AT&T Eliminating Copper Landlines by 2029

DukenukemX said:

Fiber is so cheap that Hezbollah is using long lines to control drones. I like my copper but as long as fiber has taken it's place then I'm Ok with it.

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The issue isn't the cost of the fiber optic cable itself (I would note that the stuff they use for telecommunications costs a lot more than the shit used for drones) it is the install. It is a lot of man power to go and run cables, be they copper or fiber, to houses particularly if they have to go underground. So companies are reluctant to spend that re-running where a connection already exists.

Wireless now gives an even cheap option to say "but we don't wanna spend money running fiber" since it has zero last mile cost.

It's not the cost of the materials though, always the labor.

Sycraft said:

The issue isn't the cost of the fiber optic cable itself (I would note that the stuff they use for telecommunications costs a lot more than the shit used for drones) it is the install. It is a lot of man power to go and run cables, be they copper or fiber, to houses particularly if they have to go underground. So companies are reluctant to spend that re-running where a connection already exists.

Wireless now gives an even cheap option to say "but we don't wanna spend money running fiber" since it has zero last mile cost.

It's not the cost of the materials though, always the labor.

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Ya, I can certainly see more ISP's just wanting to install massive towers with Wifi instead, it is like ISPs that already provide 5G Modems for people in area's that may not have faster hardlines around...

Anything to cut costs, while lowering performance for most people

Sycraft said:

The issue isn't the cost of the fiber optic cable itself (I would note that the stuff they use for telecommunications costs a lot more than the shit used for drones) it is the install. It is a lot of man power to go and run cables, be they copper or fiber, to houses particularly if they have to go underground. So companies are reluctant to spend that re-running where a connection already exists.

Wireless now gives an even cheap option to say "but we don't wanna spend money running fiber" since it has zero last mile cost.

It's not the cost of the materials though, always the labor.

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Ok but we gave telecom's a lot of money to run fiber. Telecom companies received $400 billion to deploy fiber optic grid inside US, but never delivered. They just took the money and pocketed it. Of course, their solution is home wireless because of course it is. Except home wireless is trash, just like it is on phones. My sister did this with T-Mobile where she got 300 up and down plus plans for her families phones, but the connection was absolute trash. I warned her it was a bad idea, but she didn't care because savings. Eventually it got so bad that she took my advice and went back to FIOS, and she only pays $20 a month for 300 up and down, just like I do. Verizon gives you a $15 per month discount if you have a Verizon or Visible phone plan, which I use Visible. I pay $26 a month for my Visible Plus plan. They had really good deals during the holidays.

DukenukemX said:

Ok but we gave telecom's a lot of money to run fiber. Telecom companies received $400 billion to deploy fiber optic grid inside US, but never delivered. They just took the money and pocketed it.

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Oh believe me I know, I'm just saying that's the issue with fiber and costs. Not the material, the labor.

What I'd like to see is to do the actual last-mile as a public utility. Have the city lay fiber to all houses and maintain all the infrastructure for getting data from houses to a data center. Then at that DC ISPs go and install equipment and they are the ones who sell you your access. They can compete on speed, stability, features, network, price, etc. You just get connected to the ISP you pay, and part of the monthly you pay them is a fee that goes back to the city to maintain the physical infrastructure.

That way we actually get the fiber laid, and it isn't something where you have to have 5 fiber lines to each house to have 5 options. However it also keeps it from being all government owned and thus government controlled.

Thankfully where I live we have fiber... but it is Century Link who are dumb as rocks. When it works, which it usually does, it is fast, stable, and low latency. When it breaks getting them to fix it is like hearding cats.

Sycraft said:

Oh believe me I know, I'm just saying that's the issue with fiber and costs. Not the material, the labor.

What I'd like to see is to do the actual last-mile as a public utility. Have the city lay fiber to all houses and maintain all the infrastructure for getting data from houses to a data center. Then at that DC ISPs go and install equipment and they are the ones who sell you your access. They can compete on speed, stability, features, network, price, etc. You just get connected to the ISP you pay, and part of the monthly you pay them is a fee that goes back to the city to maintain the physical infrastructure.

That way we actually get the fiber laid, and it isn't something where you have to have 5 fiber lines to each house to have 5 options. However it also keeps it from being all government owned and thus government controlled.

Thankfully where I live we have fiber... but it is Century Link who are dumb as rocks. When it works, which it usually does, it is fast, stable, and low latency. When it breaks getting them to fix it is like hearding cats.

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Are you still getting service through acttual CenturyLink?

They got bought by AT&T which brands as Quantum Fiber. I used to have CL but saw advertisements for QF so I went to their website and signed up and now I get double the speeds for $15 less per month. All they did is come to my house and swap the modem out.

sharknice said:

Are you still getting service through acttual CenturyLink?

They got bought by AT&T which brands as Quantum Fiber. I used to have CL but saw advertisements for QF so I went to their website and signed up and now I get double the speeds for $15 less per month. All they did is come to my house and swap the modem out.

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We haven't bothered yet. At this point the bill is still Century Link. We did have the ONT swapped out when it went out last time (it wasn't the ONT but we got it swapped anyhow).

sharknice said:

Are you still getting service through acttual CenturyLink?

They got bought by AT&T which brands as Quantum Fiber. I used to have CL but saw advertisements for QF so I went to their website and signed up and now I get double the speeds for $15 less per month. All they did is come to my house and swap the modem out.

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Oh i missed that announcement. At&t (really southwestern bell, iirc) subsuming US West back into the fold, more or less. Only Bell Atlantic and Nynex escaped (Verizon)

Sycraft said:

What I'd like to see is to do the actual last-mile as a public utility. Have the city lay fiber to all houses and maintain all the infrastructure for getting data from houses to a data center. Then at that DC ISPs go and install equipment and they are the ones who sell you your access.

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This is the model for Washington public utility districts... The problem is customers have to pay/finance the construction costs directly and construction costs are expensive. And service is expensive too. I understand why most people in my county stay with telco or cable internet; muni fiber is much better in measurable ways but most people won't notice a difference.

Sycraft said:

Oh believe me I know, I'm just saying that's the issue with fiber and costs. Not the material, the labor.

What I'd like to see is to do the actual last-mile as a public utility. Have the city lay fiber to all houses and maintain all the infrastructure for getting data from houses to a data center. Then at that DC ISPs go and install equipment and they are the ones who sell you your access. They can compete on speed, stability, features, network, price, etc. You just get connected to the ISP you pay, and part of the monthly you pay them is a fee that goes back to the city to maintain the physical infrastructure.

That way we actually get the fiber laid, and it isn't something where you have to have 5 fiber lines to each house to have 5 options. However it also keeps it from being all government owned and thus government controlled.

Thankfully where I live we have fiber... but it is Century Link who are dumb as rocks. When it works, which it usually does, it is fast, stable, and low latency. When it breaks getting them to fix it is like hearding cats.

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I've seen areas where other companies have done the last mile laying of fiber. My uncle's home upstate has Margaretville Fiber which is expensive since they charge $100 for 100 up and down and $200 for 300 up and down. I know people complain about the cost of housing, but there's a lot of cheap houses out in the middle of nowhere. Besides lack of jobs being one reason people don't move into empty areas, but the other is a good internet connection. At the very least some people could work from home with a good fiber connection. A good internet connection is a must in this day in age. You can forget about home wireless internet because the signal there is barely registering. Maybe Starlink but I've heard bad results from people using those.

DukenukemX said:

I've seen areas where other companies have done the last mile laying of fiber. My uncle's home upstate has Margaretville Fiber which is expensive since they charge $100 for 100 up and down and $200 for 300 up and down. I know people complain about the cost of housing, but there's a lot of cheap houses out in the middle of nowhere. Besides lack of jobs being one reason people don't move into empty areas, but the other is a good internet connection. At the very least some people could work from home with a good fiber connection. A good internet connection is a must in this day in age. You can forget about home wireless internet because the signal there is barely registering. Maybe Starlink but I've heard bad results from people using those.

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Laying fiber to rural houses is always going to be a real challenge because of the costs. Like it would be very possible depending on the length of run to NEVER recover your investment it could cost so much.

Wireless is actually a much better option but getting the companies to actually put the towers out there is harder. Mid-band 5G can actually reach a mile, or even more. So in an area that is rural but not totally out in the sticks a single tower can cover a reasonable number of houses and offer pretty good speeds (100s of mbps). However again, costs a lot to put up a tower so they'd rather just have one low band tower to cover a 100 square miles even if it means it sucks.

Starlink is... mixed. It looks good on the surface and can be, but it seems like you rarely get the promised speeds. I know someone with the 100mbps plan and it is more like 10-20 in his area. Latency is also always going to suck, there's just no beating the speed of light and the fact that the signal has to go up to a satellite, then from satellite to satellite until it gets to a downlink just adds lots of latency. However, it can be the best option particular for people that are truly in BFE. However it also may have pricing issues as costs go up since they need to replace about 20% of their constellation every year.

Sycraft said:

Latency is also always going to suck, there's just no beating the speed of light and the fact that the signal has to go up to a satellite, then from satellite to satellite until it gets to a downlink just adds lots of latency.

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I live near Seattle. People near me were claiming 20-40ms pings on starlink when it was first widely available. My DSL pings were like 18 ms throughout the day (except when the dslam had no utility power). Low earth orbit isn't that far away, and I think most land based users wouldn't have much traffic go through space lasers.

toast0 said:

I live near Seattle. People near me were claiming 20-40ms pings on starlink when it was first widely available. My DSL pings were like 18 ms throughout the day (except when the dslam had no utility power). Low earth orbit isn't that far away, and I think most land based users wouldn't have much traffic go through space lasers.

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I mean I'm not going to say it is impossible... but I haven't seen it. When I've seen it in use, pings were pretty high. My guess is that a downlink was in Seattle so the signal basically went up and back down. The problem is if you are out in the sticks, there probably isn't a downlink around so it has to go from satellite to satellite until one can send your signal back down, and then unless that happens to be near the server you want it has to go back around on the fiber optic network.

Like for sure try it if you are in an area that doesn't have other good options... but I would expect most technologies to handily out perform it, even cellular since it basically has every problem that cellular does (everyone in a given area sharing bandwidth, atmospheric interference, encoding delays, etc) and then additional problems because it is further away and it has to hand you off from station to station as they orbit.

Alsoalso with it, or well any service really, be careful about self-reported latency figures. They are often overly optimistic. I always check actuals to various sites.

SamuelL421 said:

Long overdue to upgrade lines in some places, but there's something to be said for the trusty old landline that worked even in a power outage. Safe to say that's no longer going to be a thing.

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Exactly! People that don't live in hurricane prone areas just don't understand. It should be maintained as the critical infrastructure that it is. This world is going to hell in a hand basket.

Sycraft said:

Laying fiber to rural houses is always going to be a real challenge because of the costs. Like it would be very possible depending on the length of run to NEVER recover your investment it could cost so much.

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Lots of stories where locals end up doing it themselves. One such person is Jared Mauch who was quoted $50k to get internet to his home. Now the government gave him $2.6 million to do what big telecom companies wouldn't. It's an excuse by large ISP's not to run fiber due to cost.

View: https://www.youtube.com/live/MrTptiKzjjU?si=SsMPsz8rhzLWbLb2

Wireless is actually a much better option but getting the companies to actually put the towers out there is harder. Mid-band 5G can actually reach a mile, or even more. So in an area that is rural but not totally out in the sticks a single tower can cover a reasonable number of houses and offer pretty good speeds (100s of mbps). However again, costs a lot to put up a tower so they'd rather just have one low band tower to cover a 100 square miles even if it means it sucks.

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Just to have a cell phone service you'd need some towers. It's just proof that corporations are greedy and will pocket money instead of doing what they've been paid to do.

toast0 said:

I live near Seattle. People near me were claiming 20-40ms pings on starlink when it was first widely available. My DSL pings were like 18 ms throughout the day (except when the dslam had no utility power). Low earth orbit isn't that far away, and I think most land based users wouldn't have much traffic go through space lasers.

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I've played with people who've StarLink for World of Warcraft and it wasn't 20-40ms for them. They were dealing with hundreds of ms, which was a problem. Usually people who have parents who live in the middle of the woods and visit them will have Starlink in those houses. To me 18 is pretty high.

Good riddance. Everybody has 2 cellphones and 70 ways to charge them. Mandate hardening that infrastructure that can FAR more efficiently serve FAR more people and move on.

I only have USB-C phones so only have one way to charge them. Hoping the USB-C ports holds up.