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Marginal copper upgrades won’t bring afforable broadband to rural California

6 November 2020 by Steve Blum
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Leaning pole

Fiber matters, particularly in rural California where copper telephone lines are rotting on the poles and where cable companies can’t rake in the high level of monopoly profits they can in denser and richer urban communities.

It’s about speed, capacity and cost.

Technically, it’s possible to push 10 Gbps through some kinds of copper cable under the right conditions. It means operating at the ragged edge of what’s possible, though. Whether a cable or telephone company could actually achieve that in a rural area, given the age of their overall plant, their willingness to invest and the availability of backhaul is an open question that they can’t answer until they actually build it, although they will make promises regardless.… More

AT&T kills wired broadband service for half a million Californians

22 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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AT&T’s decision to stop selling legacy DSL service – the sort that uses 1990s technology and rides on regulated phone lines – affects 547,000 Californians, 1.4% of the state’s population. 67,000 of them will completely lose the ability to buy residential wireline broadband service from a commercial provider. Rural counties will be hit hard, with Tuolumne County taking the stiffest punch: 3.4% of its population will no longer be able to get wireline broadband service at any speed.… More

CWA union says AT&T redlines poor communities. California’s stats confirm the pattern, if not the extent

21 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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The Communications Workers of America (CWA) – the primary telecoms union in the U.S. – claims that AT&T is doing fiber upgrades in high income communities and redlining low income ones. A white paper published by CWA and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance claims…

The analysis of AT&T’s network reveals that the company is prioritizing network upgrades to wealthier areas, and leaving lower income communities with outdated technologies. Across the country, the median income for households with fiber available is 34 percent higher than in areas with DSL only – $60,969 compared to $45,500.

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AT&T abandons rural broadband systems as it stops selling 1990s era DSL tech

8 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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AT&T will no longer sell new connections to old school DSL service, although it claims it will continue to support customers who already have it. It notified customers of the change via the last cycle of bill statements. In one respect, it’s a rational and proper decision – AT&T offers much better service via newer technology – but in another respect it’s bad news: wireline networks in rural communities redlined by AT&T haven’t been sufficiently maintained, let alone upgraded, to support modern systems.… More

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile accuse each other of spectrum hoarding and market domination

25 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Tmobile los angeles spectrum

T-Mobile is building up its inventory of mobile bandwidth, first by leasing low band, 600 MHz spectrum from a private investment firm and then, it hopes, by buying more capacity when the Federal Communications Commission auctions off C-band frequencies later this year.

That bothers AT&T and Verizon, which have formally registered their annoyance with the FCC. Although neither company publicly opposed T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint (what their lobbyists and lawyers do behind closed doors is often a different story), they’re both complaining that T-Mobile is already holding too much spectrum – exceeds the spectrum screen as the jargon goes – and shouldn’t be allowed to buy or lease any more, until AT&T and Verizon have a chance to catch up.… More

AT&T delivers low quality service to low income Californians, but lavishes fiber on the rich

21 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Att outages by hh income

AT&T provides the highest quality service in the highest income neighborhoods of California, and the lowest quality in communities with the least income, according to a network quality study done by the California Public Utilities Commission.

The study’s initial findings were released last year. The top line conclusion was that AT&T and Frontier Communications are deliberately choking off investment in ageing copper phone systems, particularly in rural areas – now-bankrupt Frontier because it had no money for upgrades; AT&T because it could get away with it.… More

Mobile carriers use arbitration board to debunk each other’s ads

17 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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The three major U.S. mobile carriers are fighting each other’s advertising claims via an arbitration process run by the Better Business Bureau. First, it was T-Mobile who successfully challenged AT&T’s 5GEvolution scam. The BBB’s National Advertising Division (NAD) said that putting a 5G label on 4G service was misleading, and the appeals board run by BBB agreed.

Verizon objected to T-Mobile’s wide-ranging claims of wide ranging 5G coverage and NAD agreed, albeit while blessing verbiage about the superior building penetration ability of the low band spectrum it’s using.… More

Meaningless fines lead to AT&T’s, Frontier’s deplorable quality in California

15 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Verizon taft 2dec2014

A study of AT&T’s, Verizon’s and Frontier Communications’ telephone network quality conducted by the California Public Utilities Commission shows that overall performance is poor across California. Low income communities have worse service and more outages than high income ones, but it’s not particularly good anywhere…

Maximum Customer Trouble Report Rates of 6%, 8% or 10% of switched access lines per month (based on wire center size) are unduely generous because failure rates as high as these can hardly constitute acceptable service quality.

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AT&T guilty of obfuscation, delay, deception, inaccuracy, evasion, omission and contradiction regarding 911 service, CPUC says

8 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Bluto pencils

AT&T has to pay a $3.75 million fine because of its “pattern of obfuscation, delay, and deception” in dealing with the California Public Utilities Commission, and the “inaccuracy, evasion, omission, and contradiction” in its description of its 911 service. The core issue was whether AT&T is required to file particular paperwork regarding next generation 911 services. The answer from the CPUC is an emphatic yes. AT&T’s refusal to do so and the manner in which it refused earned it the multimillion dollar fine.… More

Frontier’s California outage complaint rate triple that of AT&T, electric companies

Cpuc complaints 15mar 13jun2020

Frontier Communication’s service outage problem is three times bigger than any other major California utility, judging by consumer complaints submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission during the covid–19 emergency. On a per customer basis the bankrupt telco’s wireline outage complaints were triple those of AT&T, and greater than Southern California Edison’s or Pacific Gas and Electric’s on an absolute basis, despite having fewer than half the number of customers as either of the two electric companies.… More