said by fiberguy:100mb symmetrical is nice to "have" available, but at the price they want for it and that the industry wants to charge for it, AT&T is actually making a smart move.
With a smaller investment in bonded xDSL, they're spending less now and offering a service at which customers can use and take advantage of. 24mb isn't anything to sneeze at and will serve the purpose of customers very well for some time to come.
Comcast has their 50 and 100 meg service but who's going to pay comcast, in this economic environment of "cut back the monthly bills"... Meanwhile, AT&T is making a smaller investment int heir system, still making a killing on profit, sitting on a load of money in the process. Meanwhile, and yes I'm thinking sane here, AT&T could easily in the future take that pile of money and do an end run on everyone by doing a national deployment of fiber service IF they were smart. (ie: they're making higher profit margins now, save it, and have a better financial picture to make a HUGE stink later) If they were to do this, you know that tarnished reputation they have? ... improved over night. Most people are victims of the great American disease of "short term memory syndrome" and will forget about AT&T's past..
As it stands now, the phone industry is lauded by many people for their being "heros".. DSL was a lower cost, somewhat, and Verizon launched fiber. The younger generation tends to preference phone over cable because they were not part of the generation of phone customers who took it up the but to make calls. (Many younger generations forget that average phone bills just a decade or so ago were in the average price of $80+ a month)
Anyway... my statement above is predicated on the fact of AT&T actually making a smart move.. I won't hold my breath that they'd seize an opportunity because, well, they tend to look at numbers, and not the person's way of thinking in order to help gain maximum results. Part of business is thinking like your customer; a necessity in business.
But anyway.. like I was saying, having 100mb is one thing, they're still not doing much to see that customers will actually want to take it. It's more marketing than anything.I bet if you look at VZ's FiOS internet, the overwhelming majority of their customers still take their rock bottom tier with only a small handful taking higher speeds.
wow you really went all out in your response. I understand and agree with a lot of your points but my original intent was to say that ATT's continue reliance on cooper is going to come back and bite them in the ass big time.
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