AT&T pulls 5G home Internet from New York to protest state affordability law.
This is a good example of the “If you regulate/tax business, they’ll just leave and you’ll be sorry!” Ayn Rand fallacy.
All this means is that their business model was to gouge consumers, and being barred from gouging cheap internet for their poorest customers revealed that they were (and still are everywhere else) bad faith, dishonest, antisocial actors that have no interest in providing products and services for a reasonable margin.
Just as with any business that would exit a market, or billionaire that would leave the country to prevent taxation back into the commons that facilitated their wealth accumulation to begin with (a preliterate workforce, roads and utilities they disproportionately degrade with heavy use, etc) you demonstrate that you work against your own customers and your own people, so by all means, gtfo.
The US Government needs to stop dicking around with this neoliberal bullshit and just offer mobile and home Internet AS A UTILITY.
Use the existing USPS infrastructure and cut out all the bullshit ISPs and parasitical orgs that have been bloating themselves on taxpayers for decades, with zero improvements to users.
Bring back basic banking at USPS too.
Well I doubt that is going happen anytime soon. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1247393656/net-neutrality-explained-fcc
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/federal-net-neutrality-reinstatement-3966433/
FCC lacks authority to make that happen.
“The recent ruling by the 6thCircuit Court of Appeals is one of the first major challenges to a federal agency action after the Chevron Doctrine—which gave deference to federal agency decision-making and findings—was overturned in the landmark Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision by the Supreme Court in June 2024.”
By USPS you mean post office? If so, I’m gonna need you to explain the “USPS infrastructure can be reworked to offer internet service” part. Not arguing, genuinely curious.
You used to be able to do some banking at your local post office. You still can at some offices but it has largely been done away with. I believe they were referring to this and not USPS as an ISP.
I actually meant both. To use USPS for basic banking, AND have them offer internet from the same locations.
I see that now. My brain read your first USPS as ISP I guess. In which case… yes please do explain what infrastructure they have that could be used to deliver internet to the masses.
They have physical locations and extant real estate across the entire US.
So, rather than continuing to give billions to private ISPs that do literally nothing with that money, and who double-down to curtail services whenever mildly inconvenient, my suggestion is that we (ie US Government) does not provide a single additional dollar in funding or subsidies, and instead invests that money in building itself a USG internet UTILITY. If necessary, clawback the billions that have gone to Comcast, ATT, Verizon et al, or just seize their networks and charge their executives with RICO and fraud. They essentially operate as a cartel anyway.
But how? What infrastructure? Do they have their own fiber network or something?
That’s not what they said, but now that you mention it, both concern the regular transfer of information. USPS should be a utility broadband provider.
popcorn
Don’t mind me, just reading comments on my €10, 1gbps mobile connection in the train home from work.
I’m enjoying this from my £28 a month 100Gb 5G contract that includes the cost of my iPhone.
(and which is about to drop to £10 a month because I’ve paid off the phone)
Nice! I ain’t going to be seen with a normie-phone tho
“AT&T’s shitty business model can’t provide quality service in NY, so they gave up.”
They decided to try fuck over the state govt and make them pay more with your tax dollars. Having failed, they are throwing a hissy fit and leaving, hopefully pissing off a bunch of people in the process.
I’m sure there will be a federal giveaway of money for internet providers to expand their networks to rural users to solve this problem…and they totally won’t just keep the money, give ti to executives as bonuses, and refuse to do the work or anyhting.
… business customers can keep any device they purchased at no charge," AT&T said.
Gee how magnanimous (emphasis mine)
I don’t know if this AT&T service covered all of NY but for sake of my point I’m going to assume it covers most to all of NY. Obviously, not everyone would subscribe to AT&T either. I’m generalizing a bit to make a point.
There are approx 8.5 mil households in NY and 1.7 mil qualified for the previous affordable broadband law (couldn’t find an exact number for this current law).
If they charge $60 for the service that’s a potential total of $512,000,000 for NY.
If 1.7 mil get broadband for $15 that’s $25,500,000.
So AT&T is willing to give up a potential $487,000,00 from all other NY customers just to spite low income families.
Note: this is income before any AT&T expenses, just to be clear and fair.
Edit I was clear or the article wasn’t clear.
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ATT is pulling 5G service from existing customers. They were given a 45 day window to find a new provider. I’m not talking about new construction.
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they are not obligated to provide fiber at $15. Only broadband. I know there are still expenses with that, but there is much more broadband already available than fiber.
Note: this is income before any AT&T expenses, just to be clear and fair.
Yes, exactly. By your numbers, their revenue would go down by almost 10% while their operating expenses remain the same. Is it plausible that they could have just lowered prices by 10% and still operated profitably all this time?
Old cable guy here. The cost is in laying the lines. That cost is astronomical. AT&T did the math, said, “Fuck it. Not worth it.”
Call 'em evil, but they’re not stupid.
ISPs were already given a shitload of money to build out infrastructure, but they did the bare minimum and pocketed the rest instead.
They need to be forced to build out a proper modern infrastructure at this point, imaginary money line be damned.
They didn’t even do the bare minimum
Oof. They just pocketed all of it? With no repercussions?
AT&T came through and wired my neighborhood for fiber, all except for the 14 houses on my side of our street. I have AT&T copper in my yard but they don’t offer sign up’s anymore. They “completed” my neighborhood in 2022 and moved to the next.
They aren’t laying lines though. It’s the Internet Air program which provides it through 5g.
I’ve also been involved in something similar. It costs a lot to expand infrastructure. Part of my job would be to plan and explain the costs associated with that. Wireless still needs a wired connection, and wireless still has connection limitations. You can’t just add more users and expect things to work. And you can’t just plop another receiver without it interfering with the others. It needs to be properly planned and something as simple as a building’s signal reflectivity can mess an entire project up. More towers, more equipment, more redundancy, more personnel, more cables, more power, and forking all the money to do all this within the time limit or face fines is a huge task. And that’s assuming it could even work on a technical level, sometimes you just can’t do things (don’t want to interfere with FAA requirements and such) and people don’t understand.
I hate ATT too, but from a purely financial and planning point of view, I’ve been there. You can’t just snap some fingers and make things happen just like that.
I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. I meant AT&T is pulling out and removing service from people who already have it. They aren’t just pulling out of new projects, they are pulling out of existing service areas.
I thought it was clear in the article but I guess I shouldn’t have assumed. That’s on me.
I don’t live in NY but as I understand it, they had to offer this service to every qualified individual. They most likely didn’t have the option to only support certain or just existing customers.
Think of it this way: Had ATT the option to exclude, they would have and abuse it as much as possible. They can’t, so either they follow the law or take their business elsewhere. Leaving paves the path for another company or cooperative who does want to follow the new laws, rather than having ATT undermine at every opportunity. It hurts in the short term, but in the long term it helps. NY isn’t the first place to chase big telcomm out.
And where’s does 5g come from
Usually fiber lines that have either been there for decades or the the federal government has been effectively paying them to install for decades decades and they just fucking didn’t do it yet.
Lots of those “government surcharges” that aren’t quoted in their estimates and show up as a surprise bill were authorized by the government, but go directly to the carriers and are supposed to be used to cover the cost of infrastructure upgrades and extension.
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Sounds like it’s time for a municipal broadband solution. If AT&T doesn’t want the business, fine. Let’s not force them to take our money.
I have municipal fiber, it’s great. Cheaper than Charter and 5x the speed.
Chattanooga, Tennessee did something like that, but when they tried to expand outside of the city they were shut down
They pulled their wireless home Internet service which mostly targets rural areas where companies like AT&T never laid fiber and have started abandoning their copper networks. It’s a lot harder for smaller rural communities to do municipal broadband because the costs are much higher per household. Not impossible, but more of an uphill battle. In some GOP states it’s even outlawed. In NY hopefully people can get grants for them.
I remember when the US government paid AT&T to get fiber to the curb of American homes.
Then AT&T didn’t. And then the US sued AT&T to get the money back and into the hands of US Americans. Wireless internet is an end-around having to fulfill those promises of a wide bandwidth future. And here is the evidence for that.
These predatory companies make such a huff, like an abusive partner storming out while shouting “you don’t know what you’re missing!”
We do know, and we’ll be fine. 👋
Interesting, so it seems because ATT doesn’t have fiber already setup in NY that they’re pulling out. If more states did this, they probably wouldn’t be able to handle pulling out, financially.
I don’t see what the issue is here. They don’t want to be treated as a utility, but if they stay in New York, they’ll be regulated as a utility. They’ve dealt with it as a phone provider, and choose not to engage in the regulatory environment being put in front of them. It’s a totally reasonable choice for a business to walk away from a market if the cost of doing business would exceed the profits made.
Apple could have done the same thing with the EU. Either don’t put USB-C on their phones, or cease doing business in those countries.
That’s correct, and the fact that Apple caved from the 8-Pin Lightning connector to USB-C is one of many, many reasons I won’t be buying anything Apple again, even second-hand. The lack of a headphone jack is just one more thing that made me certain of it. If I could find a micro-USB device with a headphone jack that serves as a phone, a pager, a calculator, and an audio (various formats - MP2A,MP3A,MP4A,WAV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, etc.) player, all my problems would be solved. I have looked into featurephones, I think I’m going to be moving in that direction next time I upgrade.
fuck apple forever, for sure, because they’re proprietary from soup to nuts. but “caved” moving to a universal standard instead of a proprietary charging cable, as if that’s a bad thing? yeah, man, i dunno what you’re smokin, but you should put the pipe down.
USB is so so so so so so so much worse than Lightning. Yes Apple is one of the only companies who manages to implement it so it mostly works, but it was still a huge downgrade.
Slowly since glass pipes tend to break.
Personally I’d be happy if I never had to touch a micro-USB device ever again. Mini-USB is somewhat acceptable, but USB-C blows the rest out of the water. It’s unquestionably the better USB standard
Micro USB was definitely horrid. The USB C connector is OK agreed other than the gender is on the wrong sides which still causes reliability issues vs lightning. And USB is such a mess, no mortal has any hope of knowing what the usb c port they have will actually do.
Find me a USB-C that doesn’t fall out. Every Micro-USB male plug that I’ve used has those two notches at the bottom that hold it in place. Every device I’ve had with USB-C, I have to treat it like it’s super delicate while it charges.
You need to clean your usb c port. Get a match, and carve it down go a thin flat end that will fit between the blade of the usb c. Then clean out the lint. The charging cable should click into place if it’s cleaned out.
But apple had Usb-C years before on IPad these scumbags withhold it only from Iphone so that you had ti buy a sepearate Cable Fuck Apple
I have maybe a few dozen USB C devices all from dumb 5V/2A chargers to 20V/5A chargers. From USB 5GB to USB 40GB. Never once have I ever had issue with the cables and connectors. Only time I’ve had an issue was when I dropped my phone into the charging cable where it physically broke off.
Meanwhile I’ve had an iPhone for 4 years and the lightning connector broke in such a way I had to use hot glue to pull it out of the port.
I’ve had many instances of micro-USB bending, some to the point of breakage. This never happened even once with USB-C.
Yep, every micro usb charging port I ever had eventually failed. And because the gender was opposite how lightning works you have to replace the port/device instead of just getting a new cable. It was horrid.
Very much the opposite. The only broken USB port I’ve ever had was a USB-C port for a netbook charger.
How? The netbook era ended way before USB-C is even a thing.
I can literally swing my phone around with its USB C charge cable. As long as I don’t add enough speed for it to make full circles instead of swinging back and forth, it doesn’t drop. If I drop my phone and the cord isn’t long enough to reach the ground, even the sharp stop of ‘no more cord’ tends to not remove the plug.
Lucky you. My experience has been the opposite.
I’ve never had a USB C plug fall out in my entire life, but I have distinct memories of wrapping a micro USB cord around the phone so the plug would maybe make some sort of connection and charge. Same with whatever plug the Nintendo DS used.
Do you have shit devices or shit cords? Because one of the two is causing the problem.
So, all those lines are leased to at&t by the state right? I feel like they could just revoke them and give everyone free Internet.
Until a line breaks and you discover it costs money to have someone fix it. Or a router gets attacked be someone evil and now you don’t have internet. Or … There are a lot of costs to running internet.
I don’t know how the costs compare to what AT&T is charging. I doubt you do either.
You think at&t is protecting you from hackers? ISPs are notorious for using crap routers and wifi devices which they charge an arm and leg for. ISPs literally had default passwords that can be guessed (many of them still do), used outdated protocols that were prone to brute force attacks or simply fail to compete with even the most basic DD-WRT, Open-WRT or other custom firmaware.
You could just add an extra tax to cover it and it would be cheaper than your Internet bill since it would be spread out amongst everyone.
Liberals: Tax it!
Also Liberals: What about the poor people!
Public utilities are cheaper than private ones. And it’s not like there aren’t city programs for low income. Cali is far from being the most progressive (in comparison to the rest of the world) and they have plenty of assistance programs for all possible utilities.
Lemmy tends to think everything is free, has no clue about real-world costs.
Idiots tend to think that lemmy tends to think everything is free, has no clue about real-world costs. Also they have bad breath.
Looks like a monopoly to me. That’s practically admitting that they believe consumers don’t have sufficient choice, and they’d rather not compete.
