quetwoThat VoIP Guy Premium Member join:2004-09-04 East Lansing, MI |
quetwo
Premium Member
2014-Sep-11 4:52 pm
This has already been happening for a while in Michigan...Last August, my in-laws got a notice saying that within 4 months AT&T was switching their county to "IP" service (U-Verse), and that they were no longer offering DSL service in their area. When they went through the system to "upgrade" to U-Verse, they were told that only Cellular + Satellite was available to them -- not wireline service, because they were > 5k ft. from the closest RT. When the person on the phone tried to sell them 4G/LTE service, they weren't able to buy it because AT&T would be considered "roaming" in their area. January came, and they got a letter saying it was their final bill. Their DSL service was disconnected later that month -- but they were provided 6 months of dial-up service for free... Too bad their laptops don't have modems anymore :P
While they live in a small community ( 15,000 people), they did have working broadband before. Sure, it was only 5MB service, but it still worked. They have nothing now. They are currently to see if Verizon 4G/LTE is available with a strong enough signal. The maps show they do, but they are skiddish about signing a long-term contract if it won't work well. |
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2 recommendations |
What happened to your in-laws is exactly why we need some form of regulation for ISP services. AT&T should not have been able to shut off the ADSL2+ service until they had properly built out U-verse to service the area. Having the cost per GB increase by 10X, because of the need to go to cellular, is not acceptable. |
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BiggA Premium Member join:2005-11-23 Central CT
1 recommendation |
to quetwo
That sucks. Sounds like AT&T screwed up on that one. They should have moved them to ADSL2+ as part of an IP transition. |
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to quetwo
And thanks to the Michigan legislature, which passed an AT&T drafted bill, AT&T can pretty much do what it wants. DSL, while not super fast is better than capped and expensive mobile internet. |
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BiggA Premium Member join:2005-11-23 Central CT ·Frontier FiberOp.. Asus RT-AC68
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BiggA
Premium Member
2014-Sep-12 10:33 pm
True. What's unbelievable though, is that AT&T would cut off a paying DSL subscriber. Why would you just get rid of perfectly good customers like that? It's a crime that they aren't upgrading to fiber, and even worse if they're going to just cut existing customers off. Whoever is running that company (or not running it) is completely incompetent. The shareholders and customers should be equally pissed. |
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