closet. Well, AT&T decided they liked that cable and took it for another customer. The cable had a Sonic label, they knew it wasn't their service. I am convinced AT&T does this on purpose since resold circuits bring in less revenue. There is nothing Sonic can do for these types of shenanigans. Dane keeps on pimping Sonic's fiber but it has limited availability. I am in my 50s, I will be dead before it comes to Santa Clara, California, the middle of Silicon Valley.
Throwawayaerlei 6y ago
According to the article they're stopping expansion of their very first generation of ADSL, which I know is partly forced because the hardware has not been manufactured for a very long time. No doubt they've run out of scavenging they're willing to do, like upgrading a location to "ADSL/VDSL" marketed as "AT&T Internet." Which they are still offering with speeds that can go higher than 6Mbps up and all have 1TiB monthly caps. Or since they have historical data, maybe the future scavenging is dedicated to maintaining their existing customers, covering the usual old age failures, and nastier ones like DSLAMs getting destroyed by accidents, lightening, and natural disasters. I'm not sure how exactly how they do their "ASDL/VDSL" which I now use, but their old school ADSL in my home town when I and my family started using it a decade and a half ago was ASDL to the DSLAM, then ATM to a monster Cisco box 70 miles away.
- martinald 6y ago
  Hardware is still definitely available. ADSL2+ (up to 24mbit/sec) is still pretty popular (I would imagine still over 100m+ active lines globally) and is 100% backwards compatible. Nearly every VDSL modem/router and DSLAM is also compatible all the way back to ADSL1, at least that I've seen.

wnissen 6y ago

Yeah, I wonder that, too. Best ISP in the world sonic.net is still reselling Fiber To The Node (FTTN) AT&T 50Mbps DSL in my area. It's still really unfortunate, we only have one option (Comcast) for truly fast Internet. I will say that I would rather have Sonic than Comcast, the latter is very unreliable and the DSL has been rock-solid if you reboot the router every couple months. Really, really hoping 5G creates some competition in the home Internet space.

bogomipz 6y ago
>" Best ISP in the world sonic.net is still reselling Fiber To The Node (FTTN) AT&T 50Mbps DSL in my area." How does this work? Is it FTTN from one ISP and then copper from the node to the home via another ISP? Is it one bill?
- martinald 6y ago
  Not entirely sure of that exact setup but usually the "monopoly" ISP will terminate the connection to the "resselling ISP" in some sort of IP tunnel. The underlying physical connection is basically invisible to the reselling ISP and it just looks like a normal IP tunnel they can route to and from. The ISP providing the physical connection bills the reselling ISP a wholesale rate for the connection, which then bills the end customer.
ncmncm 6y ago
I agree that Sonic is super-great. Anywhere there is a choice between Sonic and literally anyone else, Sonic is the obvious choice.
athms 6y ago
> Comcast...unreliable It really depends. I have Comcast Business and it has been great. I used to have Fusion from Sonic in an apartment in Santa Clara, CA at 9Mb/s. This was acceptable and the service never felt constrained. Unfortunately, I moved to a house in the same city and the bandwidth Sonic quoted was 3Mb/s. They pitched bonded to bring it up to 6Mb/s. At that point I looked into Comcast Business which starts at 35Mb/s and the L1 support aren't idiots. Sonic has its own problems. I have been a customer of theirs off and on for over twenty years, and their support has gotten worse while their sales tactics started mimicking AT&T and Comcast. Being a scrappy underdog doesn't cut it anymore. It took three attempts to get a DSL connection at my last apartment because AT&T failed to do work on their end. Granted, Sonic is dependent on AT&T and they are treated as a customer in this regard, but it is a major weakness. A customer should NOT be informing Sonic that a scheduled activation wasn't completed; Sonic should be the party reaching out to a customer. I have had modem reboots and complete failures with Sonic equipment. Documented these incidents in excruciating detail and Sonic support responds with boiler plate, telling me to do things I have already done. I would love to buy my own equipment, but unlike cable modems, nobody makes DSL modems for the general market anymore. I never signed up for promotional email, but Sonic started sending me a sales pitch every week for DirectTV. I normally deleted these, but it got to a point that I was getting three a week. When did Sonic decide that automatic opt-in was an acceptable business practice?
- martinald 6y ago
  The problem is that Comcast (or Comcast Business) is DOCSIS, which is shared. If you get on a CMTS which is overloaded (either through an area with higher than average usage per customer, or too many customers connected) you are pretty screwed. QoS on DOCSIS is an oversight which I've never really seen work properly (mainly it is upstream that is the problem, and it's just hard to enforce this on such a shared channel).
  - athms 6y ago
    True. However, most Sonic Fusion accounts are resold AT&T circuits, including FTTN. As long as Sonic is at the mercy of AT&T, infrastructure issues can crop up. In the late 1990s, which was pre-Fusion, my Sonic DSL service stopped working. After a week of no Internet, Sonic informed me that AT&T had used my active circuit for another customer. The DSLAM was over subscribed and AT&T took a reseller circuit and used it for a new, non-reseller circuit. Because the DLSAM had no capacity, I was SOL. I switched to Comcast. I had another issue when I lived in my last apartment a few years ago. When Sonic came out to service the line, they put a quality cable in the building's wire closet. Well, AT&T decided they liked that cable and took it for another customer. The cable had a Sonic label, they knew it wasn't their service. I am convinced AT&T does this on purpose since resold circuits bring in less revenue. There is nothing Sonic can do for these types of shenanigans. Dane keeps on pimping Sonic's fiber but it has limited availability. I am in my 50s, I will be dead before it comes to Santa Clara, California, the middle of Silicon Valley.

Throwawayaerlei 6y ago

According to the article they're stopping expansion of their very first generation of ADSL, which I know is partly forced because the hardware has not been manufactured for a very long time. No doubt they've run out of scavenging they're willing to do, like upgrading a location to "ADSL/VDSL" marketed as "AT&T Internet." Which they are still offering with speeds that can go higher than 6Mbps up and all have 1TiB monthly caps. Or since they have historical data, maybe the future scavenging is dedicated to maintaining their existing customers, covering the usual old age failures, and nastier ones like DSLAMs getting destroyed by accidents, lightening, and natural disasters. I'm not sure how exactly how they do their "ASDL/VDSL" which I now use, but their old school ADSL in my home town when I and my family started using it a decade and a half ago was ASDL to the DSLAM, then ATM to a monster Cisco box 70 miles away.

martinald 6y ago
Hardware is still definitely available. ADSL2+ (up to 24mbit/sec) is still pretty popular (I would imagine still over 100m+ active lines globally) and is 100% backwards compatible. Nearly every VDSL modem/router and DSLAM is also compatible all the way back to ADSL1, at least that I've seen.