AT&T Customer Since 1960 Buys WSJ Print Ad To Complain of Slow Speeds (arstechnica.com) 161
A man who has been an AT&T customer since 1960 has a message for CEO John Stankey about the company's failure to upgrade DSL areas to modern Internet service. Aaron Epstein, 90, is so frustrated by his 3Mbps Internet plan that he took out a Wall Street Journal ad in today's print edition in order to post an open letter to Stankey. From a report: "Dear Mr. Stankey: AT&T prides itself as a leader in electronic communications. Unfortunately, for the people who live in N. Hollywood, CA 91607, AT&T is now a major disappointment," Epstein wrote in the letter. Epstein paid $1,100 to run the ad for one day in the Manhattan and Dallas editions of today's Journal, he told Ars in a phone interview. He chose the Manhattan edition to reach investors who might want to pressure AT&T into upgrading its network and Dallas because that's where AT&T is headquartered, he said. "We need to keep up with current technology and have looked to AT&T to supply us with fast Internet service," Epstein wrote in the open letter to AT&T's CEO. "Yet, although AT&T is advertising speeds up to 100Mbps for other neighborhoods, the fastest now available to us from AT&T is only 3Mbps. Your competitors now have speeds of over 200Mbps. Why is AT&T, a leading communications company, treating us so shabbily in North Hollywood?"
Competition (Score:2)
My family home, and my graduate student off-campus apartment were, coincidentally, test markets for competition when that started to be a thing in the early 1990s. In both cases, prices plummeted and upgrades and quality skyrocketted.
On the other hand, rural areas are expensive for upgrades relative to subscribers.
That is all.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Informative)
North Hollywood is far from rural. No excuses in the big city.
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Excuses abound in big cities. Often they are inhabited by NIMBYists that are enraged at the sight of a telecom box and won't permit them. I suspect that very problem in North Hollywood. One can only imagine the generations of gentry honing their intolerance to ever finer points with each passing year.
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Excuses abound in big cities. Often they are inhabited by NIMBYists that are enraged at the sight of a telecom box and won't permit them. I suspect that very problem in North Hollywood. One can only imagine the generations of gentry honing their intolerance to ever finer points with each passing year.
My hometown growing up was a suburb, but they didn't have the NIMBY problem there, it was the municipal monopoly that was the problem. MediaOne, then AT&T (which bought MediaOne), then Comcast (which bought MediaOne) were the only option for anything better than DSL. That being said, we had super fast speeds with MediaOne (I remember a friend getting over 3 MB/s circa 2001 on an FTP transfer. My personal peak back then was about 1.5, but even so, that was insanely fast for consumer connections in tha
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Re: Competition (Score:3)
Scandinavia doesn't have the problem with remote rural areas. So no excuse there.
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No, much of America is literally (meaning, in fact) unpopulated, and service there isn't just nonexistent, it's unnecessary and superfluous.
Look at a coverage map of Maine - Much of the northwest quarter of the state is unserved. No one lives there, other than scattered individuals who choose to, lumber harvesting, and wildlife. Not as lack of service, no demand.
This example, North Hollywood, has no such excuse. If I were a bettor, I would put money on the expense of entirely replacing the existing copper p
Re: Competition (Score:3)
We paid ATT billions of dollars above and beyond their billing to extend FCC-defined broadband (based on speeds) to EVERY customer. They gave away the money to executives and shareholders.
It is an excuse, not a reason.
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... then why not just write "in fact"?
Re: Competition (Score:2)
Well, many people don't know what 'literally' means.
Oh, wait...
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There's always room for excuses, they're free.
In the US, when it comes time for the government to force a business to build and maintain something, it doesn't take many excuses to kill it. There may be a cultural difference in that American's (maddingly) don't view access communication as essential. That and other aspects of egalitarianism can lead to very different priorities in the US versus Scandinavia.
No excuse for Scandinavian countries not to have their own space program. Or their own nuclear weapons.
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Providers have been given nearly $1 trillion taxpayer dollars over the decades to upgrade and expand networks. Bill Clinton was the first to hand over a few billion, and every administration since keeps handing out more money.
What have all these private companies done with that taxpayer money? Why do they keep asking for more to do something they've already been paid to do?
There's a reason the U.S. has some of th
Re:Competition (Score:5, Informative)
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North Hollywood, which this story is about, is between Burbank and Van Nuys. It isn't a low population density area.
I have a client in Studio City and it was just 5 or 6 years ago that they were finally able to get something other than T-1 at the business address. Someone finally started offering cable service there. It's weird to me because I legit live in "the country" and I've had high-speed cable available since I moved here 7 years ago. You'd think the valley would be ripe for high-speed internet, it's not like the density isn't high enough.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Interesting)
The net effect was to freeze the infrastructure in whatever condition existed at that time, let's approximate it at 2005-ish. Areas like North Hollywood were probably in line to get fibre, either VZ FIOS or AT&T U-verse, but it all halted. You may be lucky to live on a block with fibre but a block away they're stuck with coax or twisted pair, which the fellow who bought the full page ad apparently is stuck with.
The only hope is for wireless 5G-Home to build out, but it is taking a loooong time for that to happen. Hopefully the man will live long enough to see it come to pass, lest he pass before it comes.
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Thats the kind of bullshit we get here in Las Vegas. I'm currently on Cox preferred (150/10), paying $88/mo. The only alternative here is CenturyLink, besides a grossly overpriced wireless, that is less than half of the thruput that I'm getting with Cox AND NEARLY DOUBLE the price of Cox and they have the chutzpah to call it "residential". CL offers a "lifetime" $49/mo plan, which I'd inquired about a couple of years ago, during one of my periodic attempts to dump Cox. They told me the best they could do at
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I'm also in a redlined area for CenturyLink.
As much as I'd like the evil that is Cox to be taken out in a meteor strike, CL is limited to 1.5Mbps in my neighborhood.
At 10, I'd take it.
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Your recommended model is exactly what is being rolled-out here in Australia: the National Broadband Network (NBN). Public infrastructure with private companies leasing & reselling the service.
I think it's a great model for something rather critical, and where perverse corporate incentives would otherwise leave many without. But don't be too pie-eyed ... our government grabbed most opportunities to screw-up the execution:
1. I recall hearing initial estimates of about $AUD30 billion (~ $USD22 billion) an
DSL is dead (Score:4, Interesting)
The technology is lacking, and 200MB over copper pairs is pretty damned difficult. 25MB is damned difficult. The solution isn't to excoriate AT&T for their poor performance, but to move on to viable technology.
Yes, DSL can work very very well, and 91607 is sufficiently densely populated to make it practical, though the copper plant there might be in such disrepair, or installed so that DSL is always hamstrung.
When I had CenturyLink DSL in the Phoenix area, we lived literally 30 feet from the pedestal, the SLIC that we were connected to. Max speed download was 12MB, usually 8MB, and moving to a new home got us about 1200 feet from the nearest pedestal. Speed there was 3-5MB download. Still, I didn't quit it until, as we had their TV service on the same line, they went down for 38+ hours during Super Bowl Sunday, the whole day, the night before, and the next day. No explanations, no rebate, no apologies. I can't tell ya Cox has better customer service, but their outages are accompanied by at least a form letter apology.
Aaron, it's time to move on. Sad, but they cannot compete. Game over, man, game over.
Re: DSL is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
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You should know those billions didn't go into actually delivering the services anticipated. That's criminal, literally, but try and get either performance, compensation, or punishment. Not going to happen. Another reason to not subsidize these thieves.
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Agreed -- we need to hold them to their obligation to deploy high speed networks via fiber. They've received the moeny, tney need to fulfill their end of it.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
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Epstein said he pays AT&T about $100 a month at home for two phone lines and Internet service and $49 a month to Charter for cable Internet. Epstein also pays AT&T for phone and Internet service at a business he owns in Sherman Oaks, but he said the slow Internet doesn't bother him much in the office because he uses it for basic tasks like email and not for video streaming.
So he has charter internet AND ATT? Maybe the artic
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With 3mbit dsl you'll get up to 256Kbit/s upload, which would allow you to upload about 5 minutes of HD video per day.
Re: DSL is dead (Score:2)
I don't think there are any 200 megabyte per second copper pair connections that go far enough to leave the house, are there?
Or did you mean 200 Mb, aka megabit?
I bet you say 20 coulomb too when you mean 20 degrees celsius.
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You could ask what I meant, or you could correct me for not using 'mbps', like the article, or you can try to seem smart.
I'll bet you don't know if I even have good reason to know what a Coulomb is. At least you use your name, for that you get credit.
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Funny. I switched permanently from Cox to AT&T DSL because Cox had a switch failure (the switch is in an easement in my front yard) and we were down for 7 days. No explanations, no rebate, no apologies.
We are getting 18 Mbps (more like 10 down) from AT&T but it has been rock solid. We've had about 3 hours of down time a year and we are hammering it with 15 devices, remote school, gaming, and constant zoom meetings. We tried to upgrade but 18 is the fastest they can give us in our hood.
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> The solution isn't to excoriate AT&T for their poor performance, but to move on to viable technology.
If AT&T was topping out at 25Mbps or more, this would be an issue of the limits of DSL. But 3Mbps in a densely populated area is certainly not that problem.
Eventually, though, yes, it will be time to move on from DSL. AT&T is the one that has not moved on to viable technology. Fiber is not outside the scope of AT&T. They can start with fiber to the curb, and move on to fiber to the h
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This isn't about DSL. It's about broadband availability.
The major carriers have failed to extend their networks as they should have. Internet access is now a basic requirement for normal life in America. We depend on these access providers to make their networks available, reliable, with sufficient throughput, and at a reasonable price. It is important enough that we have government-approved fees to fund the expansion of these services beyond the scope of densely populated areas.
The author of the advert
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"This isn't about DSL. It's about broadband availability.
The major carriers have failed to extend their networks as they should have. Internet access is now a basic requirement for normal life in America. We depend on these access providers to make their networks available, reliable, with sufficient throughput, and at a reasonable price. It is important enough that we have government-approved fees to fund the expansion of these services beyond the scope of densely populated areas."
This. ^^^
I live on the out
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I used to live close enough to the CO that I could hit it with my spud gun from the front yard, but because of the way the cable plant in my neighborhood was laid out in the 1950s the lines went two miles north, half a mile east, and then two miles south again. DSL would go down for days at a time, finally on the third service call the tech they sent had a meter (his own, ATT wouldn't provide him with tools). He said he was amazed we ever got a connection at all, since we were well beyond the limit where
Re: DSL is dead (Score:2)
If you're going to be pedantic, at least get it right, lol. The guy was complaining about 3 Mbps, which is 1,000,000,000 times faster than 3 mbps. m=milli=1/1000; M=mega=1,000,000. I think it would be amazing to get 3 mbps from any connection. That's one bit every five and a half minutes or so. You could do faster with eye blinks.
1 second on google.. (Score:2)
The problem is his love for the AT&T brand, which has failed the competition. So instead of all the angst, effort and money spent on the ads he could have spent 1 second on google and signed up with FiOS or presumably other providers. First link I found shows $60/month for 500Mbps which should be a nice upgrade from his DSL.
https://gofrontierinternet.com... [gofrontierinternet.com]
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Re: 1 second on google.. (Score:2)
Well, then it is supposed to hurt.
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That generation still has SUPER brand loyalty
This.
There are a few Chevron gas stations in my town that are charging about $0.75 per gallon MORE than the discount outlets. Mainly neighborhood stations where the residents have been pulling in to the same station to fill up for 50 years. They don't sell much gas, but they still make a profit. Meanwhile, the local Costco not only has traffic lined up at the pumps, they had two fuel delivery trucks lined up to drop off more gas the other day.
I suspect that some of these expensive stations are loss leader
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I buy Chevron for my small engines exclusively - Techron is good enough they sell it as an additive on its own.
But my cars don't deserve it more than twice a year, and the surcharge is about the same as buying a bottle at the parts store. Feh.
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It isn't even the same company anymore. Today's AT&T is just a licensed service mark. Everything else divested over the past 50 years. Even AT&T Wireless' ancestors weren't even AT&T companies.
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All of the remaining merged RBOCs (Qwest, Verizon, AT&T) have just as much lineage from the original AT&T. The one that calls itself AT&T has additional linear from purchasing the long-distance service, so it's not just a reusing the name. The ex-Cingular wireless service is only part of it.
You could also argue that Nokia counts since they own Bell Labs, which still exists.
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Unless you know his address you can't know whether its available to him. There are plenty of unserviceable areas in towns that are supposed to be covered by fios.
If a competitor offers more, he should go to them (Score:3)
But there isn't a competitor in his area, is there? Then why would investors pressure AT&T to spend money on upgrades if the alternative is to keep raking in the money paid by subscribers who have no other option? Investors want to get paid.
Re:If a competitor offers more, he should go to th (Score:5, Informative)
According to TFA, not only IS there a competitor in his area (Charter), he actually has their TV service. But instead of using Charters high-speed cable internet, he uses a low speed DSL connection then bitches about it.
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I know that 60 years of loyalty means nothing to you. But obviously it does mean something to this person. I'd guess he is also an investor, a stock holder. You complain like this when you've given your loyalty and your cash and you get short-changed in the end. Its folks like this guy that made ATT what it is today. Whether they like it or not, ATT should take better care of its customers. Nothing wrong with pointing that out.
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The real issue is limited competition.
I suspect this person could find a fixed wireless carrier that could provide much better service.
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AT&T is not Epstein's only option for wired Internet service. In fact, he said he pays for both Charter Spectrum's cable Internet and AT&T DSL at home but generally only uses AT&T Internet because, he said, "in order to get phone service, I have to use the AT&T modem." He noted that a technician could probably set things up so that he could use AT&T phone service and Charter Internet. But with the pandemic continuing, Epstein said that he and his wife are playing it safe by not having any visitors in the house.
And to the inevitable random asshole who I'm sure is clicking Reply to This right now without even getting this far: The dude is 90 and obviously not super technical, it's perfectly fine that he doesn't know how to resolve the issue he brings up in the quote above himself. It's also perfectly valid for him to call out AT&T for sucking, even if he DOES have other options.
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That's even worse. Why would investors want AT&T to spend money on keeping customers who can leave but don't? He needs to stop giving them money. And does he not have kids who can set up carrier-independent VoIP for him? No, I'm not going to read an article about a stupid stunt like that.
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I feel his pain (Score:2)
Me too. (Score:2)
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LOL, ok you got me with that one.... I've no mod pts, tho
The space man is coming for you... (Score:5, Informative)
The starlink will absolutely demolish AT&T/Verizon on those regions and give musk enough money to waste on 3 or 4 hyperloop-like dumb things.
Re:The space man is coming for you... (Score:4)
Well, that's what I call a win-win situation. People get faster internet so they can watch more explody stuff in HD from Musk.
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This. Voting with your wallet can be the best way to get your point across. This ad would've paid for the Starlink setup fee and a few months of service. Could load-balance it with a laggier traditional satellite Internet service if you like.
Re:The space man is coming for you... (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole point of monopolies is that you can't vote with your wallet, and sometimes can't even create a service to compete.
But AT&T/Verizon trick is to convince the local governments to pass laws allowing only one cable to be run across the city, and well, there's no cables with starlink.
Even if they somehow convinced the cities to ban starlink, it would be VERY hard to enforce.
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I don't think any wireless service would be an adequate replacement for a well-engineered wired service. Latency for interactive things like voice and video conferencing is horrible on any wireless device or service I've used (I find the delay on ordinary cell phone voice calls nearly unusable compared to classic land lines), and that delay would be inherently worse on satellites. Interference and propagation problems on wireless links will always be worse than wired infrastructure; bandwidth is limited, wh
Didnâ(TM)t ATT stop selling âoeDSLâ (Score:2)
Donâ(TM)t they call it âoehigh speed internetâ now? They slathered a little lipstick on the pig.
Got some cold calls after a hurricane when Cox was struggling to get their stuff up and running. ATT however was impressively responsive with generators and trucks everywhere. They were even knocking on doors to get new customers. I asked the guy knocking on my door if they had fiber in the neighborhood yet as Iâ(TM)ve seen them laying new infrastructure. It cuts off about a quarter mile down
Bigger news (Score:2)
Re: Bigger news (Score:2)
Two ads.
For only two regions.
Because profit. (Score:2)
Becaise you mistake psychopathic robots with only one goal, maximum profit, for social humans who care for other people and higher goal.
Might aswell ask a fire why it's not nice to gasoline-soaked straw.
What you do, is: You put it out.
Leased Lines (Score:2)
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You're a funny guy, old man. (Score:2)
AT&T cares not about you nor their investors. And they don't care if you know they don't care.
And they *really* don't care about you if you're still on the copper lines.
If there were a real life personification of the Simpsons "Old Man Yells at Clouds" meme, this is it.
Stankey service from a Stankey guy. (Score:2)
That's a name that gets you bullied in school. =(
Managed expectations (Score:2)
You wouldn't expect a fish to win a bike race, so why would you expect ATT to deliver anything related to acceptable service?
Dear Mr. Stankey: AT&T prides itself as a leader in electronic communications.
I chuckled a bit at this.
why? (Score:2)
fuck you, is why xD
AT&T Does Not Know Telecommunications (Score:4, Interesting)
Late in 1996, I decided that -- having been a software test engineer for 27 years -- I should finally buy a PC for my home. I chose Pacific Bell Internet (PBI) as my Internet service provider (ISP) for three main reasons:
* Rather than giving PBI my credit card number and having the charges automatically appear on my Visa bill each month, they would bill me on my phone bill. I had heard that too often it was difficult to stop automatic credit card charges once they started.
* PBI was part of Pacific Telesis (a unit of AT&T), the dominant company in telecommunications in California, with a reputation for excellence.
* With dial-up being the primary method for Internet connections, PBI could offer 33.6 Kbps instead of the more common 28.8 Kbps.
What a mistake!
PBI's service proved unacceptably deficient, both the actual Internet service and also the technical service provided by PBI's personnel. Outages in POPs, peering, news servers, mail servers, and even DNS tables were not rare. In the meantime, technical support generally reacted to any reported error as if the subscriber -- the customer whose monthly fees paid the salaries of the support staff -- were always at fault. Worse, the support staff often knew less about the Internet than the subscribers and even tried to talk subscribers through "corrective" actions that would be destructive.
The merger between Pacific Telesis and Southwestern Bell, leaving the latter in charge, did not result in any improvement. Finally, after almost two years with PBI, I canceled my account.
Today, where I live, AT&T is still the "phone company", having bought up Southwestern Bell and serving much of the metropolitan area of Los Angeles. (North Hollywood is a neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles. It is definitely urban.) I use Spectrum for my Internet connection. While the connection is very good unless Southern California Edison has an outage -- several times a year during which Spectrum's system dies -- I do not like several aspects of Spectrum's service. Thus, I use Spectrum to connect to Sunset.net, an ISP that does not otherwise serve my area.
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I've been with AT&T since ISDN was their only option for "high speed" Internet. Their support, while not always quite as competent at tier-1 as I would hope, has always been conscientious. I even talked to Scott Adams (of "Dilbert" fame) once as a Tier-2 support tech.
So I still have 30mb-up/6mb-down AT&T FTTN for a busy, multi-user home network.
AT&T sucks less.
He could have crowd-sourced several pages (Score:2)
Mr. Epstein should have crowd-sourced the funding for his ad. He probably could have filled half the newspaper with names of many thousands of fellow signers, in very fine print. That would have made a splash.
Just a few miles from "downtown Silicon Valley", my only wired connectivity providers AT&T and Comcast, along with a few other companies who re-sell AT&T DSL (if I'm only willing to pay consumer prices). Both AT&T and Comcast are rapacious monopolists, but my experience is that Comcast is m
Customer for 60+ years... (Score:3)
... of a company that hasn't existed that long.
The brand "AT&T" has changed corporate hands almost continuously over the past 30 years or so. The AT&T on my 2021 phone bill is not the same AT&T as the AT&T on my cellular service before Southwester Bell bought up Cellular One and changed its branding to "AT&T", then SWB sold my "AT&T" cell service to what became Verizon. Nor is it the same AT&T that provided my home phone service before the break-up.
It may have stabilized now, but the current company isn't 60 years old.
This is weird. (Score:2)
This isn't Podunk. NoHo is in the middle of the San Fernando Valley. I live in 91307, about 15 miles from NoHo, and I have full gigabit fiber.
This guy isn't in the sticks. He's right around the corner from Disney, ABC, NBC, and Universal. There is no reason on Earth that AT&T should not have high speed available in his neighborhood.
Lots of factors at play here (Score:2)
From NIMBYs to leasing agreements over access to utility trunks and telephone poles. All of it takes time and costs money as everyone and their cat demands a little taste of the money
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That says more about you than it does about anyone else. Epstein is a rather common Jewish surname.
Re: Poor guy (Score:2)
Well guess what, I don't live anywhere near where Jews live, because some asshole eradicated them all, as you might know.
I only ever heard the name 'Epstein' before that news article, in System Shock 2, where there was the "Epstein-Barr device".
Not everybody is you. Surprise.
So stick your prejudice of racism where it don't belong, and bully somebody else, you SJW.
Re: Poor guy (Score:5, Informative)
You mean the French-Epstein device. Epstein-Barr (HHV-4) is the herpes virus that causes mononucleosis.
Also not to be confused with the Epstein Drive, which will let us efficiently colonize the solar system.
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I'm sure that somewhere, at some time, an Epstein killed himself.
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I'm guessing he means it is more of a generic (though Jewish) name. People who live in a place with any sort of Jewish community just see it as a common name, not one exclusively associated with the recent news.
Epstein is not a name that has been completely soiled for most people. And now if we change how we refer to that name, then the bad people win.
So if we treat it just as a normal name, without any special-ness, then we move forward and forget the asshole whose actions shouldn't tarnish the many thou
Re:Poor guy (Score:4, Funny)
If we should remember anyone named Epstein, it should be Solomon Epstein, the fusion engineer whose sacrifice enabled the exploration of the outer solar system and colonization of Mars and The Belt. Sure, he was a Duster, but he was a good Duster even to us Earthers. ;)
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Re: Poor guy (Score:2)
I'm a probable crypto-jew based on family history. Guess what, you are the anti-semite.
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I don't think either of you is an antisemite. But boy, are you lacking in social skills.
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Thing is, he's been Aaron Epstein for many decades before the "other" Epstein was even a dirty thought.
So rather than get all PC, why not try letting the guy use the same name he's had for the last 90 years?
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Referring to an elder by just their first name without their consent or familiarity has been considered rude for longer than any of us have been around. I can't imagine that disrespecting him in that manner is needed or wanted to avoid an elementary school flavor name comparison to another figure elementary schoolers aren't even aware of.
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And newspapers have been doing it since the dawn of, well, newspapers: First mention is a full name, from then out it's last names only, unless there's confusion. Not sure why this is a big deal, other than the dude with an (apparently) common name shares it with another dude who happens to be a shithead. Nobody on the planet thinks Jeffery Epstein came back from (not) killing himself to take out a full page add disparaging AT&T.
The exception to this rule in news is when it's subject to accidental defamation, in which case they'll refer to the individual by their full name (first, middle, any additional, and last). That's why you know him as, "John Wayne Gacy," instead of "Gacy," as the name John, and the surname Gacy are common enough that the media specified that it was this specific John Gacy.
Re: Poor guy (Score:2)
Yes, and people have been "Hitler"s too. What's your point?
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I see what you are saying but the name being in common with someone else feels more like a grade school level dilemma. No doubt some people are that immature but I doubt Mr. Epstein is so immature as to be concerned.
Using his first name informally feels like it would be very disrespectful to Mr. Epstein. That is just basic courtesy.
Re: Poor guy (Score:2)
I failed to specify that I'd use both his first and last name. Sorry.
And also, only until this Jeffrey Epstein thing blew over.
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Hey, it would be cool not to refer to him as simply "Epstein" and always use his first name for reasons which would be obvious to anyone who gave a fuck.
The first sentence used his full name. Aaron Epstein. After that only his last name. Which is common practice in journalism in nearly every English country. If that confuses you, then try practicing by reading a newspaper.
Re: Wow. (Score:2)
Greetings, dear Sir slash Madam,
is "fuckity" an adverb?
Fuckety bye,
Patrick Star
Re: AT&T needs to be broken up, again (Score:2)
But broken up into *layers*.
Not into regions to keep beig monopolists in.
Ideally, the lines should be shared by many competitors.