AT&T came through and wired my neighborhood for fiber, all except for the 14 houses on my side of our street. I have AT&T copper in my yard but they don’t offer sign up’s anymore. They “completed” my neighborhood in 2022 and moved to the next.
Usually fiber lines that have either been there for decades or the the federal government has been effectively paying them to install for decades decades and they just fucking didn’t do it yet.
Lots of those “government surcharges” that aren’t quoted in their estimates and show up as a surprise bill were authorized by the government, but go directly to the carriers and are supposed to be used to cover the cost of infrastructure upgrades and extension.
I’ve also been involved in something similar. It costs a lot to expand infrastructure. Part of my job would be to plan and explain the costs associated with that. Wireless still needs a wired connection, and wireless still has connection limitations. You can’t just add more users and expect things to work. And you can’t just plop another receiver without it interfering with the others. It needs to be properly planned and something as simple as a building’s signal reflectivity can mess an entire project up. More towers, more equipment, more redundancy, more personnel, more cables, more power, and forking all the money to do all this within the time limit or face fines is a huge task. And that’s assuming it could even work on a technical level, sometimes you just can’t do things (don’t want to interfere with FAA requirements and such) and people don’t understand.
I hate ATT too, but from a purely financial and planning point of view, I’ve been there. You can’t just snap some fingers and make things happen just like that.
I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. I meant AT&T is pulling out and removing service from people who already have it. They aren’t just pulling out of new projects, they are pulling out of existing service areas.
I thought it was clear in the article but I guess I shouldn’t have assumed. That’s on me.
Old cable guy here. The cost is in laying the lines. That cost is astronomical. AT&T did the math, said, “Fuck it. Not worth it.”
Call 'em evil, but they’re not stupid.
ISPs were already given a shitload of money to build out infrastructure, but they did the bare minimum and pocketed the rest instead.
They need to be forced to build out a proper modern infrastructure at this point, imaginary money line be damned.
They didn’t even do the bare minimum
AT&T came through and wired my neighborhood for fiber, all except for the 14 houses on my side of our street. I have AT&T copper in my yard but they don’t offer sign up’s anymore. They “completed” my neighborhood in 2022 and moved to the next.
They aren’t laying lines though. It’s the Internet Air program which provides it through 5g.
And where’s does 5g come from
Usually fiber lines that have either been there for decades or the the federal government has been effectively paying them to install for decades decades and they just fucking didn’t do it yet.
Lots of those “government surcharges” that aren’t quoted in their estimates and show up as a surprise bill were authorized by the government, but go directly to the carriers and are supposed to be used to cover the cost of infrastructure upgrades and extension.
I’ve also been involved in something similar. It costs a lot to expand infrastructure. Part of my job would be to plan and explain the costs associated with that. Wireless still needs a wired connection, and wireless still has connection limitations. You can’t just add more users and expect things to work. And you can’t just plop another receiver without it interfering with the others. It needs to be properly planned and something as simple as a building’s signal reflectivity can mess an entire project up. More towers, more equipment, more redundancy, more personnel, more cables, more power, and forking all the money to do all this within the time limit or face fines is a huge task. And that’s assuming it could even work on a technical level, sometimes you just can’t do things (don’t want to interfere with FAA requirements and such) and people don’t understand.
I hate ATT too, but from a purely financial and planning point of view, I’ve been there. You can’t just snap some fingers and make things happen just like that.
I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. I meant AT&T is pulling out and removing service from people who already have it. They aren’t just pulling out of new projects, they are pulling out of existing service areas.
I thought it was clear in the article but I guess I shouldn’t have assumed. That’s on me.