said by ronpin :

Sadly AT&T is now locked-in to a "active fiber" network along with the active VRAD field nodes. They could've simply copied Verizon's passive optic network and saved a ton 'o money over the life of the system (as many here tried to tell them). But no, they saved a maybe 50% for now -- only to pay twice as much later to finish the job.

It wouldn't look so bad if Verizon hadn't already shown them way -- and thousands of others tried to tell 'em. AT&T has no excuse (hell the NSA probably would've paid half! ;0 )