dslreports logo
 story category
AT&T Faking Concern for Rural Deployment
Yesterday's announcement comes during political push

Editorial: AT&T is getting a lot of press for their announcement yesterday that they were making an effort to reach broadband have-nots with wireless, satellite, and "Project Lightspeed." Buried amidst the bubbly news and analyst coverage we've seen trumpeting this announcement, only CNET's Russell Shaw seemed to remember that AT&T is in the middle of a political fight to eliminate local franchises and deployment requirements from state and federal laws.

This has already resulted in ample complaints that the company is redlining - or ignoring less affluent or rural areas as it upgrades its network to VDSL2 & fiber. Yesterday's announcement prepares a counter to these arguments by allowing AT&T to say that they are making an effort to reach these customers. However, looking closely at the announcement, not much really changed from a hard-deployment perspective.

•The Wild-Blue deal re-brands satellite broadband that was already available to rural Americans.•The "Project Lightspeed" plan to "pass" 5.5 million low-income households was already calculated. In part, we'll cynically assume, to skirt redlining allegations. No new deployment was actually announced, and the project remains in trials.•The plans for two new fixed wireless trial locations is far from broad deployment.
Granted, from a business perspective it doesn't make financial sense to serve many of these areas because of limited ROI. However, if you're against rural deployment for ROI reasons (which is AT&T's right), should they also get the public relations and deregulatory perks they'd receive if they actually were seriously deploying to these areas?

Apparently yes. All it takes is lobbying muscle and impressive sounding but ultimately empty press-releases.

Do we believe AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre when he suggests these new moves "could help bring broadband to as many as 11.5 million additional homes and businesses?" Or do we assume AT&T is doing a song and dance for representatives of these regions to gain political favor?

Most recommended from 48 comments


Rick5
Premium Member
join:2001-02-06

5 recommendations

Rick5

Premium Member

Can someone help me out here?

And tell me, at what point in time did it become a requirement for a company such as AT&T is to have to be forced into delivering goods and/or services into areas which would most likely prove to be an unprofitable business venture for them?

What a HORRIBLE expectation to expect from this, or any other U.S. Company.

This and other companies put their and their shareholders hard earned money into building and upgrading their systems and in fact, in this industry, that amounts to billions of dollars.
This company is not here to service those people who CHOOSE and who have decided to live in the more rural parts of America with non essential services such as broadband internet, video over IP, or VOIP.

If I were to ever decide to live in the Mountains of California or anywhere else that's rural, or even borderline rural for new technologies, I would fully expect that I'd be sacrificing a certain amount of convenience to do so.
I wouldn't expect a national food chain to then move a supermarket down the street from me..which is an EXCELLANT comparison to this issue..only to service my and a relatively few others needs.

I would expect to drive a long distance for even such basics as Gasoline for my tank and even for things such as a doctor or hospital visit.
One of the biggest and first challenges companies like AT&T have had to face is how to service even those more densely populated areas with this newer technology.

I myself lived a while back in a pretty heavily populated suburb of Columbus Ohio, in a complex with over 300 units in it..and we couldn't even get DSL...because of the distance limitations. This wasn't the phone companies fault, it was the technology involved that had us too far from the C/O. But, if you were a FOR profit business...which would you RIGHTFULLY work on first...that type of a scenario involving many potential customers or the more rural customers where you might have to lay miles of new lines to service only a few?
The executives of a for profit company have an OBLIGATION to their shareholders and to the corporation itself to choose the first one. This is not a welfare agency and in business to lose money.

Just as any FOR PROFIT corporation in America should be as well.

For whatever faults they may have, I think AT&T has demonstrated their commitment to trying to get these things rolled out as fast as they can. Witness the recent lawsuit even against the city of Geneva IL..that they filed trying apparently speed along that community as well.

On one hand, the writers here at BBR complain about AT&T's attack against franchise agreement, and on the other you complain about how slow they are.

Which is it BBR?

Which one do you want to support?

You can't have it both ways.

~RRR