Tag: AT&T

AT&T sues City of Louisville over Google Fiber pole attachment rules

  By
Stephen Hardy
English: Telephone pole, Westwood

English: Telephone pole, Westwood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

AT&T has filed suit in federal court alleging that officials in Louisville, KY, overstepped their authority in giving access to AT&T-owned telephone poles to Google Fiber and potentially other competitors, reports the local Courier-Journal.

As one of the communities Google Fiber has selected for potential provision of its gigabit fiber to the home (FTTH) services (see “Google Fiber sets FTTH sights on three new cities”), Louisville officials had passed unanimously a “One Touch Make Ready” ordinance that would enable Google Fiber and other broadband services providers in the future to access city utility poles and attach the necessary hardware to provide services themselves. AT&T owns between 25% and 40% of those poles, the Courier-Journal reports, and the ordinance potentially would allow its competitors to move AT&T’s equipment on the pole to make room for the new infrastructure. Continue reading

FCC Narrowly Misses Its Gigabit Deployment Goal

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by Karl Bode

Back in 2013, then FCC boss Julius Genachowski issued a “1 Gbps challenge”: basically a pledge to ensure there was at least one gigabit network operating in all fifty states by 2015. As we noted at the time it was kind of a show pony goal; notorious fence-sitter Genachowski was simply setting a goal he knew the industry would probably meet with or without’s government help, so that government could come in at a later date and insist it played an integral role.

Well, 2015 has come and gone, and while there is at least one gigabit network planned for every state, we narrowly missed Genochowski’s goal by most estimates:

quote:

We combed through our archives and other online resources and, by our tally, at least one network operator has announced plans to offer gigabit service in every state. Not all of these networks are actually deployed or supporting service yet. But generally network operators don’t announce specific markets more than a year or two in advance of when they expect to deliver service.

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Want Google Fiber In Your City? Make It Easy For Us, Google Exec Says

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Google Inc.’s high-speed Internet service is slowly rolling out around the U.S., but so far has avoided major metropolitan markets – like New York and Los Angeles – as well as most smaller cities. One Google Fiber executive says bureaucracy is what’s holding back the rollout.

“If you make it easy, we will come,” said Milo Medin, Google Fiber vice president, according to Wired. “If you make it hard, enjoy your Time Warner Cable.” Continue reading

AT&T joins case; Chanute needs state nod to offer fiber broadband, says 1947 law

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BY DION LEFLER
Chanute, Kansas

Chanute, Kansas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After beating back a legislative effort to stop them, city leaders in Chanute now face another state government hurdle in their effort to extend ultra-high-speed fiber broadband to residents’ homes and businesses.

Because of a 1947 state law on utilities, the city has to get permission from the Kansas Corporation Commission to sell bonds to fund its fiber-to-home project, which would extend some of the fastest Internet service in the nation to the rural community of about 9,200 people in southeast Kansas. Continue reading

The Empire Strikes Back: AT&T threatens to pull Paltry US Fibre Investment

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Whether or not you think that AT&T is bluffing on halting or slowing its capital investment, the reason that they are investing in residential services is that it is not regulated and they are finally facing some competition. Implementing Title II regulation will limit their return-on-investment and drive up their costs so naturally they will start investing in areas where they can make more money just as they have done since divestiture. Look at the amount of money that they invest in business and wireless services that are not subject to regulation. 

People are naive to think that introducing regulation will make service better and lower prices. Only competition will do that. Regulation will bring you consistent price increases each year and a lower quality of service with little to no innovation. Look at any of the utilities that your city or county provide. What new and exciting services has your water or trash company offered lately? Have you seen your price go down? The same goes with the electric utility. The only innovations that have creeped into their services are to lower the cost of providing electricity so they can achieve higher profits.

Once again I caution, “Be careful for what you wish. You just may get it.” 
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AT&T Sends Mixed Messages on Paid Prioritisation

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AT&T partially has the right idea by supporting traffic prioritization at the users’ request but they present it as selling more bandwidth instead of guaranteeing maximum latency and jitter. The user should be able to specify if they want their traffic prioritized whether they pay a service provider for that option or whether they purchase an option to label certain traffic from the ISP. AT&T wants to use this as an opportunity to sell a higher tier of service so they can drive up ARPU instead of selling a guaranteed maximum latency and jitter rate that is much less expensive to provide. Is AT&T being disingenuous or are the people presenting the public face truly ignorant on the subject of traffic management? I am beginning to wonder.

AT&T

AT&T (Photo credit: MrVJTod)

U.S. telco in favour of enforcing net neutrality under section 706 but wants to give customers option to pay for Internet fast lanes.

AT&T has somehow managed to simultaneously support a ban on paid prioritisation while at the same time recommending that prioritisation agreements should be permissible.

In a blog post late Thursday, the U.S. telco came out in favour of reinstating the Federal Communications Commission‘s net neutrality rules “including banning paid prioritisation – where an ISP prioritises packets over the consumer’s last mile broadband Internet access service without being directed to perform that prioritisation by the consumer”.

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AT&T hopes to fight Google Fiber with gigabit internet in more cities

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Fiber optic endsAT&T isn’t letting Google Fiber’s expansion plans go unanswered. The telecom giant hasannounced that it’s looking at bringing its GigaPower internet service to as many as 21 additional big cities and their nearby municipalities. There’s some potential for direct competition with Google, as both companies are looking into gigabit access for key urban areas like Atlanta, San Antonio and San Jose. However, it’s clear that AT&T is taking some initiative here — it’s also exploring rollouts in Chicago, Los Angeles and other hubs that aren’t currently on its rival’s roadmap.

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