3 ms·
Would it not be the case that if ATT ran fiber to my home, they would charge me a fee to connect to it? (And possibly an installation fee to plug it in, and a r
by fernly 12y ago
Would it not be the case that if ATT ran fiber to my home, they would charge me a fee to connect to it? (And possibly an installation fee to plug it in, and a rental fee for a modem to connect to it, but set those aside.) The point is that each terminus of a fiber is a cash generator, just as each landline telephone connected to ATT's voice network is a cash generator. They would invest in "infrastructure" in order to ensure a long-term flow of small cash payments -- exactly as they did for telephones in the 1920s, just as electrical and gas utilities did in the 1890s.
- maxlybbert 12y agoThey have some costs running and maintaining the system. Connection fees aren't enough, of course people pay monthy subscription fees. Again, I realize there are obvious ways to abuse its control of its network. I'm a big fan of net neutrality, I just want to know that we've considered what the world will look like down the road. And, really, I can see valid reasons to treat different traffic differently. If Netflix wants to send 2GB of data to a person, there is a deadline of how quickly that data should arrive for a good viewing experience. If somebody wants to deliver 2GB of data to an email server, they're probably OK if it takes a while. Then again, under the current system, there's no way to say what kind of latency or throughput data needs. The best AT&T can do is guess based on who the endpoints are.