Lumen is a separate RBOC (CenturyLink) that is selling its consumer fiber to AT&T.
Lumos is who's building in the suburbs now. T-Mobile bought them. Oh, I didn't know Ezee branched into Illinois from Texas. Interesting. -- Mike Hammett ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nate Burke" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2025 11:20:05 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] price war The ISP list is still growing now though. The town next to where I live is served by 2 Coax providers, Xfinity and Astound. AT&T with U-Verse over copper, Verizon built 80% of the town with UWB on every 3rd street pole. T-Mobile is prevalent, AT&T Wireless has neighborhood repeaters, LUMEN is currently building FTTH, and EZFiber just started FTTH construction this week. And there are still houses with Starlink. Those are all big companies, LUMEN is a brand of T-Mobile Fiber. EZFiber I guess is the smallest of the lot. Maybe Xfinity would buy Astound. But doesn't seem like much merging with those companies, unless it's something really big. So they're all big companies going after the same customers. On 12/10/2025 10:51 AM, Steve Jones wrote: smalls got gobbled up by the bigs. same with cable companies. there are like 25 small ILECs in il vs like 355 ISPs. in 10 years id be surprised if the ISP count is still 3 digits On Tue, Dec 9, 2025 at 10:53 PM Ken Hohhof < [email protected] > wrote: Maybe he’s referring to all the acquisitions and mergers. Contel acquired hundreds of small telcos and was itself acquired by GTE. My first apartment was in DesPlaines, IL and the phone company was Centel. They were maybe acquired by Sprint? From: AF < [email protected] > On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2025 7:00 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' < [email protected] > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] price war All of the small ILECs made it. They are still there and they are all still doing great. Rate of return regulation is alive and well and makes it impossible to go out of business. (Unless your mom too too much Tylenol). From: AF < [email protected] > On Behalf Of Steve Jones Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2025 12:21 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group < [email protected] > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] price war Look at telephone Internet is the new telephone How many small telephone operators made it That is the exact future of Internet The exact same thing, only faster. Age related retirements excluded, the majority of operators on this list and the other ISP communities will not exist in 10 years. Consumer prices all went through the roof. Anybody who thinks its going to go any other way, I truly wish it wasnt meth youre smoking, you should switch to cocaine while youre still profitable so you can share with me. I dont get to do cocaine since I became a growed up, but I will put the offer on the table to do as much cocaine as it requires with you to get you to recognize the future. Many of those who took the free money on the builds wont be able to maintain, particularly those who built tarana with it. The small regions where two or three overbuilds exist will eventually consolidate, competition requires customers. Regional monopolies are still monopolies. Monopolies always have the same outcomes. Eventually the governments going to step in to help the way they saved the consumer by breaking up Ma Bell. I dont know how big a cocoa plant is, but if somebody could dwarf them, maybe small scale cocaine production in the fiber huts would be an option to subsidize the burdens, But then your techs would be at risk of kinetic strikes. but pretty much without cocaine adjuncts, small operators are going to get edged out of the game across the board. On Mon, Dec 8, 2025 at 10:07 PM Ken Hohhof < [email protected] > wrote: I lost a customer today to $30 AT&T 5G Home Internet. Starlink has 100 Mbps at $40 with $0 equipment, and that is without competition yet from Amazon Leo. All the companies looking to deploy BEAD fiber, I’m guessing they are counting on around $55 for their base tier, and something like 80% take rate. But it looks like we are already into a price war. Are they going to be disappointed at the revenue? We could say the price war will end and prices will rise, but how will that happen unless some of the competitors drop out or consolidate? In the case of the big 3 mobile carriers, that’s not going to happen (although DISH is probably a goner). They could become less aggressive about FWA pricing though if they use up all their excess 5G capacity and don’t get more spectrum. Yeah, right. Convince me I’m wrong. -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
