In the apparent hopes of reducing the PR impact of today's Google Fiber in Austin announcement, AT&T has decided their best tactic is to play a little make believe. In traditional AT&T fashion, a company press release picks its words very carefully, insisting that AT&T is "prepared" to offer "an advanced fiber optic infrastructure" capable of 1 Gbps, which is like totally the same thing as offering 1 Gbps residential lines for $70 a month, right?
Like Time Warner Cable, AT&T's press release very much wants the press and public to conflate their ability to offer 1 Gbps over the core network (and to businesses for a small fortune) with offering 1 Gbps lines inexpensively to consumers and businesses alike.
However, the phrase "prepared to build" to those of us fluent in AT&T speak can be translated to "you sir, are very nicely dressed and I would be more than happy to hold your wallet while you visit the restroom."
Here on planet Earth, AT&T's current residential broadband offerings have struggled to keep pace with cable, much less fiber. Particularly upstream, where AT&T struggles to deliver 5 mbps to the vast majority of its customers. Remind me, what's the difference between 1 Gbps and 5 Mbps again?
Despite the very obvious reality on the ground, AT&T would have you believe that they're right there nipping at the heels of Google's 1 Gbps service, implying that the only thing that has kept Americans from seeing cheap 1 Gbps AT&T connections so far is -- the mean old government:
quote:Today, AT&T announced that in conjunction with its previously announced Project VIP expansion of broadband access, it is prepared to build an advanced fiber optic infrastructure in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. AT&T's expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives. This expanded investment is not expected to materially alter AT&T's anticipated 2013 capital expenditures....Our potential capital investment will depend on the extent we can reach satisfactory agreements.
While Google Fiber certainly has seen some sweetheart regulatory arrangements, AT&T too has spent the last decade being deregulated state by state, and the result hasn't been magic 1 Gbps blossoms and price-slashing fairies, it has almost uniformly been higher prices and worse service. That is courtesy of limited competition and regulatory capture, two things that Google Fiber will at least chip away at on a small, local scale.
Still, even with the added pressure of Google Fiber in one of their markets, and with added regulatory perks, AT&T's promises may not be reliable. While AT&T has promised to expand U-Verse as part of their above-mentioned "Project VIP" upgrades, that promised expansion is mostly smoke and mirrors. AT&T's focus is primarily on wireless and big investor returns (the exact thing a large-scale Austin FTTH build won't provide). The days of meaningful landline broadband expansion at AT&T are over, and most expansions moving forward will be theatrical in nature.
AT&T certainly could afford to offer a few FTTH lines to a select number of users to save face; the company does offer some users actual fiber to the home lines in upscale developments, though they historically cap those lines at fiber to the node speeds. Still, the press release claims these upgrades are "not expected to materially alter AT&T's anticipated 2013 capital expenditures." What kind of network expansion doesn't cost you much of anything? One that either doesn't exist, or is only deployed in a very narrow number of cherry-picked locations.
All of this could provide some weird and entertaining theatrics in Austin, but it doesn't do much for the tens of millions of AT&T DSL customers stuck on ultra-slow speeds the company has shown absolutely no interest in upgrading.
This whole competitive fiber crap is really obnoxious! Why not provide it to areas that REALLY need it because there are no other options. Chicago is Comcast/AT&T land. We're lucky we even have that, however we have no choice for fiber that's reasonably priced. Why? Purely for competition reasons.
yep, unions and the most corrupt political machine in america make Chicago (and other places) less appealing for a project like this.
Fair enough. Based on your own rationale, then surely in nonunion states you guys should have 100GB/s service.
Then again, I do recall seeing a lot of (most likely) illegal aliens deploying fios for the Texan company with the contract. After all, these guys loved to wave the flag on Monday, then turn around on Tuesday and exploit the backs of foreign nationals, to save a dime.
Chicago would be a tough city to deploy in. I don't think the city would cooperate to Google's likings.
Chicago is home to the original fiber-based "competitive access provider", Metropolitan Fiber Systems (the remnants of which were merged with Verizon), which strung fiber directly to major businesses in the downtown area back in the 80s using abandoned underground water pipes back when telcos limited fiber to the interoffice network.
I don't live in Chicago and so can't speak to the current political environment, but they played ball once before, I don't see why they wouldn't again.
Because Chicago wouldn't provide the sweetheart deals that KC and Austin gave google for Google OR AT&T. AT&T has the technical capability and the financial depth (IF the choose to force customers elsewhere to pay) to match google in Austin. It's good business/PR to force the city/Google to reveal the exact terms/subsidies Google will receive and at who's expense those are provided.
Yes, let's put a toll gate at every intersection, make the drivers pay, and do away with infrastructure taxes. Of course, it might take you 10 hours to go 20 miles, but at least the users will be the ones paying.
Or some of it can be vehicle registration fees and some as gas taxes or annual mileage fees at least as far as cars and trucks go. but that is somewhat different then building private or public Internet provider networks.
In short, expect 1 Gbps residential fiber connections from AT&T right around the time Margaret Thatcher raises from the grave to personally oversee the construction of an official Margaret Thatcher amusement park in downtown Austin.
A zombie Maggie plus an amusement park? It almost makes me want to root for the Death Star. But only almost...
Instead of providing speeds that very few would actually have use for and certainly not want to pay for, why haven't they made sure to provide wider coverage for DSL in the first place. After all THE TAXPAYER has subsidized AT&T for years and deserves more in return.
They have fiber to within a few thousand feet of many homes here in Austin (U-Verse VRADs). It wouldn't take an enormous capital expenditure to push the fiber the rest of the way...and each VRAD can already do multi-gigabit...but AT&T doesn't like spending money unless they can get it back posthaste.
Depending on how you define "materially", AT&T isn't materially impacted if they wire the entire city up for fiber, at a cost of around $300 per subscriber. But I'll bet that their definition of "materially" and their definition of "rollout" are opposite the actual costs of an actual rollout.
Don't get me wrong. If I could get gigabit from AT&T and gigabit from Google, both for $70-$80 per month, I'd probably buy both. But that ain't gonna happen.
GFiber is Active Ethernet. Isn't VRAD GPON based? If so, ATT may either have to have a cap or not really deliver 1Gbit to all users.
The announcement with the 'cautionary forward looking statements' sounds more like the ATT PR team hastily put this out before checking with the engineers.
"Forward looking statements" is always tacked onto any press release made by a publicly held company about...well...forward looking statements. No red flag there.
As for GFiber being active vs. U-Verse not being active, I thought I saw a screenshot somewhere of GFiber CPE mentioning PON. Glad to hear it's active though. As far as U-Verse goes, the VRADs themselves are powered by active Ethernet (multiple gigs per). Though in FTTH areas U-Verse is definitely B/GPON.
Actually they do offer this; just not FREE or under a handout that the stupid shareholders of Google are doing it. It's always been available by them, by the MSOs and Verizon.
Seriously though. The cost to provide a residential gigabit circuit, assuming you've got active gigabit fiber to the home and a 10G backbone (or even GPON and 10G), isn't really any more than provisioning a 50M symmetric connection. It's just that ISPs have drawn a line in the sand, mainly based on how fast either DSL or cable can reasonably go, beyond which you get billed for a dedicated connection, and below which you get billed for a shared one. Until recently, that line was far south of a gigabit. Google is fixing this issue...and there are worse things to do with a wad of cash than invest in low-maintenance infrastructure that allows your customers to access your services with zero bottlenecks.
Funny how all these telco-cable companies suddenly come out and say they "CAN" offer 1Gbps... but it is only in areas where Google is deploying their fiber service.
Goes to say what competition can really do. Imagine this country wide! Our internet service and pricing will suddenly improve greatly.
It's all "magical". Just like how Comcast can magically drop caps (enforcement) and yet their network is not impacted at all, but the entire premise of the caps to start with (that they explained to consumers) is that if they didn't have them their network would slow to a crawl from the boogeymen "abusers".
When utopia rolled into towns in Utah and offered triple play for 90 dollars a month. Magically Comcast could also immediately offer triple play and their fastest internet tier for 90 dollars a month (and still be profitable).
And now ATT magically can deploy 1gpbs fiber without substantial build costs.
I'm always amazed at how much magic there is in the telecom industry.
Funny U say this! Shows people are dopes cause u know if Google COMES TO your town, and the competition gives you equal or better prices and you then support the competition and not google, well then Google will pull out! And then the public stupidity short sighted ness will bomb as the competition seeing how you got duped will the moment google puls out, jack up there prices like crasy and laugh at you.
So please stop this insane drooling over competition, all USA compitition is colluding, only Google is being the Saint the Khalsa Jedi!
Nothing hysterical or pathetic about this at all. This it T's playing to force governments' hands regarding regulations, taxes, and deployment requirements. This is a strategic communications effort, not a product/service announcement.
AT&T - A Texas Company, Getting mopped by Google in backyard
Don't forget that AT&T is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. And along comes Google and mops the Texan floor with AT&T by providing a high-speed up-to-date modern telecommunication service in Ma Bell the telecom company's own backyard.
Re: AT&T - A Texas Company, Getting mopped by Google in backyard
They may be headquartered here, but it's not like their service is any better here than other places lol. Still a ton of dropped calls, terrible DSL/U-Verse coverage, etc..
AT&T will NEVER build out a 1Gbps network, ANYWHERE. AT&T will do EVERYTHING possible to prevent Google from doing the same in Austin. This is really pretty funny stuff.
I know exactly why this wont affect 2013 CAPEX: They are NOT going to do it.
Looks like AT&T's stock price took a bit of a hit with that press release.
The average AT&T stockholder does not want AT&T to invest any more than they absolutely have to into their wireline business.
AT&T's cash cow is wireless. That's the side of AT&T's business that stands to make the most amount of money on their investments, or in market speak... ROI. AT&T's stockholders care only about ROI and there's not much to speak of in the wireline business.
It should be noted that AT&T Is not AT&T It is SBC they bought the good name of AT&T. SBC cut their customer service staff when they changed the name. When SCB/AT&T tried to buy T-mobile one blogger's toung in cheek comment was they were trying to eliminate the contrast in customer service. SBC/AT&T was rated the worst and T-Mobile the best in customer service at the time.
This is what happens when you piss off somebody who can do something about the dysfunctional marketplace. Usually you can't force through to allow a company's subsidy of telecom as have been done in Mo & Ks overnight... so obviously AT&T will be forced to rethink possible FTTP deployments in the south & elsewhere.
quote: 1 Gbps AT&T connections around the time Margaret Thatcher raises from the grave to personally oversee the construction of an official Margaret Thatcher amusement park
Making fun of a woman who just died? Not too classy.
Edit>> The Thatcher passage has been deleted from the story
You get over a $100 Billion from the 1996 Telecom Act for FTTH and all you do is pokey IFITL in limited markets. You bribe GA state legislatures into passing a bill for state wide franchise agreements with the promise you'll bring high speed internets, but again you go back on your word and only deploy silly U-Verse to limited high income areas.
Seriously, I'd move out of Atlanta to Chattanooga, Kansas City, or Austin if it weren't for the in-laws and friends. Yes, my in-laws are that good.