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AT&T has deployed fiber-to-home Internet in less than 30 percent of homes in its 21-state territory, a new report says, adding that AT&T is targeting rich, non-rural areas in its fiber upgrade.
The co-written report by AT&T Workers Union and an advocacy group is timely, released just days after it was confirmed by AT&T, which will stop new customers from connecting to its older DSL network. That doesn’t mean customers in DSL areas will get fiber, as AT&T said last year that it was largely expanding its fiber service. AT&T said at the time that in areas where it makes financial sense for AT&T, it would only grow on an additional fiber basis. We will give more details on DSL cutoff later in this article – in short, the fiber / copper hybrid known as AT&T Internet is still offered to new customers, but existing customers except for the slow product that AT&T sells under the DSL name.
Citing data that the ISP is required to submit to the Federal Communications Commission, a report released today said AT&T built fiber-to-home in 28 percent of its homes as of June 30, 2019. The report was written by A.T. A union representing A&T employees, through the Communications Workers of America (CWA); And the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), an advocacy group that has been monitoring AT&T’s broadband deployments for years. Groups say AT&T has left rural areas and low-income people with older, inadequate broadband services.
AT&T has 52.97 million homes in the home-internet service sector and 14.93 million of them have fiber-to-home access, CWAA told Ars. The CBWA / NDI report found that fiber percentage was particularly poor in some states, with rates ranging from 14 to 16 percent in Michigan, Illinois, Mississippi and Arkansas.
“In AT&T’s national footprint, mainly in rural counties, only 5 percent of households (217,284 out of 4,442,675) have fiber consumption,” the report said. In urban areas, the situation is good but not problem free. Seventy percent of households in urban counties still lack access to fiber through AT&T, as the company has provided fiber to only 1.7..7 million households out of a total of 48.4 million households in these counties, the report said.
AT&T upgrades leave poor people behind
In recent years, NDIA research has focused on AT&T’s “digital red-lining” in cities such as Cleveland and Detroit, with the richest city dwellers prioritizing fiber improvement. The same was found in the new report.
“AT&T prefers network upgrades in affluent areas, leaving low-income communities with older technologies – the median income of homes with fiber available is 34 percent higher than those with DSL alone,” today’s report said.
With AT&T reducing the use of copper phone cables from a fiber-to-the-node approach, every home can provide decent broadband speeds without having to build fiber all the way. But there are still many areas where AT&T does not serve FCC’s standard of 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. The nearly six-year-old 25 / 3MBS standard has been side-criticized by consumer advocates who say it is no longer as fast as modern broadband, but for many in the AT&T sector it will be a big step.
The CWA / NDI report states that “in 28 per cent of its network-step households, AT&T’s Internet service does not meet the FCC’s benchmark of 25/3 Mbps, which is considered broadband.”
Some customers in the AT&T sector are lucky enough to get a cable operator operator that can provide modern speeds. But even for them, the failure to deploy AT&T fiber means they are “deprived of the advantage of competition in price, selection and quality of service,” the report said. Lack of competition particularly hurts low-income people, the report explains:
Without competition for market share, providers have minimal incentives to expand the market by recruiting and supporting new broadband adapters – for example, by promoting low-income discount programs or by investing in community digital inclusion partnerships. NDI affiliates are finding that members of their community who are eligible for AT&T’s low-income discount offer, access to AT&T, have a much slower pace of data available on their homes than they need for video, compact applications, School, work and telemedicine.
Cable giants Commast and Charter have benefited from telcos such as AT&T, which has monopolies on cable companies in many parts of the U.S. AT&T has about 15.2 million Internet subscribers, compared to 29.4 million for AT Mac and 28.1 million for Charter.
In mid-2015, the Federal Communications Commission provided AT&T to 12.5 million customers in exchange for approval to purchase its DirectTV. “After meeting the conditions imposed by the FCC following the acquisition of Directive, AT&T largely halted its national construction in residential homes in mid-2019,” the CWA / NDI report noted.
We contacted AT&T this morning and will update this article if we get feedback.
