AT&T Brings Fiber To Rich Areas While the Rest Are Stuck On DSL, Study Finds (arstechnica.com) 167
According to a new study from UC Berkeley's Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, AT&T has been focused on deploying fiber-to-the-home in the higher-income neighborhoods of California, giving wealthy people access to gigabit internet while others are stuck with DSL internet that doesn't even meet state and federal broadband standards. Ars Technica reports: California households with access to AT&T's fiber service have a median income of $94,208, according to "AT&T's Digital Divide in California," in which the Haas Institute analyzed Federal Communications Commission data from June 2016. The study was funded by the Communications Workers of America, an AT&T workers' union that's been involved in contentious negotiations with the company. By contrast, the median household income is $53,186 in California neighborhoods where AT&T provides only DSL, with download speeds typically ranging from 768kbps to 6Mbps. At the low end, that's less than 1 percent of the gigabit speeds offered by AT&T's fiber service. The median income in areas with U-verse VDSL, which ranges from 12Mbps to 75Mbps, is $67,021. In 4.1 million California households, representing 42.8 percent of AT&T's California service area, AT&T's fastest speeds fell short of the federal broadband definition of 25Mbps downloads and 3Mbps uploads, the report said.
Corporation wants to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
who would have tought
They already made money (Score:4, Interesting)
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they got billions (with a 'b') in subsidies while _also_ being allowed to charge extra fees to bring fiber to those poor neighborhoods. They pocketed the money and told us to go fuck ourselves.
Well, they did make sure to send plenty of that cash back to those politicians that agreed to the deal so the gravy train would keep rolling their way, so their *real* "customers" got what they wanted out of the deal. Subscribers and their wallets are the product, not the customers.
Why would the politicians screw with such a sweet deal? Especially when they can essentially repeat the same scam every decade or two or three, depending, just like regularly shearing sheep. It's the same with most public-sector
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they got billions (with a 'b') in subsidies while _also_ being allowed to charge extra fees to bring fiber to those poor neighborhoods. ... Why the hell Americans are so obsessed with the "free" market...
And, yet again, we have cronyism being confused with a free market.
Hint: If they got billions in subsidies, it's not a free market.
Hint 2: If the government did it, they would be putting the finishing touches on their plan to roll ISDN out to those neighborhoods over the next 5 years.
It's difficult to find the winning path.
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If the government did it, they would be putting the finishing touches on their plan to roll ISDN
Like they did in Chattanooga, TN [vice.com], Longmont, CO [longmontcolorado.gov], and tens of other cities [muninetworks.org] across the US? Oh wait, you said ISDN, not Gigabit fibre.
I'm not a big government fan, but when it comes to services that have reached utility level (aka everyone needs them to function in society, like water, electricity, and now internet access) the profit driven "free market" approach only seems to create monopolies that drive up prices and lower the quality of service.
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If the government did it, they would be putting the finishing touches on their plan to roll ISDN
Like they did in Chattanooga, TN [vice.com], Longmont, CO [longmontcolorado.gov], and tens of other cities [muninetworks.org] across the US? Oh wait, you said ISDN, not Gigabit fibre.
I'm not a big government fan, but when it comes to services that have reached utility level (aka everyone needs them to function in society, like water, electricity, and now internet access) the profit driven "free market" approach only seems to create monopolies that drive up prices and lower the quality of service.
Sigh. Again, this isn't a free market. Remember "billions in subsidies"?
The other issue is that this isn't like water and electricity. The same standards of delivery for those services was the same 100 years ago. Broadband has changed dramatically in the last 5 years. There is simply no comparison.
I have no problem at all with municipal broadband competing in a market on a level playing field (meaning they also have to provide service to places that might not be lucrative), which is mostly what you see
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Corporation wants to make money by refusing to provide service to those willing to pay.
ATT is NOT a charity (Score:2, Insightful)
They'll go where the money is.
That's the proper way to run a business.
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You mean committing fraud? AT&T has been offered and accepted deal after deal granting them special tax breaks, subsidies,. and some big fat checks, not to mention right of way over other people's property in exchange for not cherry picking the rich neighborhoods. Time for them to pay up.
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I suspect if you read the fine print you'd find that they have lived up to their obligations. Even if there was a goal established for reaching x% of households with y mbps speed, failing to reach that goal doesn't necessarily mean they violated the agreement. I'm curious if you have any concrete details with links to the relevant legislation (or regulation, or executive order, or whatever) that specifies the terms of the agreement including consequences.
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That might take a whole other website and a few years time to pile up the many cases of this going back to the mid '90s.
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Eh I've read other websites about this issue. It sounds like mostly bullshit to me. From what I recall, the biggest source of "theft" or whatever that people accuse AT&T of is that they were depreciating their copper network and getting a tax break for that. It's a really common theme... people have no clue about how taxes work, and then fly into a rage when they find out some company is "using loopholes" or "not paying taxes."
The other big complaint I've heard is that companies like Verizon and AT&
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If that's all you saw, you must not have wanted to see more. Pretty much all of the telecoms have been taking massive grants and subsidies since the mid '90s to build out universal broadband service. They have yet to actually perform to the level they promised.
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Universal service is an aspirational goal. Wanting to hold telecoms responsible for failing is like saying Obamacare is fraudulent because it promised universal health care and failed, so the government should refund all of the tax money collected for it.
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The government never collected tax money for universal healthcare. Obamacare was never claimed to be universal healthcare. It was claimed to expand the availability of health insurance and it did that. Feel free to argue if it was a good value or if it expanded it enough or even if insurance was an appropriate approach to healthcare, but it did what was claimed. The telecoms get heaps of money to implement universal service and have for a long time.
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Gigabit Internet from AT&T is $70/month. DSL is $30 -$40 a month. How many people could afford to pay $40 a month and couldn't afford $70?
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I am going to get hard flamed for this, but I would still make the argument that the vast vast majority of people have no need or even practical use for more than the 50Mbps symmetric speeds VDSL can "practically" deliver.
I telecommute, I would LOVE something better than LTE, because the caps are an issue, the speed around 6Mbps really isn't the problem. That said if I had the choice between VDSL and gigabit fiber at a price difference of $30 a month, I would not pay fiber.
We don't need fiber the premises
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I agree. I have Gigabit Internet but it's really overkill. The problem with DSL and cable are upload speeds. Comcast's gig service tops out 35Mbps - unlike AT&T.
My work network tops out at 80/80 when I'm on the VPN in the middle of the night, most streaming is less than 10Mbps, and I have yet to go to a website or download a file at anything over 25Mbps except for work.
The only thing that comes within 50% of maxing out my connection is BackBlaze if I max it out with 10connecgiknd.
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I have AT&T Gigabit Internet. My bill every month is $70. No extra fees for the modem rental, or other bogus fees.
I usually get around 400Mbps/400Mbps wireless and 900+Mbps/900Mbps wired on my best computer (my desktop). I get slightly less on my laptops with Gig-E.
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They'll go where the money is.
You are correct. They went to the government, lobbied for subsidies to build out broadband networks they had no intention of completing. They also have local monopolies that lower competition levels and increase profits. That's how to profit with crony capitalism.
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Nothing at all to do with who will pay what and everything to do with the squeaky wheel gets oiled. Basically they did those area first, where people would complain the loudest (loud in terms of real political access) and the poor, well, we all know the answer to that, screw em (keep in mind the prejudice of the decision makers). Don't think so, think property size and how many residence per kilometre of road, poor area small properties and medium density dwellings versus rich area and mansions (much larger
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That was the way it was in rural areas (no electric grid) ;until as late as the 1960's (for those further out). Even with transmission lines crossing their properties, farmers and ranchers could not get electricity because "it just would not be profitable to serve them". The Electric Co-operative system alleviated this except for a few people in very remote areas. Where I am moving to in Bandera County Texas, the local electric co-op is working to put fiber to the premises in the denser rural areas. The
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Who exactly is surprised by this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rich people also drive Teslas, were the first to have HDTV and before that, the first to have home computers.
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Re:Who exactly is surprised by this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are not necessities.
Neither is gigabit internet.
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They define needs differently these days. [goo.gl]
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But faster connections than DSL are. The government even states that.
The government says a lot of crap; doesn't make it true.
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If you can lobby to change it, it's not really a necessity is it.
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So you don't know what the word "necessity" means I take it?
Let's see, if you successfully lobbied the government to declare that water is not a necessity... would it stop being a necessity in your view?
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I would think rich people do have priority for food, water, and shelter. Don't they? Last I checked, only the rich and the very kooky poor are planning for things like nuclear armageddon where those things will suddenly be an issue.
Poor people paid most of the taxes (Score:2)
Re:Poor people paid most of the taxes (Score:4, Informative)
Poor people paid most of the taxes that put fiber in those rich neighborhoods.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the exact opposite of true. At least at a national level (Federal income tax), the top 16% of earners (those will incomes of $100K or above) account for 79.4% of all the individual tax revenue paid to the government [pewresearch.org]. In fact, the top 1% of earners account for 51.6% of the IRS individual tax revenue all by themselves. Maybe taxes in California are radically different, but I doubt it.
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A poor person may at least enter negotiation with the sellers of those products, to see if they can come to a mutually acceptable offer.. AT&T refusing to even consider offers. Refusing business out of hand is a pretty anti-capitalist move.
They are also often newer (Score:2)
That is another huge determining factor. The big cost is laying the infrastructure. The kind doesn't matter so much. So, if you are doing new deployments, fiber is more likely. The cable company here is all FTTH all the time for new build outs. However once that shit is deployed a replacement is a lot of money that you'd rather not spend. So they are less inclined to do it.
Well new developments also tend to not be low income. Usually middle and upper class is what they target. No surprise then that is where
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Don't look at me for sympathy :)
I bought this house in a middle class neighborhood about 30 years ago. It has degraded to lower middle class. (Hey, it makes for cheap security: noone in the neighborhood has anything worth stealing, so burglars don't bother us . . .)
I can get highspeed from Cox, may many poxes befall their house.
Centurylink, which used to be the phone company, can't deliver more than 3 mbit service here (but, gee, if I dig the trench to the street, they'll supply 8 conductor rather than 4
ummm just saying (Score:3)
wouldn't it make sense for them to deploy where people will buy their product especially when it is substantially more expensive product. and with the bonus of monetizing the usage data of high net-worth individuals who are probably a the target demographic of their advertising overlords...
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I'm paying $70 a month for AT&T Gigabit Internet -- $30 - $40 a month more than DSL. That's not "substantially" more expensive..
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50% more! What is substantial double? $40 is a weeks worth of groceries for a lot of Americans!
If you think $40 additional cost is "insubstantial" to most folks you are completely out of touch!
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The average household income is $55775 a year. $40 a month is $480 a year. That less than 1% of the average household income.
The average cost of food per month for a household is $550.
https://www.valuepenguin.com/h... [valuepenguin.com]
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average vs median, math is hard but these things matter
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Yes and Words Mean Things
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
"a single value (such as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values"
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i work with full time coworkers that would forgo the service for 40 dollar difference, while i would probably pay 40 more than you do to get gigabit.
my coworkers do not live in my neighborhood.
Don't knock DSL just because it's DSL. (Score:2)
Is the DSL at least reliable? If so, I'll take it!
DSL versus fiber versus gerbils carrying pebbles with 1's and 0's on them make diddly squat difference if it's not reliable.
Damn oligopolies make one have to choose between Dumb and Dumber.
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I've had strictly DSL in some for or other since early 2000, and I've rarely had "connectivity issues". The most notable times were first, when the local copper down the alley degraded to the point where POTS service gave up before DSL did (though this gave me my first lesson in how TCP/IP doesn't tolerate even 10% packet loss very well), and second when (at least three times on two lines!) someone re-punched the wires inside a breakout box incorrectly. There have also been times (usually after midnight) wh
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I agree about reliability. Way back around 2003, I was having serious trouble with Time Warner internet. They claimed to be faster than DSL. They probably were, but for me, they went down at the drop of a hat. Any hat. Anywhere in the world.
DSL might have been slower, but it was much more reliable.
DSL works for me (Score:2)
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funny enough (Score:2)
I was just bitching not more than 2 hours ago about how ATT only has fiber service in the dumpy part of town, but not out here.
Im not rich, mind you but I live inland on a peninsula of a very large lake, so while I personally am not rich, there's some sickeningly big ass lake houses just down the road
There's a semi-good reason (Score:3)
With ADSL, you can upgrade one CO and spread the costs among rich AND poor areas. With VDSL2, your meaningful service area is about 1,000 feet... and deploying a new VRAD in an area without existing fiber within a mile or so isn't cheap. Unless they can find enough rich people within a thousand feet who can't get service through an existing VRAD, those poor areas aren't going to get faster service.
God, it hurts defending AT&T... but even if they were actively benevolent, VDSL2's short range makes it really hard to cost-effectively serve poor areas UNLESS those poor areas have lots of people willing and able to buy premium internet service.
Going back to the rural electrification argument, yes, you can force the power company to provide you with power almost anywhere adjacent to a public road or right-of-way... but if you decide to build an Aluminum-smelting plant in the middle of nowhere (Aluminum-smelting uses a STAGGERING amount of power), you can't legally (or reasonably) expect the power company to upgrade 100+ miles of wiring for free, even if they WOULD provide you with up to 500A service for free.
The best way California can get Uverse into poor neighborhoods? Find all the properties in the area owned by the city/county/state due to unpaid liens, and offer one per ~2,000 feet to AT&T for free (waiving those liens) as a neighborhood VRAD site. Most poor areas have vacant properties that can't be sold, because the liens exceed its value. Making some of them available to AT&T as VRAD sites would make it easier for AT&T to justify the cost of deploying 50mbps+ VDSL2 into those areas.
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You mean in addition to all of the special tax breaks, right of way, and subsidies they have already been given?
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ADSL has a range of a few miles, but as you observed, it maxes out around 13mbps. VDSL2 is another matter entirely.
ADSL was viable for CLECs to lease wires, because they could rent rack space in the RBOC's CO and serve thousands of customers. VDSL2 blows that whole business model out the window... the only practical way CLECs could be accommodated with VDSL2 (due to short distance limits) is if the RBOC provided the VDSL2 network connectivity to the customer, then routed that customer's traffic over to the
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UNLESS those poor areas have lots of people willing
One thing I find is that it doesn't matter how poor someone is, they always find money for a premium cable subscription.
Which makes me wonder why cable companies don't provide them with high speed internet too.
Wish I could get DSL (Score:2)
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News to Me... (Score:2)
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You are not alone, family member who lives right next to Ferguson, Missouri has AT&T Gigabit service. I checked addresses around them and one block in any direction and it would say "unavailable.'. I would think SF would have a better roll out.
You know what we need to do? (Score:2)
"Look... Let's be real.. if those nigg&&cough^^cough^^hack$##... poor people could just afford to pay for it, it'd be there already..."
As much
Do not jump to conclusions... (Score:2)
This problem has been solved by Cooperatives (Score:3)
This problem has already been solved by Cooperatives
But even Cooperatives have trouble. The cost to provision a dwelling for fiber ranges from $3,000 to $12,000 and large fiber build-outs or build-overs are not likely to happen without a government subsidy.
Verizon FiOS is not building fiber anymore because it just doesn't make economic sense to. Verizon will not see dime one of profit for another 10 years on their FiOS plants. Remember, they cut bait and sold an entire region to Frontier years ago.
Fiber to the neighborhood and copper coaxial to the dwellings is perfectly sensible and astonishingly cheap with comparable speeds and latency, though not 800 MB/s speeds, which, arguably, a dwelling would have a hard time seeing that speed once the connection leaves the FiOS plant.
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The cost to provision a dwelling for fiber ranges from $3,000 to $12,000
I think the low end must be lower than $3k, based on my observations of AT&T installing fiber in my neighborhood. Where did you get that figure and how old is it?
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Yeah, it's from a couple of years ago. I'm sure it's lower now.
Verizon (Score:2)
>"AT&T Brings Fiber To Rich Areas While the Rest Are Stuck On DSL, Study Finds "
Duh. Can you say "How is that different from Verizon?" who does the EXACT SAME THING with their FIOS fiber. Here, one better-off neighborhood has FIOS and right across the street one that is less well-off has zero access to FIOS. And it is like that all throughout the city. Verizon covered only the absolute top of the market with FIOS and left the rest to rot with 2Mb/s DSL, which is so fragile that half of it goes do
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Well I don't think that is just it. My family member that basically lives in Ferguson, Missouri has AT&T Gigabit service, but going a block in any direction doesn't from their house. No they don't live in the rich part of town at all.
Of course (Score:2)
My neighborhood is home to a major AT&T CO which occupies a multistory building the size of a large square block. It was once full of so many employees, they had a whole other second block of parking lots for workers. But it's all automated now. It's kind of a Mother of All COs, serving as a hub for a large number of regular COs.
This CO has ALL the latest services including fiber, video, DSL, whatever. Nobody here can get any of these services except DSL. We're a poorer neighborhood, you see. A
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I think you missed the most important part. They wired a NEW neighborhood, that hadn't been previously wired. The major blockade to getting the last mile of fiber installed is usually right of way, both on utility poles (they are often owned by a competitor) and it's even worse when all the wiring is underground. Sometimes the old wiring in a neighborhood falls apart to the point where it needs to be completely replaced, and at that point you will probably see the "only one block gets gigabit" effect.
Municipal fiber (Score:3)
Seems like good business sense. (Score:2)
Higher income households are more likely to use a gigabit connection. Given the choice they will more likely choose the $70 gigabit over the $30-$40 DSL.
They are more likely to have tvs that can support 4k streaming. They probably have more devices that are accessing the internet at the same time(smartphones, tablets, and multiple pcs/laptops). They are also more likely to be telecommuting.
They are also less likely to intentionally share their wifi with multiple neighbors and friends.
Upcoming Tech (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll probably be labeled a shill for this, but it explains why AT&T isn't pushing very hard on FTTH deployment.
In the works is a wireless solution that will provide gigabit speeds to homes that will be MUCH cheaper to deploy than fiber can ever be. It's called Project AirGig.
The designs I've seen sit atop telephone poles and are inductive powered via the power lines.
I want to say they operate in the 39 ghz range.
It is being prepped for 5g deployment so, IF they get the design down, expect to see it in the not too distant future.
Is why they're pushing for regulation changes that would allow them to install these units atop the poles with a minimum of red tape.
Also explains why they don't want to pour billions of dollars into fiber if this is a potential solution instead.
Marketing Video: https://youtu.be/ZF09OWzv_pw [youtu.be]
Re: But $90k per year is poor in California (Score:5, Insightful)
This is such a stupid article. Seems to incite flame, but it's like stating: Rolex builds stores in affluent shopping centers only, study finds.
So? Gigabit internet costs more than DSL, and it costs more to build out. So if they go to where there are a high number of subscribers who can likely afford it, they are more likely to recoup the buildout investment, and the service then won't die off. Otherwise the headline would read: AT&T kills off GPON service due to low subscriber rates.
The rich get the product first, lowering the N'th's cost and so by making it more affordable for the products to be moved down market. Everyone knows this.
Re: But $90k per year is poor in California (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, telecom companies don't operate in the same environment as Rolex or (as suggested above) Tesla.
First of all, Rolex or Tesla won't refuse to sell you their products if you come along with cash just because of your address.
Secondly, and most importantly, those companies don't get massive subsidies from taxpayers to provide services to all, not just a privileged few.
Finally, if you are looking at Tesla or other products in their initial phase, there is certainly a time when the costs are high and they drop as adoption rates increase, but at this time, GPON is well established technology. Costs are not likely to drop very much.
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Re: But $90k per year is poor in California (Score:4, Informative)
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Maybe the USF is only high enough to bring DSL to poor neighborhoods. Or maybe, and this is what I suspect, the USF does nothing and our attempts to subsidize universal service is a failure.
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I suspect that the companies receiving the USF funds don't see it as a failure. There's probably not enough "stick" to go with that "carrot" though...
Re: But $90k per year is poor in California (Score:4, Interesting)
GPON is well established technology. Costs are not likely to drop very much.
Don't be ridiculous! Costs are dropping and will continue to drop as the technology is deployed more to residential customers. The cost of fiber optic cable itself is going down. The cost of fiber network equipment is going down. The labor costs of installing are going down. I mean for example, when AT&T installed fiber in my neighborhood they sent a guy out to fuse the cables. Last time I talked to a tech doing an install, he told me they stopped doing that and use pre-terminated cables. It's cheaper. It's faster. Putting the cable in the ground is also getting cheaper, easier, and less labor intensive.
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The cost of fiber optic cable itself is going down. The cost of fiber network equipment is going down. The labor costs of installing are going down.
And all of that pales in comparison to the costs of litigation and red tape involved in doing anything underground. That cost just seems to go up without any end in sight.
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And, pray tell...which group of people being considered here are paying the bulk of said taxes that fund said subsidies?
The wealthy neighborhoods or the Section 8 housing part of the city?
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I don't know what country you live in, but in the USA, paying more taxes does not get you more votes, nor should it entitle you to more government spending.
Re: But $90k per year is poor in California (Score:2)
*should* is your opinion, not a fact.
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No, but it *does* keep the cops from patrolling your residences unless there's a call.
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But here it isn't directly govt. spending.
It is govt giving subsidies/monopolies to private business which then builds out and provides the product, i.e. higher speed networking.
The company(s) know who butters their bread and will vote them more if they provide the product, hence...the wealthier neighborhoods get the good stuff first.
And besides...wh
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maybe not so stupid when you consider how many hundreds of millions of dollars AT&T was given to build out better than DSL service to underserved and rural areas. And just where did all that money go?
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A follow up study to the one in the article reached a quick conclusion....
"Duh!!"
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Gigabit internet costs more than DSL, and it costs more to build out.
If you now are ripping open the earth, laying a DSL line is far more expensive in the long term than laying a gigabit one, as you need to replace the DSL in a few decades any way because none of your customers will want it or be happy with it. I mean the largest part of the costs of building out the last mile is just cost connected to moving soil.
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For new housing in which they are putting in new wires it makes sense to put in fibre and skip copper all together. But for most of the existing houses they just use the existing copper wires for DSL. There is no digging up to install wires so DSL is cheaper to install than fibre. That was the great thing about DSL. It reused the existing infrastructure. You just changed the line card and gave the customer a couple of filters for their phones.
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The study comes from the UC Berkeley's Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, which hosts a yearly "Othering & Belonging" conference [berkeley.edu].
So, yes.
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The only solution is for the haves to voluntarily care for the poor - and for have-nots to avoid being covetous assholes that focus on complaining about not getting enough (i.e. the world owes them a living.)
To help bring that about, both sides would need to come closer together, figuratively and literally. Personalize the whole
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And after this is done what prevents one the parceled out smaller corporations from expanding their business enough to regain and over take the size of the original corporation?
If a company controls more than a pre-defined percentage of the market, they would be required to break off some of it completely (into its own, separate business entity - no legal collusion). It would then compete against its former "parent" in the same market. They still have the ability to make a ton of money, while keeping the