AT&T raised phone prices 153% over a decade as service got steadily worse
"AT&T and Frontier have let their copper phone networks deteriorate through neglect since 2010, resulting in poor service quality and many lengthy outages, a report commissioned by the California state government found."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/att-raised-phone-prices-153-as-service-got-steadily-worse-report-finds/
4 replies (most recent on top)
- A few years ago there was a big push to move people off of POTS and onto wireless or voip
Some people have no choice but copper landlines. There are tons of rural areas where wireless is spotty and broadband internet needed for VOIP is non-existent.
Have a buddy down in Devine TX whose phone goes out after every rain. Stays out weeks until they
can string 300 ft of quad at a time temporarily until they make permanent repairs. Only problem is
that they don't ever spend money and the quad becomes the permanent fix until the inside quad
is cut by a mowing crew or the copper corrodes.
He called PUC once and they didn't care either and his concession is One Dollar so he didn't keep
calling in to complain because he didn't want T to know he should be paying $25. But that area is served by an antique Ericsson Switch and the resolve appears to
be that they encourage service transfer to mobile.
This company is on life support while the leadership siphons off money.
Anyone complaining about copper lines isn't doing anything to help the company. Just dragging the company down by refusing to grow with the times.
I am NOT an ATT fanboy but this article is silly. POTS is old and slowly people are doing away with it. So there's no reason to make much of an effort to improve or maintain the service beyond keeping the lights on and wheels turning. A few years ago there was a big push to move people off of POTS and onto wireless or voip and then someone realized traditional wireline is a huge cash cow that may as well continue to be milked so the effort was abandoned. At the same time we decided to stop spending money on wire line maintenance and allow service to decline and put out fires when necessary. Pretty smart really and if you look at the financials, wireline's contribution to free cash flow is still significant and is probably how we can still pay a dividend.