AT&T Fools Entire Media With Giant Gigabit Fiber Bluff http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Fools-Entire-Media-With-Giant-Gigabit-Fiber-Bluff-135848 In reality, AT&T has consistently been cutting back its fixed-line investment budget and CAPEX to focus on more profitable wireless (read: usage capped) broadband. There's no budget for the kind of "real" fiber build AT&T's press release implies. In fact, while AT&T pats itself on the back for this latest build, it has been consistently trying to figure out how it can gut regulations in order to hang up on millions of DSL users it doesn't want to upgrade. And while AT&T this week promised its over-hyped fiber build will someday reach 14 million residential and commercial locations, they didn't give a timeline for this accomplishment. That means AT&T technically could be winding up this not-particularly ambitious attempt to cherry pick the nation's high-end development communities and university student condos -- by 2030 or so. We're potentially talking about only a few hundred thousand lines per year, many at universities.
- - - Exactly. U-verse is fiber to the terminal, with the final leg almost always provided over copper and using DSL-technologies. What AT&T is doing is claiming a massive "fiber buildout" when in practice all they're mostly doing is providing a relatively few direct fiber connections to those terminals in special cases. But are they really planning to spend a pile of money deploying fiber (on poles and buried) to replace all that copper that serves most homes and businesses in their service areas? If you think so, there's a bridge across the East River in New York you might be interested in buying. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so. My opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
