The following may be attributed to an AT&T spokesperson:
“It’s bad enough the FCC keeps moving the goal posts on their definition of broadband, apparently so they can continue to justify intervening in obviously competitive markets. But now they are even ignoring their own definition in order to pad their list of accomplishments.
“We’ve seen this movie before. In order to apply its net neutrality rules to as many services as possible, the FCC considers very low speeds to be broadband then cites a much higher speed level in order to claim broadband is not being reasonably and timely deployed under Section 706. So, which is it?
“It’s beginning to look like the FCC will define broadband whichever way maximizes its power under whichever section of the law they want to apply. This cannot be what Congress intended.”
This is so frustrating for people in AT&T’S service area that can’t even get, or only can get a DSL connection of 3mbps down.
All we hear from AT&T is how they are going to connect everything from cars to cities and how they are taking the lead in Fiber deployment.
At the same time, living in AT&T wired service area, seeing the broken Junction boxes next to the road covered in trash bags, unable to get any usable fixed broadband.
I’m not talking about a 25/3 connection but the broadband definition from a decade ago is not even reached.
Now ATT will get funding to bring broadband to my community and they have the option of fixed wireless, a service that is deployed more and more by many small companies throughout the US.
I would like to see some bold action, where ATT bites through the bullet and really start replacing the copper with fiber, get it over with instead of holding large parts of their service areas in a choke hold for decades.
Also have a good look at the 2015 broadband report, evaluate how ATT is doing even with the previous broadband standards, att is lagging behind.
That’s the best the largest telecommunications company in the US can do.
Our community is been neglected by att for over a decade, that’s what att has done for us.
Please tell Mr. Cicconi that AT&T’s inability/unwillingness to upgrade even wealthy suburban areas to speeds past 6 Mbps (I’m pointing out areas like Carlsbad, CA where businesses along main roads top out at 40 Mbps but residential areas like the Aviara master planned community has not been upgraded from DSL speeds of 6 Mbps by upgrading the cabinets on the street.) In 2016, speeds like this are NOT considered fast. Even the 40 Mbps U-Verse service in these areas is not considered fast. Stop ignoring your customers and upgrade your network! Even cell service in this area is an afterthought!
Or.. was it because the definition of ‘broadband’ was outdated?
Having ADSL is not broadband anymore. I was a tech deploying the stuff almost 20 years ago when speeds were just 256Kbps. That was fast then. It’s not fast anymore.
Pure hypocrisy. at&t (previously sbc) and the rest of the telcom industry is a big part of the reason the state of broadband in the U.S. lags so badly, by getting states to pass protectionist laws banning communities that at&t itself won’t serve or serves poorly. If I was still with at&t for DSL, I wouldn’t be able to get more than 6Mbps, and any service from at&t is heavily bit-capped. Look in the mirror Cicconi.
I honestly would like to know how you can sleep at night after bold face lying to the public. How do you do it?
After 7 years, I LEFT AT&T because I could no longer justify an $84.00 monthly bill for last mile 6-meg DSL with a 150 gigabyte data cap, a lousy website which was difficult to navigate and many times your “usage meter” was not accessible. And when I turned off the modem I was billed for usage even when there was no internet activity. On the last months before I finally went with another provider, I truly believe AT&T was deliberately slowing down my internet connection to a crawl as to drive me to another provider. What made even angrier is that AT&T refused to provide U-Verse in my area, and also tried to buy protectionist laws in my city to prevent us from getting better broadband.
If you don’t want to provide wireline to many parts of the country then say so and sell your copper assets to another company that does.
But stop lying to the public.
So this 25/3Mbps is too high of a goal to reach for the largest telecommunications company in the US.
AT&T is lucky it only included the households that don’t have access to 25/3 Mbps, since they just accepted $428.000.000 annually, $3.000.000.000 to bring 10/Mbps to their service areas that does not even access to 3Mbps.
That is for over 7.000.000 households in AT&T wired area.
According Wikipedia there are 117,538,000 households in the US, 7.000.000 households is ~6% of total households in the US don’t even have access to 3Mbps
This is best case scenario where ATTs footprint would serve 100% of US households.
AT&T is a drain on america and most of us would prefer if you just go away and stop wasting our time.
I’m an AT&T uverse customer and I fully support FCC on this.
1) Maybe you’d prefer we use 56k as the “broadband” definition? The FCC didn’t move the goal posts. It’s called innovation. Technology isn’t stagnant, so if you can’t keep up, shut up and make way for people who can.
2) Broadband is a range. As long as you keep using outdated technology, we will continue to need to define it for the purposes of legislation as broadband. But as far as setting a benchmark goal to implement broadband, the highest current point of technology is going to be the standard.
3) The FCC will define broadband in whichever way maximizes its ability to protect the people’s rights. This may not be what you intended for Congress to intend when you paid them over 35 million dollars during the 2014 election cycle, but it is exactly what the founding fathers intended the role of government to be – protecting the rights of the people against those who would abuse them. Maybe instead of whining and bribing government officials, you could take some of that 35 million and use it to improve your network and bring it up to modern technology.