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davidhoffman
Premium Member
join:2009-11-19
Warner Robins, GA

davidhoffman to elwaylite

Premium Member

to elwaylite

Re: [Availability] Ports Full In Theodore, Alabama Area

Yes, the AT&T fiber markers in the middle of nowhere. I have a friend who has these within 300m (660 ft) of his house. He lives at the end of a dead end street, in a very rural area. The entire street cannot get DSL, only POTS. The odd thing is that it is a 2400m (5280ft) long dead end road. Why AT&T needed to run fiber down a sparsely populated dead end road is another one of AT&T's mysterious ways.
cubguy
join:2010-07-09
Lawrenceville, GA

cubguy

Member

Could it possibly be that the "dead end road" hasn't always been dead end. Some of our phone cables here are older and follow the ROW of the original roads instead of the current ones. There are a few places where it seems the cable runs across a field, but growing up I can remember the original road running there...
davidhoffman
Premium Member
join:2009-11-19
Warner Robins, GA

davidhoffman

Premium Member

No, I do no think the road went past where it stops now. The deep dense tall tree forest beyond the end of the road has never been touched, according to the land owners nearby. It sits in an area too bad to farm according to them. The terrain is not very level and varies too much over short distances. The forested area also acts as somewhat of a wind break, a hunting area, and keeps soil erosion controlled. Many of these people's families have lived on the same land there for several generations. All this adds up, to me, to the road having always ended where it does now.
cubguy
join:2010-07-09
Lawrenceville, GA

cubguy

Member

so it definitely seems as though it was a spur to a new laid fiber cable. It could be that pre-planning was done for your neighborhood but AT&T is playing it close to the vest and installing cards only in blocks as needed. If you can have any luck getting in touch with their engineering dept, you can probably have some take a look and see if its a case of no slots available, or no "cards" available. One is overcomeable, the other isn't without major infrastructure improvements.
davidhoffman
Premium Member
join:2009-11-19
Warner Robins, GA

davidhoffman

Premium Member

AT&T spent big money to put in a new cellular tower a couple of miles away. Verizon is expanding LTE in the area. My friend uses Millenicon's resale of Verizon cellular EVDO 3G service. He is hoping to upgrade to a Millenicom or similar company's LTE service in another year. As far as we know, no one within 3 miles of his little side street, going up and down the main road it connects with, has DSL or cable service. Since that is about the wireline distance limit for decent DSL, we figure the fiber is for something else, some cancelled upgrade, or some far future project. One guy thinks it is one of many redundant, geographically widely separated, fiber optic cables connected to the federal and state law enforcement centers in the area. There are fenced off antenna towers marked as federal or state property in a lot of places, some in areas where some of the fiber markers are. I have driven up to the boundary of some antenna towers and it only takes a few minutes until a state trooper or county deputy comes driving up to investigate who is there. I have never been questioned, but you get the message to leave by them showing up so fast. I guess if you are still on the side of the public road inside your vehicle, they are instructed to just watch you and see if you quickly get the clue to leave. There is a lot of fiber in the larger area that has no one getting DSL service. We have pretty much decided AT&T is using it for something other than DSL. Cellular and satellite will be the area's only choices for internet service for the foreseeable future.
cubguy
join:2010-07-09
Lawrenceville, GA

cubguy

Member

They installed alot of fiber here about 18 months ago. Most of it went right past our neighborhood to the AT&T tower and the Doppler Radar Site a few miles from here. They are also running alot for rural schools here. It's so "here and there" here. For example, where the closest AT&T tower is from here, there is no DSLAM, just a junction box for POTS, yet they put a new DSLAM about 4 miles away and never turned it up. There was a guy on here from, I think NC or somewhere who was telling about them running fiber right past his community to the next one over to provide service, yet nothing in between has High Speed. You would think that it would make sense to cover as many people as possible for better returns but I think it has to do with the fact that they don't plan to deploy any new locations for DSL, only upgrade what they have for either UVERSE. They even are trying to call the 3.0 DSL, Uverse now once they completely upgrade the DSLAM its in.