AT&T pulls 5G home Internet from New York to protest state affordability law.
… business customers can keep any device they purchased at no charge," AT&T said.
Gee how magnanimous (emphasis mine)
I don’t know if this AT&T service covered all of NY but for sake of my point I’m going to assume it covers most to all of NY. Obviously, not everyone would subscribe to AT&T either. I’m generalizing a bit to make a point.
There are approx 8.5 mil households in NY and 1.7 mil qualified for the previous affordable broadband law (couldn’t find an exact number for this current law).
If they charge $60 for the service that’s a potential total of $512,000,000 for NY.
If 1.7 mil get broadband for $15 that’s $25,500,000.
So AT&T is willing to give up a potential $487,000,00 from all other NY customers just to spite low income families.
Note: this is income before any AT&T expenses, just to be clear and fair.
Old cable guy here. The cost is in laying the lines. That cost is astronomical. AT&T did the math, said, “Fuck it. Not worth it.”
Call 'em evil, but they’re not stupid.
They aren’t laying lines though. It’s the Internet Air program which provides it through 5g.
And where’s does 5g come from
Usually fiber lines that have either been there for decades or the the federal government has been effectively paying them to install for decades decades and they just fucking didn’t do it yet.
Lots of those “government surcharges” that aren’t quoted in their estimates and show up as a surprise bill were authorized by the government, but go directly to the carriers and are supposed to be used to cover the cost of infrastructure upgrades and extension.
I’ve also been involved in something similar. It costs a lot to expand infrastructure. Part of my job would be to plan and explain the costs associated with that. Wireless still needs a wired connection, and wireless still has connection limitations. You can’t just add more users and expect things to work. And you can’t just plop another receiver without it interfering with the others. It needs to be properly planned and something as simple as a building’s signal reflectivity can mess an entire project up. More towers, more equipment, more redundancy, more personnel, more cables, more power, and forking all the money to do all this within the time limit or face fines is a huge task. And that’s assuming it could even work on a technical level, sometimes you just can’t do things (don’t want to interfere with FAA requirements and such) and people don’t understand.
I hate ATT too, but from a purely financial and planning point of view, I’ve been there. You can’t just snap some fingers and make things happen just like that.
Sounds like it’s time for a municipal broadband solution. If AT&T doesn’t want the business, fine. Let’s not force them to take our money.
Chattanooga, Tennessee did something like that, but when they tried to expand outside of the city they were shut down
They pulled their wireless home Internet service which mostly targets rural areas where companies like AT&T never laid fiber and have started abandoning their copper networks. It’s a lot harder for smaller rural communities to do municipal broadband because the costs are much higher per household. Not impossible, but more of an uphill battle. In some GOP states it’s even outlawed. In NY hopefully people can get grants for them.
I remember when the US government paid AT&T to get fiber to the curb of American homes.
Then AT&T didn’t. And then the US sued AT&T to get the money back and into the hands of US Americans. Wireless internet is an end-around having to fulfill those promises of a wide bandwidth future. And here is the evidence for that.
These predatory companies make such a huff, like an abusive partner storming out while shouting “you don’t know what you’re missing!”
We do know, and we’ll be fine. 👋
Interesting, so it seems because ATT doesn’t have fiber already setup in NY that they’re pulling out. If more states did this, they probably wouldn’t be able to handle pulling out, financially.
I don’t see what the issue is here. They don’t want to be treated as a utility, but if they stay in New York, they’ll be regulated as a utility. They’ve dealt with it as a phone provider, and choose not to engage in the regulatory environment being put in front of them. It’s a totally reasonable choice for a business to walk away from a market if the cost of doing business would exceed the profits made.
Apple could have done the same thing with the EU. Either don’t put USB-C on their phones, or cease doing business in those countries.
That’s correct, and the fact that Apple caved from the 8-Pin Lightning connector to USB-C is one of many, many reasons I won’t be buying anything Apple again, even second-hand. The lack of a headphone jack is just one more thing that made me certain of it. If I could find a micro-USB device with a headphone jack that serves as a phone, a pager, a calculator, and an audio (various formats - MP2A,MP3A,MP4A,WAV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, etc.) player, all my problems would be solved. I have looked into featurephones, I think I’m going to be moving in that direction next time I upgrade.
fuck apple forever, for sure, because they’re proprietary from soup to nuts. but “caved” moving to a universal standard instead of a proprietary charging cable, as if that’s a bad thing? yeah, man, i dunno what you’re smokin, but you should put the pipe down.
USB is so so so so so so so much worse than Lightning. Yes Apple is one of the only companies who manages to implement it so it mostly works, but it was still a huge downgrade.
Slowly since glass pipes tend to break.
Personally I’d be happy if I never had to touch a micro-USB device ever again. Mini-USB is somewhat acceptable, but USB-C blows the rest out of the water. It’s unquestionably the better USB standard
Micro USB was definitely horrid. The USB C connector is OK agreed other than the gender is on the wrong sides which still causes reliability issues vs lightning. And USB is such a mess, no mortal has any hope of knowing what the usb c port they have will actually do.
Find me a USB-C that doesn’t fall out. Every Micro-USB male plug that I’ve used has those two notches at the bottom that hold it in place. Every device I’ve had with USB-C, I have to treat it like it’s super delicate while it charges.
You need to clean your usb c port. Get a match, and carve it down go a thin flat end that will fit between the blade of the usb c. Then clean out the lint. The charging cable should click into place if it’s cleaned out.
But apple had Usb-C years before on IPad these scumbags withhold it only from Iphone so that you had ti buy a sepearate Cable Fuck Apple
I have maybe a few dozen USB C devices all from dumb 5V/2A chargers to 20V/5A chargers. From USB 5GB to USB 40GB. Never once have I ever had issue with the cables and connectors. Only time I’ve had an issue was when I dropped my phone into the charging cable where it physically broke off.
Meanwhile I’ve had an iPhone for 4 years and the lightning connector broke in such a way I had to use hot glue to pull it out of the port.
I’ve had many instances of micro-USB bending, some to the point of breakage. This never happened even once with USB-C.
Yep, every micro usb charging port I ever had eventually failed. And because the gender was opposite how lightning works you have to replace the port/device instead of just getting a new cable. It was horrid.
Very much the opposite. The only broken USB port I’ve ever had was a USB-C port for a netbook charger.
How? The netbook era ended way before USB-C is even a thing.
I can literally swing my phone around with its USB C charge cable. As long as I don’t add enough speed for it to make full circles instead of swinging back and forth, it doesn’t drop. If I drop my phone and the cord isn’t long enough to reach the ground, even the sharp stop of ‘no more cord’ tends to not remove the plug.
Lucky you. My experience has been the opposite.
I’ve never had a USB C plug fall out in my entire life, but I have distinct memories of wrapping a micro USB cord around the phone so the plug would maybe make some sort of connection and charge. Same with whatever plug the Nintendo DS used.
Do you have shit devices or shit cords? Because one of the two is causing the problem.
Looks like a monopoly to me. That’s practically admitting that they believe consumers don’t have sufficient choice, and they’d rather not compete.
So, all those lines are leased to at&t by the state right? I feel like they could just revoke them and give everyone free Internet.
Until a line breaks and you discover it costs money to have someone fix it. Or a router gets attacked be someone evil and now you don’t have internet. Or … There are a lot of costs to running internet.
I don’t know how the costs compare to what AT&T is charging. I doubt you do either.
You think at&t is protecting you from hackers? ISPs are notorious for using crap routers and wifi devices which they charge an arm and leg for. ISPs literally had default passwords that can be guessed (many of them still do), used outdated protocols that were prone to brute force attacks or simply fail to compete with even the most basic DD-WRT, Open-WRT or other custom firmaware.
You could just add an extra tax to cover it and it would be cheaper than your Internet bill since it would be spread out amongst everyone.
Liberals: Tax it!
Also Liberals: What about the poor people!
Public utilities are cheaper than private ones. And it’s not like there aren’t city programs for low income. Cali is far from being the most progressive (in comparison to the rest of the world) and they have plenty of assistance programs for all possible utilities.
Lemmy tends to think everything is free, has no clue about real-world costs.
Idiots tend to think that lemmy tends to think everything is free, has no clue about real-world costs. Also they have bad breath.
