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AT&T The Internet

AT&T Finally Stops Selling DSL (usatoday.com) 148

"One of America's largest internet providers is uploading its oldest broadband technology into the sunset," reports USA Today, complaining that AT&T will be leaving some future customers without any choices for wired broadband. "We're beginning to phase out outdated services like DSL and new orders for the service will no longer be supported after October 1," a corporate statement sent beforehand read. "Current DSL customers will be able to continue their existing service or where possible upgrade to our 100% fiber network."

DSL — a broadband connection delivered over old copper telephone lines — is no prize at AT&T. The company doesn't sell downloads faster than 6 Mbps, less than a fourth of the 25-Mbps minimum definition of the Federal Communications Commission and further cramps their utility with stringent data caps of just 150 gigabytes. But the technology that provided many people (myself included) their first real broadband still works to provide an always-on connection and far more capacity than satellite connectivity.

"I'm really not surprised that AT&T is phasing out DSL, as it's an obsolete technology," emailed one soon-be-stranded DSL subscriber, retiree Jack Mangold of Collettsville, North Carolina. "I am, however, very disappointed that AT&T has no interest in replacing DSL in rural areas with some other technology." AT&T reported 653,000 total DSL connections at the end of its second quarter, compared to 14.48 million on its fiber-optic and hybrid-fiber services. The latter, sold as "AT&T Internet," combines fiber trunk lines with DSL last-mile connections for faster speeds.

The company has seen DSL subscribers steadily dwindle. Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst at the research firm Leichtman Research Group, wrote in an email that two years ago, AT&T had just over a million DSL customers. "AT&T basically gave up on fighting cable over a third of its territory" said Dave Burstein, editor of the trade publication Fast Net News.

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AT&T Finally Stops Selling DSL

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  • Some of it are forms of DSL. The "box" plugs into a phone line and does all of its internet and video over that one connection. That's what it was when I had an apartment years ago.
    • by Megane ( 129182 )

      Uverse is VDSL in general as far as I know. "The company doesn't sell downloads faster than 6 Mbps" sounds like what they're actually stopping is ADSL, since they don't sell Uverse that slow. However, I would like to see them step up burying more fiber, that copper is going to keep slowly degrading. When I had my Uverse hooked up a few years ago, the tech had to go back twice to the breakout box a few blocks away. That's two out of three pairs that weren't suitable!

      • since they don't sell Uverse that slow

        FTFY. Uverse can definitely be that slow. But they sell it as up to something much higher. And poor you for living so far away from the DSLAM.

        • Thats what the remotes were about. You gotta be inside 3000ft in order to push VDSL2 sufficient enough to give you tv service. So the DSLAM you will see in the field are 1U in boxes mounted to poles.

    • AT&T reported 653,000 total DSL connections at the end of its second quarter, compared to 14.48 million on its fiber-optic and hybrid-fiber services. The latter, sold as "AT&T Internet," combines fiber trunk lines with DSL last-mile connections for faster speeds.

      When they reference hybrid fiber "AT&T Internet*, they're talking about Uverse. They're phasing out ADSL.

      • Yea. VDSL2 is still ongoing.

        ADSL2 will max at 24M x 1M if you are close enough. Thats without G.bond , but so few devices supported G.bond and it was not resilient. If you lose the primary pair the secondary pair also failed. You could lose the secondary but not primary.

        HDSL is the smart jacks they use for T1 voice or data services. There is a 2-pair and 1-pair spec for HDSL. You will still see these when delivering traditional PRI service.

        VDSL/VDSL2 is an asynchronous higher speed DSL with much shorter dis

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Some of it are forms of DSL. The "box" plugs into a phone line and does all of its internet and video over that one connection. That's what it was when I had an apartment years ago.

      Around here, they're selling "fiber" connections that are DSL. I laughed when I saw that they were "phasing out DSL". Sure they are - they'll definitely phase out calling it "DSL". They'll still sell it, just to suckers who think they're getting fiber.

      I've shit on their little parade for about a year now on Nextdoor. People pop in with "I'm thinking of changing from xfinity to fiber from AT&T." I then tell them the magic question for AT&T: "Is it fiber to the premises?" Because I know AT&T

      • Our main office has had U-Verse DSL for years now. For WiFi and that's about it. AT&T contacted me informing me they are phasing out the copper DSL service, and would upgrade us to fiber. I too was skeptical, but when I was accompanying the tech around, sure enough, he patched right into our fiber appliance in our demark room to connect their U-Verse box to. We have fiber dedicated Internet service for our client/server network, so we already had the infrastructure in place at the premise. Overall we ar

        • Our main office has had U-Verse DSL for years now. For WiFi and that's about it. AT&T contacted me informing me they are phasing out the copper DSL service, and would upgrade us to fiber. I too was skeptical, but when I was accompanying the tech around, sure enough, he patched right into our fiber appliance in our demark room to connect their U-Verse box to. We have fiber dedicated Internet service for our client/server network, so we already had the infrastructure in place at the premise. Overall we are pulling 500 mbit on the U-Verse service and I can't complain!

          We're out of town in an area where the smallest lots are an acre, so running fiber to premises isn't a priority. Especially when you can sell the rubes a DSL connection and make them think it's fiber.

        • For residences, AT&T fiber really means fiber to the neighborhood. From where the fiber ends it is ADSL or VDSL to the home. They never tell you how fast your internet will be until you call, because (1) they need your phone number and address for marketing reasons and (2) they need to know how far away you are from the end of the fiber.

          I'm happy with my AT&T, even though price is high for the speed your get at least it's not Comcast. I'm in a city though, whereas my mother is in a small town and

    • It's DSL, and averages 1 to 1.5 Mbps. Nineties technology.

  • I'm Seattle and I'm stuck with shotgunned 128K ISDN.
    • How???

      • Arthur is just a weirdo who literally has been posting that he can only get ISDN in Seattle for a decade. He has some gripe with Seattle city council I think.
        • The real news is that ISDN is still been offered as a service for residential users (business users are different because they might have a piece of industrial equipment with an ISDN modem or which needs an ISDN videophone line or whatever, but there is no reason to offer ISDN to residential users anymore). Anyway, I cannot understand how Arthur's post has a score of 2, since his experience is not typical but he didn't bother to clarify it.
          • Radio stations still use it for remote links because I think they have to guarantee latency.

            • Interesting... Now that I am thinking of it, ISDN is dial-up, so it can guarantee quality-of-service if you dial another ISDN number (that's how ISDN videophones worked). Still, why is it offered to residential users? Also, why can't this Arthur guy act like a normal person and resolve whatever issue they have with the council and get some broadband internet? Why does he feel the need to complain here as if his experience is typical? Questions, questions...
          • by aitikin ( 909209 )

            Anyway, I cannot understand how Arthur's post has a score of 2, since his experience is not typical but he didn't bother to clarify it.

            His post didn't/doesn't have a score of 2, just like yours doesn't (at time of typing). You likely have a "Karma-Bonus Modifier" of +1, so users whose overall karma is positive get a bonus point when you read the comments. That's why your posts start as a 2 even though the comment itself is a 1.

            IIRC that modifier is set to +1 by default.

          • If your karma score is excellent, your posts start at a score of 2. Could simply be that nobody bothered to mod his post.
    • Not everywhere has cable. My uncle has a cabin on a lake out in a remote, but populated area. The lake has several permanent residents, and the only broadband available is DSL. There isn't even stable 4G available, you have to go down the road a few miles to get a clean signal. The only other option would be satellite, which is *stupid* expensive, and slower than DSL. Starlink might be an option, but it's not available yet.

      • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Yep, I'm not even in a remote area, I just live on a dead end street and have a long driveway and they never ran cable to the house when they were building out in the area. Myself and one neighbor are stuck on AT&T ADSL because of it. Going from 150/10 at my old house to 18/1 here really sucked.
        • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

          Oof that's rough. My sister-in-law was in the same situation in the suburbs. She was at the very end of a cable leg, and while she could technically get cable broadband, it *sucked* and since the cables were buried, the cable company didn't want to fix it. She ended up getting a refund for a couple month's service because they couldn't even provide 20% of the advertised bandwidth.

          She ended up making a deal with a neighbor a few houses down to share his fiber connection (the availability of which ended in be

        • You can imagine if you were building a new cul-de-sac or mobile home park, there is a department to talk at the cable company about putting up a couple poles and running cable to a new group of houses. Which is an altogether different department from the standard retail sales that turns of existing connections, locations that already have physical cable.

          Thar department should be able to give you a quote, which will probably include up-front cost. The cost is sometimes very reasonable and sometimes not. So

          • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            Oh they gave me a quote all right. I decided I could live with 18/1 after seeing it. The big problem is the length, and the fact that despite them using the local utility poles, they would not use my existing bump poles (owned by the power company they already work with) and said it had to be buried.
          • by Strider- ( 39683 )

            I live in Vancouver, BC and keep a sailboat in one of the local marinas. Our marina has a fairly large number of float homes in it, so our local telephone company (Telus) has run FTTH out onto all the docks. I could legitimately get gigabit fiber to my boat, but not to my condo. WTF?

            That said, I get a chuckle at the "Call before you dig" sticker on the FTTH box at the end of my finger. There's 25 feet of water under the dock at that point, good luck getting an excavator out there!

            • > There's 25 feet of water under the dock at that point, good luck getting an excavator out there!

              Oh that's easy. Hand me the keys to your excavator, I'll get it off the dock and into the water no problem.

              Getting it back on the dock is up to you.

              Actually, tracked excavators are made for driving in mud, and weigh enough to absolutely sink to the bottom. I wonder if someone with scuba gear could drive one down the shore into the water and drive along the bottom, given a snorkel on the ex to provide air f

        • Is the end of the cable availability close enough to your property that you could "terminate" cable in your own utility box at the periphery of your property and come up with some scheme to extend it to your house? I can almost see a metal utility box with a cable modem and a media converter to fiber, and then direct burial fiber to your house.

          • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            Nope. My drive crosses 2 other properties so I don't own the end, and even if I did, the companies won't terminate unless it's a home or business. Also can't trench my own line, it has to be their line and their guys doing it, and the cable company doesn't want to use my existing bump poles (although their lines already run on the power poles in the area), they said they had to bury the line. It was going to cost a fortune to get it run. I almost bought a small trailer and lot that went up for sale nearby t
      • by Strider- ( 39683 )

        I operate a network out to north-central WA, and we are stuck on 3.3Mbps private satellite. It sucks, but it's remarkably usable (mostly due to how much QoS I've thrown at it). There are about 40 people, plus phone and fax connected to that. It all works, amazingly.

        That said, for an individual home/user, Viasat and the like aren't that bad these days. We have it as the backup to our primary link, and when I connect things like WSUS and my debian updates to it, I regularly pull data down at 10 to 15mbps.

        But

    • I agree that DSL is outdated, and yet it is still the ONLY option for many people in the US. AT&T may want to use their fiber, but fiber doesn't go to every house whereas the legacy copper phone lines do. Even when there is an alternative to DSL, it is almost always cable from AT&T competitors.

  • This is why AT&T has been buying up cable networks. They have no plan for making copper viable. DOCSIS beats DSL every time. Remember how the cable company handled basically all communications in Snow Crash? Yeah, like that.

    • One thing many consumers don't know is that the speed of cable is dependent on the distance from the junction.

      A cable technician just recently informed me, while trouble shooting yet another fuck up with their lines, is that since I was over 8,000 feet from the junction, the best I could expect for speed is 3-5 mbps. Of course the main office was all ready to sell me 200 mbps access.

      • by Megane ( 129182 )
        You must have a really cheap and crappy cable company if they go that far between optical-to-coax nodes. Cable TV systems have been mostly fiber for like 20 years now.
      • I think the same holds true for every type of connection. My WiFi is slower the further I am from the router. People who live way out in the country can only get slow DSL. People using wireless cellular connections have issues when they are not close to a tower. Now, as far as the practice of selling you a service that they can't provide, that's just not acceptable. But this is a problem inherent in all communications technologies.

      • That sounds like bullshit, the digital signal degrades no different than the TV signals ... even if it's some archaic cable provider who didn't go digital yet, the analogue channels would be unwatchable.

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          The signal is not digital. Its analog, and various methods of modulation phase/frequency/amplitude are used to encode various patterns of bits. There is error correction and detection and negotiation of sampling rates etc. I am not up speed on cable/DOCSIS tech as to how exactly it does signaling and what it does to lower error rates in poor signal to noise conditions but it evidently does have some graceful degradation options.

          In any case no the physical link layer is not digital, if it was it would be c

  • The GOP has shot down any attempt to force companies to provide broadband service while also preventing rural communities from buying trunk lines and providing access as a public utility.

    • GOP -> Lapdogs of the cable lobby and big coal. Democrats -> Lapdogs of the content cartels and Hollywood. I mean, all the awful anti-user laws (DMCA, CBDTPA, SOPA/PIPA) are a Democrat thing. As a non-US citizen, I prefer the GOP, because all these evil anti-user laws the Democrats vote eventually seep into Europe (for example, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions is the reason my Blu-Ray player has region-locks). On the other hand, I don't really care if you guys don't have good internet or get c
    • Uncle Sam also gave out billions to broadband companies to upgrade and build infrastructure but that money seems to have disappeared.

      • Uncle Sam also gave out billions to broadband companies to upgrade and build infrastructure but that money seems to have disappeared.

        The money hasn't totally disappeared- our (small) local utility just ran fiber to every house in our (rural) neighborhood less than a month ago, and a grant covered the bill. Installers said they're in the middle of working their way through the utilitiy's entire service area.

        • by Average ( 648 )

          The money hasn't totally disappeared- our (small) local utility just ran fiber to every house in our (rural) neighborhood less than a month ago, and a grant covered the bill. Installers said they're in the middle of working their way through the utilitiy's entire service area.

          No, it hasn't totally disappeared. A lot of small rural co-op telcos did just like yours... went PON fiber everywhere. Now, a lot of them charge ridiculous amounts. An example: https://www.epictouch.com/prod... [epictouch.com], fiber to everyone's premises (yay), won't offer you more than 50 Mbps (boo), and getting even that 50/10 is $137 a month (Christ!). Others have the fun of charging you by-the-gigabyte (https://nntc.net/internet/).

          On the other side, a lot of towns that were a bit bigger, and so were part of Ma Be

      • Hey, the broadband companies paid good money for those senators and they got their money's worth out of that investment!

    • There are political and economic roadblocks to providing quality broadband (e.g.: fiber) to remote and low population areas, but the abandonment of DSL is not political. It is simply no longer economically justifiable to maintain the copper plant. There's just no path forward. It pains me to say it, but copper is dead. And coax is fast behind. Fiber is the only reasonable way forward.

      What we need is a national (perhaps even government subsidised) push to replace the copper infrastructure with fiber. Everywh

      • Coax already delivers more than enough for residential, and pushing data through it is still seeing advancements, for instance 10/6 gbps DOCSIS 4.

        DSL is dead because its run upon tiny little twisted pair with little to no shielding anywhere along it. If you were going to design a horrible wiring method to saddle your competition with, the ma bells itty bitty little twisted pair is exactly what you would come up with.
  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Monday October 05, 2020 @07:13AM (#60573512)
    My rotary phone has DSL. Never hooked it up. It just hangs on the wall as a reminder of a slower, simpler time. My cats like the springy cord.
  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday October 05, 2020 @07:36AM (#60573568) Journal

    ....why deprecate DSL? It uses existing lines (ie better for the environment than making new), and can get respectable speeds - I am writing this on an 80/20 DSL via Centurylink which is PERFECTLY ADEQUATE for home use. We have multiple people playing games, watching (simultaneously) Hulu, Netflix, Youtube...nobody seems to feel choked.

    • by raburton ( 1281780 ) on Monday October 05, 2020 @07:50AM (#60573596) Homepage

      Probably because the summary lacks useful technical detail and fails to distinguish types of DSL. They still have "hybrid-fiber services" which "combines fiber trunk lines with DSL last-mile connections for faster speeds."

      So they are still selling DSL in that scenario, and I suspect might be what you have at those speeds. In the UK the term DSL isn't all that common, we talked about ADSL in the old days, which was the first broadband, and ran the ADSL all the way from the exchange. If I remember right it only went up to about 2mb, then ADSL2 came along and speeds of 12mb were more typical. Later came what AT&T appear to call "hybrid-fiber", and in the UK is generally just referred to, less clearly, as "fibre" where they put fibre cabinets more locally and use VDSL from the cabinet to the house over the last bit of original phone wiring.

      So I think what AT&T are no longer going to sell is, in UK terms, ADSL all the way from the exchange. It's full fibre, or fibre to the cabinet only for new connections, and if you can't have either of those, then I guess you're stuck, no ADSL to fall back on.

      • Even dial-up could be considered "hybrid fiber" by that definition, since the remote server was connected to fiber at some point.
        What matters is the type of connection entering your home. It's still DSL. But what matters even more is the speed you get. VDSL2 can get you good speeds, but it seems to be close to the limit of the technology.

        • This is my problem with the blatant lying (and that's what it is) when they call a DSL service "fiber" just because "fiber" exists somewhere between your house and the rest of the internet. By that definition, my cell phone has fiber service.

    • Not wanting to serve rural communities because it's not profitable anymore (now that non-rural communities have all switched to fiber, hybrid-fiber, or cable), that's why.
    • The big companies suffer from a mental illness known as greed. They see those copper phone lines just hanging there knowing what the scrap value is. They want all that copper replaced with fiber. Verizon has been doing away with all their copper for years so people with land lines have to pay for the voip service.

    • ....why deprecate DSL? It uses existing lines

      The existing copper system is economically unsustainable. It takes a critical mass of wireline customers to support the infrastructure, and, in case you haven't noticed, almost nobody's got a wireline phone anymore. Without that revenue, the cost of maintaining the internal and external infrastructure is a huge burden on "The Phone Company".

      • Which translates to - while currently a lot of peope have no access to broadband, now a lot of those people will also lose access to good-but-not-quite-broadband also. A good time to invest in dial-up.

    • Same reason we went from telegraph to party lines to circuit-switch PSTN to packet-switched networks....
      • But those jumps offered advantages and weren't compatible with new devices. However, that is not the case with DSL. It works with modern gear, is perfectly adequate for most use cases, and is the only option for 12 percent of the populace.

        • If they get rid of DSL because of copper issues, that also means they'll be getting rid of copper for phone service too. Thus, no DSL *or* dial-up!

    • As others have mentioned, they are stopping sales of something they call DSL, but in actuality will still sell DSL, they just call it U-Verse.

      I used to have U-Verse a few years ago, and I'm almost sure the reason they want to brand it like that is to make more money pushing bundled services. Worse case scenario they'll cancel wired internet and upgrade to a bigger mobile data plan, which they also probably make more profit from. They're trying to segment the market into people they can sell 5G and p

    • AT&T doesn't want to keep maintaining the copper twisted-pair lines. It's expensive because it's labor-intensive. They'd just as soon let it all corrode into utter uselessness and make everyone who is even on analog POTS get Uverse or whatever they call their internet/TV/etc service and use VOIP, or force them to use wireless even if they don't want a celphone. I'd imagine the end-game for them is for everyone and everything to be 100% wireless so they don't have to run cabling or any kind anywhere exce
  • I will miss DSL (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrsam ( 12205 ) on Monday October 05, 2020 @07:41AM (#60573574) Homepage

    But I will hang on to my 20mbps bonded circuit until it's the greasy spot where the dead horse used to be.

    My DSL account was originally provisioned by the defunct Speakeasy. Which was then bought by Megapath, then briefly Covad, then Global Capacity, and now I'm paying GTT. I reprovisioned a few times, and it's now on a bonded circuit, giving me 20meg downstream.

    It's plenty enough for me, and I keep hearing from my neighbors how shitty their Optimum cable is. The next town over is taking those clowns to the state's public utility's commission, how flaky their service is.

    The DSL service has notably declined. Local telco is (of course) Verizon, which don't care about their physical plant any more, they are focusing on their wireless division and letting their copper rot. Last time one of the circuits went down, it was a game of broken telephone between me, GTT, and Verizon, and six or seven truck rolls, before they fixed it. Sort of. Works ok for now. I hope to hang on to DSL as long as I can. Even when one of the loops goes out I still have connectivity on the other one, so all I have to suffer through is half the bandwidth, until Verizon gets their shit together.

    The problem with broadband in 'murica can be traced to the original breakup of AT&T, that broke them up into long distance and local telcos. The breakup simply did not go far enough. AT&T should've been broken up even further, with local telephone companies ending up owning only the physical plant, that they were obligated to lease out, and tariffed rates, to any provider that wished to provide voice and data over them. The higher the reliability of their copper, and the more voice/data the copper could support, the more money they could charge for it. Including urban and suburban areas.

    Then we would've had first class broadband in 'murica.

  • "uploading its oldest broadband technology into the sunset" is a good example of a mixed metaphor. And bad English!
  • by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@[ ]ata.net.eg ['ted' in gap]> on Monday October 05, 2020 @08:18AM (#60573696) Journal

    The real story here is summed up in this quote: "I am, however, very disappointed that AT&T has no interest in replacing DSL in rural areas with some other technology." DSL isn't capped at 6Mbps...I'm a DSL subscriber who currently has 55Mbps. What AT&T is really doing is offloading their responsibility to their rural DSL customers by cutting DSL altogether.

    AT&T (and most other big-name ISPs) are getting federal dollars requiring them to offer minimum speeds of 25Mbps. In rural areas, the only "high-speed internet" option is DSL, because they still have the old copper wiring put in back in the (old) AT&T days. For these rural residents to get anything faster on that DSL than 5Mbps, ISPs need to put in multiple expensive modulators every couple miles. And that only gets them to the minimum 25Mbps. Some politicians are trying to push the minimum higher than that, which would get far more expensive. Much cheaper for AT&T to just cut DSL altogether, at the expense of rural America.

    What really should be happening is state and federal governments mandating every household have installed fiber internet, in the same manner as electricity. But there's too many corporate interests pushing against that.

  • by Joey Vegetables ( 686525 ) on Monday October 05, 2020 @08:43AM (#60573782) Journal

    At least 6 years ago, I had severe issues with my UVerse-branded DSL. The central office is literally half a block away.

    They spent weeks first denying the problem, then claiming it had to be something inside, then forcing me to miss work repeatedly by sending "technicians" who rarely actually showed up, and never found a thing wrong even though even when they were there it did not work.

    Eventually, they must have gotten sick of hearing me complain, so they finally sent a tech who told me the truth (off the record): that AT&T no longer troubleshoots nor repairs broken DSL connections, that they're trying to push everyone to fiber, and our neighborhood would get fiber within a year or so (which it did), but didn't have it yet.

    I ended up having to switch to cable, and apart from rare weather-related issues and occasional bottlenecks during busy times, it's worked very well for us. Much more expensive than UVerse, but worth every penny.

    • We tried to get DSL from ATT about a month ago.

      First they installed it to the wrong unit.

      Then we called them, told them which unit to install it to, they promised they would, and then they came out and double-checked to make sure that it was working... in the same wrong unit.

      Then we called them again, explained that they still had it in the wrong unit, so they sent someone out again, and made sure it was working in the wrong unit again.

      Then we called them and told them that since they could not manage to in

      • I'm sorry you had that experience.

        Our politics may differ, but companies like AT&T that have abused government-granted monopoly powers, and stolen billions from taxpayers, will get very little sympathy from me.

      • Really? "Every single customer" - which I assume you mean to be residence? I seriously doubt the federal government thought it could write a check and get high-speed internet connections to every household in America. I think this claim has morphed into a tall-tale, with only a hint of truth to it.

        Did AT&T, Comcast, Verizon get the checks or was it rural ISPs?

        Was it for new services, or to subsidize existing rural services?

        Did anyone ever seriously claim that "every" household would be served 10, then 2

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          Funny, they thought they could do that with rural electrification, and rural voice telephone service and the results are outside of a some very narrow exceptions they pretty much accomplished it. The electrical grid goes just about everywhere; you have to be essentially trying to do avoid it, and the same *was* true about POTS phone service.

      • Interesting how your inability to get them to understand the problem is their issue.

        I find it hard to believe a truck was rolled to the wrong address/unit multiple times - did you ever make the effort to meet with the tech? Did you ever consider talking to a supervisor? Tape a note explaining the issue on the telco box in your apt complex?

        Or did you just yell at the customer support person that got your call?

    • Curious, is your service underground, and if so, is the area rock or soil? I suspect my area will never get fiber, just too expensive to trench. I watched as they put in a new service to a commercial building nearby. They started with a smallish ditchwitch and a small backhoe. To be replaced with a much larger ditchwitch/backhoe. The maybe 600' took about 2 weeks to get from the building to the street. After a month or so, they then started trenching burrowing from the point near the street to about a mile
      • The copper is all above ground in my case. It passes near and in some cases right through trees. Squirrels regularly chew the lines, causing first intermittent, and eventually complete failure. AT&T still repairs landlines here, but only with about a week of lead time (probably worsened by COVID-19). Cable runs along the same poles, and I've had no terribly long Cox Cable outages, but the worst outage I did have, about half a day, was also blamed on a squirrel. They're otherwise harmless creatures,

        • Fiber can be on poles. I told a friend in my area that even though he knew people (and so did I) that got google fiber in the central part of town using poles, that we would not be getting it since it would be underground and expensive to plant. Sure nuff, central pole part of town has google fiber, we don't. Google was very savvy about low hanging fruit on who to connect.
  • by jittles ( 1613415 ) on Monday October 05, 2020 @08:51AM (#60573808)
    So long, and thanks for all the phish!
  • by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday October 05, 2020 @09:06AM (#60573842) Journal

    Verizon has been at this for a while. I know the people who used to own my house had ADSL. Verizon would not hood me up though. Only other option is LTE or Satellite. So Its expensive metered LTE for me. Honestly the base price and performance are not at all unacceptable, its the damn metered aspect of it.

    I would rather have good old fashion 1.5Mbps/768Kbps DSL and no meter than the 4/4Mbps LTE any day. Slow I can work with, no big deal to have a little arm box sit and sip big files over night, and I could handle watching SD quality streams, the meter means I have to go without on both counts.

    Obviously since they did it before there is no technical reason they can't do ADSL at this address, they just wont. It sucks because it really is the best option in some places like this. Given on the market protection and direct subsides they enjoy, these companies should not be allowed to just abandon service regions like this, at least not without offering some truly competitive solution in its place. LTE as offered by ATT&T and VZW simply isnt a replacement for ADSL. Sure it might be faster but show me any plan that is both price competitive with the ADSL options they are removing and offers a data cap of at last 150GB, which was what was the cap on the ADSL service according to the article. Anything more the 25Ggigs or so before aggressive throttling to well below even ADSL speeds is piles of $

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      When Verizon was my phone company, they had a non-compete agreement with Comcast. Verizon ran the POTS system. Comcast provided cable TV and Internet. As their copper lines deteriorated, they decided to install fiber in my neighborhood (Yay!) But only to provide POTS circuits to homes where they had run out of copper (WTF?) Soon, they exited the region altogether and sold their system to Frontier. Frontier promptly started selling fiber broadband, which was just in time for me. As my wireless broadband pro

    • There are ways to get unmetered LTE through Sprint and AT&T. And T-Mobile too I think, but it's trickier... The Sprint plan is/was better if you can pick up band 41 (used to be a public, routable IP, but I heard that T-Mobile is now NATing it....), and is ToS compliant. The AT&T plan is not really, and could get shut off (there are ways around this though with the right LTE modem).

      My parents are in the same situation basically, and they've used both of those options. Due to changes with Sprint servi

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        I have Verizon's fixed LTE now. It is definitely not unthrottled. Once you burn thru your plan 15, 30, or the 60 gig plan the don't advertise but you can get if you ask; they clamp it 600Kbps: No ifs ands or buts and its almost instant from maybe a moment or two between when my local counters roll past 60Gb and its slows to crawl..

        Its 'unlimited' after that but pretty well to slow for anything other than browsing, ssh, and work over RDP, with the color depth jacked down the 8-bit and the screen size limite

  • But the technology that provided many people (myself included) their first real broadband

    How funny.
    More than a few of us started on dumb terminals at 300 Baud, went to 1200 bps, and somewhere around 9600/14.4 bps moved to slip, then up to 64 kb ISDN, and finally on to either DSL or Cable.

    Sadly, in America, few have fiber and most of it is communities (at $150). Yet, in Europe, lots of Fiber.

    • There is a lot more fiber deployed in amaerican communities than you seem to think.

    • You forgot the 28.8K modem!. I used to maintain a slip connection to work and would sync data to the corp server to my home. I too remember the 300 baud units as well. Crazy what we went thru back then to get a connection. Security on the remote was calling corp, and then some magic, don't remember anymore what it was, and then corp would call back if you were authorized and make the connection.
  • We were looking at this great house, and all up and down the street there are access posts announcing that AT&T has cables buried there. So, when we got home I took a look to see what kind of service AT&T offered there. Keep in mind that half of these units said "buried fiber optic and/or copper", which had me excited. But, no, AT&T says they offer exactly NO service in the area. NONE. Surprising since when I plugged in other house numbers on that street some came up with, "there is already
  • I want to sign up for ISDN, blazing fast at 64 kbps. I heard recently there are still people on ISDN, for example an old radio show host who thinks ISDN bits provide the best audio fidelity. Not kidding.

  • Having read a number of comments in this discussion, and being reminded of tech news stories related to this over the last several years, it seems that 'gentrification' doesn't just apply to building pricey places to live in cities, displacing the working poor. It applies to the Internet here in the U.S. as well. Whereas there are, believe it or not, places in this country where there are what are referred to as 'Food Deserts', where the poor people who live there would have to travel quite a distance just to find a decent market to buy decently healthy foodstuffs, there are also 'Internet Deserts', where you just won't have any sort of Internet connectivity to speak of, or your choices are so limited and so low-quality that it's not really useful. The fact that companies like AT&T won't bother building out to rural communities or low-income areas because it's not profitable enough to bother over, coupled with the fact that companies like Comcast will fight tooth and nail in courts to actively block cities and towns from having their own municipal internet services, and you have definite 'Internet Deserts' that will have either no connectivity at all or out-of-reach for the inhabitants of those areas. Twenty years ago I would have said "That's too bad, but Internet isn't really necessary", but today I have to say it is necessary for way too many things, and especially for the moment with this pandemic going on; people need to be able to order things online that they can't get locally, and with all this 'distance learning' going on since schools and colleges/universities can't have in-person classes, if you have no Internet, you're not getting an education.

    I think it's time now to for all lawsuits to be dismissed that are aimed at preventing communities from arranging their own Internet connectivity, and no more such lawsuits to be allowed. The ISPs and wireless companies have had a stranglehold on the Internet for far too long now, and it's now too important to allow that to continue.
  • Just attempted to order AT&T Internet. This is the only option they give my for my address. I currently have 1gbit/40mbit Comcast at this same address.

    Great news! You can get our fast, reliable internet at your address. Check out your available speed below.
    Internet Basic 1.5
    Speeds up to
    1.5Mbps
    $45/mo.for 12 months plus taxes & equip. fee/mo. for 12 months plus taxes & equip. fee
    $10/mo equip. fee applies. See offer details

  • What happens to all of their U-Verse customers now? All that runs over last-mile copper ... aka DSL

    Not that I use it or anything but I know plenty of people who do (despite my explanations of why they shouldn't)

    Maybe now ATT (aka the "Death Star") will actually deliver last mile fiber to the home the same way Verizon did with FIOS

    But then again ATT is the single most evil force in the universe so this will not happen

  • Mind you, DSL should have gone away a long time ago. The only reason it was still around is that it'd work (sort-of, depending on the area) over existing copper wires, some of which could be an hundred years old. DSL existed initially as a way to migrate to something faster than dial-up with existing infrastructure, but as time went on, DSL became an excuse NOT to put in new infrastructure. If you can keep selling a fifty year old technology by giving it a snappy new name, like "uverse", and the infrastr

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled. -- R.P. Feynman

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