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to ILpt4U
Re: How does AT&T plan to compete with cable speeds?said by ILpt4U:then the added installation group expense of converting all customers to the new network "All?" Be forced to upgrade everyone to fiber vs Wait till you can carve out fiberhoods and dump the unprofitables on to the taxpayers and wireless. |
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 ILpt4U
Premium Member
join:2006-11-12
Saint Louis, MO
Asus RT-N66
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ILpt4U
Premium Member
2015-Dec-6 10:41 pm
said by smk11:"All?"
Be forced to upgrade everyone to fiber
vs
Wait till you can carve out fiberhoods and dump the unprofitables on to the taxpayers and wireless. I may sound like a broken record, up on the soap box, but once the old Ma Bell was broken apart, Universal Service ideals were broken with them Can't accurately predict where Telecom would be had the old Bell System never been broken, but Universal Service was an integral part of the System |
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Porthos to trparky
Anon
2015-Dec-6 11:27 pm
to trparky
I have a question about the number of complaints posted versus the number of atual customers. How many Uverse (of any flavor) customers are there? How many of those are complaining about their service? Even counting multiple complaints from the same customer. Any one have some verifiable numbers available? |
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 trparkyCYA! I'm gone!
Premium Member
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH |
trparky
Premium Member
2015-Dec-6 11:32 pm
I don't have any verifiable numbers but if you check the AT&T direct forum and the AT&T forums, you will find multiple people asking for help regarding service issues on a daily basis. If that isn't enough to show that AT&T hasn't done their job properly when deploying U-verse, I don't know what more you want? |
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| trparky |
to ILpt4U
Fiberhoods? Great. So unless you live in the rich part of town you'll more than likely never see fiber to your house. Is that really what you want to see? Do you really want to see a future in which only a small 5% of people have FTTP? I sure as hell don't! |
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Porthos to trparky
Anon
2015-Dec-6 11:38 pm
to trparky
What I "want" is for someone to actually give some verifiable numbers - not just internet complaints. And just foe giggles, how many of those complaints you talk about turn out to be valid? Does anyone know what the real story is? Or am I just supposed to take it all as gospel? |
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ILpt4U
Premium Member
join:2006-11-12
Saint Louis, MO ARRIS TM822
Asus RT-N66
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to trparky
No, I really want to see Universal Fiber Deployment, like we had 100 years ago with Phone and Electricity Copper Wires. If you can get Copper Wires there, you can get tiny little Glass tubes/strands there
I think it would (literally) take an Act of Congress to get it done, but this Gov't has spent money on a lot worse things, the last 20 years...
So far, the Private Sector does not seem committed to a Universal Fiber Deployment model |
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to neutrino
The one upside of LTE is that there's at least a tad more competition in wireless than with wired services. Thanks to T-Mobile's recent moves as of late the US wireless market has never been friendlier or cheaper. Granted, we still pay more for mobile service than in most other countries but it's a significant improvement from even six months ago.
Anyway, it's probably in AT&T's best interests to eventually upgrade most of their footprint to FTTP. If nothing else it would head off the possibility of even tighter government regulation. |
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to neutrino
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who tried that and failed to pull up even one zip code. The fastest speeds still available anywhere near my area for AT&T is 18Mbps, yet they have the gull to say they're deploying Gigabit Fiber in Miami. |
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 TestBoy
Premium Member
join:2009-10-13
Irmo, SC |
to trparky
said by trparky:Well we know that this supposed "copper plant conditioning" that should have happened during the roll out of uVerse in a market didn't happen like it should have happened. As I understood it they conditioned pairs only when they needed to do it. When they installed mine neither pair had been conditioned so they went up and down busting taps loose. When I asked why.... that was the goal... only spend the time on the pair if someone will be using it. I can see the business case. If they drop a cabinet in a neighborhood and only 10% of the people subscribe it doesn't make sense to condition 100% of the pairs. Now, our area was more of an exception rather than the rule I think. They dropped the VRAD sometime back in 2010 and left it sitting there for almost 2 years before we could get uverse around here. Our VRAD was 'lost' so I bet we skipped over pair conditioning because of that. |
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to The Engineer
I live in a country whose telco is the most vocal supporter of G.FAST and I can't understand what the economics are.
In my telco's case, they have no fibre near the poles or underground equivalent ("distribution points") as it stands - except in the areas that have FTTP, which is a tiny amount of customers.
So they will be spending a lot of money to run fibre to the poles in either case - G.FAST or FTTP. If they go for FTTP, they install some fibre splitters, and have to spend some money and effort running fibre from the pole to the home (a few metres generally).
They claim that this is prohibitively expensive, so they want to use G.FAST - which requires them to buy very expensive pole mounted DSLAMs for each pole, arrange power supplies and battery backups, then buy expensive modems (as G.FAST won't have the economy of scale that PON has), and finally they'll probably they'll still have to have it professionally installed inside the home as G.FAST won't be tolerant of shoddy wiring. I cannot believe that all of the extra faff to get G.FAST rolled out in an area is substantially cheaper than just stringing fibre from the pole.
Then you have to maintain the mess - how often will G.FAST equipment be damaged by lightning, water ingress, the sun and the wind baking/freezing it, compared to some fibre splitters?
Finally, it's not at all futureproof. FTTP is the logical conclusion. This is probably why this very telco is deploying FTTP to the same areas that they're trialling G.FAST in! I can't imagine people will be too happy to hear that their neighbour gets a couple hundred more Mbits than they do, because their line is a few metres longer
This telco has not made good decisions in the past - they are still spending billions on a VDSL rollout that is obsolete the minute it goes in for the more densely populated and affluent areas (except for random streets and poles that get FTTP anyway), and FTTP for extremely rural areas where the ROI is minimal (except when they've decided that the ROI is too minimal, so they're advertising satellite) |
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TestBoy
Premium Member
join:2009-10-13
Irmo, SC |
TestBoy
Premium Member
2015-Dec-7 8:11 am
said by ohreally:I live in a country whose telco is the most vocal supporter of G.FAST and I can't understand what the economics are. IMHO..... G.Fast is best used in an MDU. Why? Two reasons: 1. Your customers are close. It's just inside wiring from the closet up to the unit. 2. You only have to run fiber to one place - the closet. This is where it makes the most economic sense. When you simply cannot use the copper anymore then you have to pull fiber to the unit. This gets them competitive with cable - and fast. I am involved with the occasional fiber pull here and there around here. It's like 30-60 days. 90 isn't the norm. Last one I was involved with for a customer Level3 pulled it off in like 3 weeks... but that was like 600 feet. There is red tape to getting fiber pulled and it really depends on the area. Around here.... no issue. They will let you do it without question as long as you know which politicians to pay off. |
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said by TestBoy:said by ohreally:I live in a country whose telco is the most vocal supporter of G.FAST and I can't understand what the economics are. IMHO..... G.Fast is best used in an MDU. Why? Two reasons: 1. Your customers are close. It's just inside wiring from the closet up to the unit. 2. You only have to run fiber to one place - the closet. This is where it makes the most economic sense. When you simply cannot use the copper anymore then you have to pull fiber to the unit. This gets them competitive with cable - and fast. I agree - G.FAST will probably provide great speeds in that situation (though depending on length and quality of existing cable you could possibly just use ethernet?) The problem I have is with the proposal to use it in the majority of cases - to normal houses and businesses. You're going to have to deploy a lot of DSLAMs (and a lot of fibre anyway) to get loop lengths small enough for G.FAST to work - and those need to be powered. Why do all this when FTTP is the simpler and easier approach? I guess one other exception are areas with underground copper cabling that isn't ducted. G.FAST could at least be a stop gap there. said by TestBoy:I am involved with the occasional fiber pull here and there around here.
It's like 30-60 days. 90 isn't the norm.
Last one I was involved with for a customer Level3 pulled it off in like 3 weeks... but that was like 600 feet.
There is red tape to getting fiber pulled and it really depends on the area.
Around here.... no issue. They will let you do it without question as long as you know which politicians to pay off. My understanding of the law where I am, is that the telco has relative freedom to do what they want, when they want. There's some red tape if roads have to be closed or dug up, but not for running a cable from a pole to a home as needed for FTTP or a copper phone line. The cable company also doesn't have any difficulty and all of their wiring is underground, always. We never had the "lawn fridge" debate for the VDSL cabinets, as the laws generally allow them to put the things anywhere, provided it meets the rules (like not obstructing pedestrians or cars) |
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bockbock to neutrino
Anon
2015-Dec-7 9:19 am
to neutrino
I hear AT&T is rapidly rolling out their GPON/FTTH platform in newer subdivisions AND eventually the FTTN copper neighborhoods will eventually be GPON. This came directly from an AT&T employee. |
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| bockbock |
bockbock to gotenks2
Anon
2015-Dec-7 9:24 am
to gotenks2
Yes, from what I hear, AT&T is "rapidly" expanding their GPON platform in the Miami area to handle Gigafast U-Verse. They also need to upgrade their outdated xFITL crap down there as well, which will eventually be GPON. I have even heard that the existing FTTN/VDSL2 neighborhoods will be all fiber as well in the coming years. |
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| bockbock |
bockbock to mind21_98
Anon
2015-Dec-7 9:31 am
to mind21_98
Yes, it is in AT&T's best interest to upgrade everyone to fiber. Any brain dead person would take FTTP over LTE in a heartbeat. T uses Alcatel-Lucent equipment for their U-Verse platform, for both FTTN and FTTP neighborhoods. With the 7330/7340 equipment they already have in place, migrating to GPON is just a matter of running the fiber from the VRAD to a splitter, and then to an ONT on the side of the house/MDU. |
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DMS1
join:2005-04-06
Plano, TX |
to ILpt4U
said by ILpt4U:Kinda agree with trparky here -- a G.fast (or another FTTC[urb]) solution is really only practical in MDUs/Businesses, where fiber can be placed in a Utility room to a DSLAM-like device to feed all the Common phone lines going to each Unit. Power should be able to be fed into that Utility room pretty easily, as well, as many of those phone closets are also the PowerCo meter rooms Which is what I was getting at, but 'tparky' failed to quote the sentence "This would work well for upgrading dense urban developments, such as older apartment buildings." from later in the same paragraph. If a single twisted pair can be used to serve the last couple of hundred feet then it provides a very good alternative to getting nothing in the cases where fiber installation would be prohibitively expensive. Ideal candidates would be apartment building or high-density townhouse type developments. |
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to neutrino
They will compete by raising prices in non cable serviced areas to higher rates so people feel like they have an expensive much faster cable plan, but meanwhile will likely be sub 20mbps :-p |
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to mind21_98
said by mind21_98:The one upside of LTE is that there's at least a tad more competition in wireless than with wired services. Thanks to T-Mobile's recent moves as of late the US wireless market has never been friendlier or cheaper. Granted, we still pay more for mobile service than in most other countries but it's a significant improvement from even six months ago.
Anyway, it's probably in AT&T's best interests to eventually upgrade most of their footprint to FTTP. If nothing else it would head off the possibility of even tighter government regulation. The upside of LTE is the government can release a huge chuck of spectrum for muni usage free of charge. It's cheaper than running glass everywhere and instantly adds competition everywhere in America with a "provider of last resort." Wireless and wired are still too expensive. LTE-A should have 100GB+ caps and we're at ~23GB right now. Once FTTP upgrades happen, regulations come with them. It's in their best interest to continue to carve out fiberhoods and hopefully dump the unprofitable copper on the taxpayer. |
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| smk11 |
to bockbock
said by bockbock :Yes, from what I hear, AT&T is "rapidly" expanding their GPON platform in the Miami area to handle Gigafast U-Verse. They also need to upgrade their outdated xFITL crap down there as well, which will eventually be GPON. I have even heard that the existing FTTN/VDSL2 neighborhoods will be all fiber as well in the coming years. What you "hear" and what ATT actually plans to do are two very different things. "We will upgrade every single ATT customer in X state to fiber" is what I want to hear. I don't think there is any company even promising such things that have legacy copper. Fiberhoods and wait is the plan. |
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to bockbock
Ain't gonna happen. |
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ATTuverse21 to smk11
Anon
2015-Dec-7 1:07 pm
to smk11
I think Smk11 has a hard on for LTE lol. Anyways no one knows what AT&T will or won't do. |
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Cant' remember but is he the one who is always talking about rain fade back-up on LTE when it comes to AT&T/DirecTV ?lol |
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 Zenit_IIfxThe system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA |
to neutrino
The reason AT&T went with VDSL/VDSL2 instead of some type of FTTP at the start of the U-Verse project was most likely due to the uncertainty of what Cable would do in the future at the time. DOCSIS2.0 was nowhere near as consistent or fast as D3.0 has been, and D3.1 totally blows *DSL out of the water. Very few people saw this coming at the start of the U-Verse era.
In addition SBC was traditionally run by morons at the top management positions. Those same morons control AT&T. BellSouth was a lot more progressive up until the merger with SBC, then everything got frozen in time (points at the *FITL deployments).
Another reason is how expensive FiOS was circa 2003/4 to build. AT&T saw those expenses and thought "no way". Today it is a different story, other countries are deploying FTTP like mad so equipment costs have gone way down. VZ did most of the hard work with regards to figuring out the ideal US deployment methods. AT&T is literally following the FiOS template with their new-built FTTP GigaPower networks, down to the use of handholes instead of pedestals (although some GigaPower builds have a mix of both).
AT&T has very little concern for competing with Cable. They will be happy to cede most of their legacy ADSL2/early VDSL2 markets to either Cable or AT&T Wireless. It's almost the same as what is going on at Verizon, only AT&T still publicly shows a token interest in expanding service. The NC fiber deployment is an anomaly, their bean counters must see some future growth happening in that area. |
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 F100
join:2013-01-15
Durham, NC
(Software) pfSense
Pace 5268AC
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F100
Member
2015-Dec-7 2:39 pm
said by Zenit_IIfx:... Another reason is how expensive FiOS was circa 2003/4 to build. AT&T saw those expenses and thought "no way". Today it is a different story, other countries are deploying FTTP like mad so equipment costs have gone way down. VZ did most of the hard work with regards to figuring out the ideal US deployment methods. AT&T is literally following the FiOS template with their new-built FTTP GigaPower networks, down to the use of handholes instead of pedestals (although some GigaPower builds have a mix of both).
.... The NC fiber deployment is an anomaly, their bean counters must see some future growth happening in that area. Exactly Zenit. Just about every part of the Gigapower Fiber construction process that I have captured here in 2015 is basically a copy of VZ's FIOS deployment. The PFP(Splitter) cabinets, pre-made Corning drops from PFP to taps, Corning Opti Taps and even connectorized drop cables to an ONT that is the same as VZ except for the Coax output. A lot of the Hispanic subs told me they have installed FIOS before and that is why they were pretty good at it. Some will say AT&T is installing Fiber as part of it's agreement with the North Carolina Next Generation Network initiative. » ncngn.net They "said" they were going to install fiber anyway. Really, I believe it's because they have to compete with Google. They know somewhere they have to go head to head and with so many universities in this area as well as tech companies, it is a good place to get some return. That's why AT&T is busting it to get ahead of Google. |
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six9
join:2001-12-03
Wake Forest, NC |
to Zenit_IIfx
said by Zenit_IIfx:The NC fiber deployment is an anomaly, their bean counters must see some future growth happening in that area. Probably a big part of the NC deployment has to do with other companies in here trying to compete. It wasn't until Google announced that they were coming to the Raleigh area that TWC and AT&T started the upgrades. Frontier is in Durham doing some things. CenturyLink is here too. There was a company that was deploying fiber where I am but went out of business probably having something to do with an environmental group whining about putting fiber across a river. Another factor that could have something to do with the Raleigh area is the proximity to Research Triangle Park and how many people companies are moving here for newer/cheaper offices. In my case, CL had fiber across the street from me but not in my cul-de-sac. They actually brought out a boring crew and got the fiber to my side and my house in the process. I was surprised they actually did that looking back on it. |
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 Donut
join:2005-06-27
Romulus, MI ·Comcast XFINITY
 ·T-Mobile
Netgear CM1000
Synology RT2600ac
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to smk11
said by smk11:Won't compete in urban areas outside of fiberhoods.
Unloading UverseTV to sat + Fixed LTE + bundling + LTE broadcast + maybe keeping old copper = future ATT broadband outside of the fiberhoods.
Cable can't bundle with wireless nor do that have LTE broadcast.
Even the worst case scenario:
768k DSL + up to 500Mbps fixed LTE-A + LTE broadcast for constantly downloaded content
Sprint and Tmobile are beginning to offer ~5-7Mbps unlimited LTE wireless hotspots for $50-$80/month. No such thing as unlimited. Just saying. But I feel ATT and Verizon see Wireless as the future, not wired. |
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to smk11
No. |
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| ham3843 |
to smk11
NOBODY (only a few desperate customers) will fall for expensive and impractical fixed LTE. With caps at that. LOL |
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| ham3843 |
to ILpt4U
said by ILpt4U:
No, I really want to see Universal Fiber Deployment, like we had 100 years ago with Phone and Electricity Copper Wires. If you can get Copper Wires there, you can get tiny little Glass tubes/strands there
I think it would (literally) take an Act of Congress to get it done, but this Gov't has spent money on a lot worse things, the last 20 years...
So far, the Private Sector does not seem committed to a Universal Fiber Deployment model
Well said. Congress needs to reenact the what was done with electrification, and telephone, UNIVERSAL SERVICE. |
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