AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite Billions In Subsidies

Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by reverendsteveii on Friday December 13, 2024 @10:25AM (#42409276)

This thing where the government funds R&D for private corporations and then the corporations get to keep all the profits because tHey tAkE AlL tHe RiSk is pretty amazing. I'm a stockholder in several fortune 50 companies except my stock is non-voting, doesn't pay dividends, I don't get to pick which stock I buy and I don't ever get to sell it or borrow against it.

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Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by ubnvfft on Friday December 13, 2024 @11:26AM (#42409971)

Also mind you when that “risk” comes knocking it results in mass layoffs. So who really took on that risk? The csuites or the wage workers?

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Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by reverendsteveii on Friday December 13, 2024 @11:52AM (#42410167)

The csuites who will vote themselves golden parachutes, the stockholders who got paid dividends this whole time and then will file for bankruptcy and settle their debts for whatever the company happens to own right now, or the people that lose their salary and house?

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Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by Neonlicht on Friday December 13, 2024 @11:01AM (#42409721)

As I understand it the US government is why every American home- from the deserts in Nevada to the mountains in Virginia- has electricity. And that investment has paid for itself a million times over.

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Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by BrianGragg on Friday December 13, 2024 @11:05AM (#42409774)

As a loan and not subsidies/grant. A ton of rural nonprofit electric cooperatives started out of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act

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Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by ghaff on Friday December 13, 2024 @11:14AM (#42409855)

Every is a bit of an overstatement. Generators in some places are a thing. (And so are fairly large areas without houses.) But generally, yes, also subject to the caveats in another comment.

Satellite broadband does seem to be the "hack" for making locations that don't have broadband or really usable cell coverage in many cases practical.

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Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by lowmagnet on Friday December 13, 2024 @01:08PM (#42410860)

Sorry but it's not satellite broadband, it's the same rural electrification that is the "hack".

My electric cooperative rolled out fiber to every address in the 3-county region it covers. It did so within a year. How? They already run poles everywhere, so they asked "why should we bury fiber?" As it turns out, it's easier to scale out on the pole!

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Re:AT&T Won't Upgrade Millions Of DSL Users To Fiber Despite... by reverendsteveii on Friday December 13, 2024 @02:55PM (#42411748)

Yeah but now they're funding multiple independent private space programs with my money and I'm not gonna get even one rocket out of the deal.

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