Sorry: AT&T & Verizon Can't Upgrade Or Repair Your Aging DSL Line Because Parts Are Too Hard To Find
from the your-call-is-not-important-to-us dept
While the government and industry pay a lot of lip service toward expanding broadband availability and competition, we've noted how giant phone companies like AT&T and Verizon are actually backing away from unwanted DSL markets. Through a combination of apathy (failing to repair the lines timely) and price hikes for services that cost less than ever to offer, the telcos are actively driving DSL users to either cable competitors or wireless (or both, since cable operators now help sell Verizon wireless services). Fixed-line broadband is perfectly profitable, it's just not profitable enough quickly enough for telco investors.As a result, these companies are shifting their attention to significantly-more-expensive wireless services with caps and overages, and pretending this is just as good as an uncapped, less expensive DSL line. The result? A huge swath of the country where the cable broadband monopoly is going to be more potent than ever, resulting in worse customer service (if that's even possible) and higher prices than ever before.
Of course, AT&T and Verizon can't just come forth and say that they no longer care about huge swaths of the country, so as they go state to state trying to gut all regulations requiring they continue to offer fixed-line services, they're claiming that if state legislatures do their bidding, the states will somehow be awash with amazing new technologies. AT&T calls this the "IP transition," and has been successful in conflating a general shift toward wireless and IP networks with the company's refusal to upgrade fixed-line assets. Both companies have even gone so far as to have folks like Steve Forbes issue editorials proclaiming DSL lines are dead -- news to those for whom that's their only reliable connectivity option.
Verizon has also used natural disasters as justification for refusing to repair or upgrade customers, with some victims of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast still waiting for their DSL lines to get repaired. Most recently, Verizon tried to claim that the reason it just sold its unwanted fixed-line assets in Florida, Texas and California was because of regulators' positions on net neutrality.
It's of course not just rural regions that are impacted by this shift: Baltimore's one of several cities (like Boston, Alexandria and Buffalo) that didn't get chosen for Verizon's now-dead FiOS expansion plans. With Verizon not willing to spend the money for further FiOS expansion, the company needed something to tell locals that not only aren't seeing upgrades, but in some cases are now waiting months for repairs. This month's excuse? Parts are just too hard to find:
"It's not just the wires that are going bad, it's the switches," said Sherry Lichtenberg, the principal researcher for telecommunications at the Washington-based National Regulatory Research Institute. "It's really hard to find parts." AT&T officials have said the company sometimes has to scrounge on eBay for parts."Yes that's AT&T, a company that saw $132.4 billion in revenues last year, claiming that it has to head to eBay to upgrade its networks. Of course, parts aren't hard to find when you replace those older parts -- like in more upscale development communities where AT&T is slowly starting to offer very limited 1 Gbps fiber deployments (deployments, it should be noted, that AT&T also claims it paused over net neutrality). Parts also aren't hard to find when you're offering wireless LTE services with $15 per gigabyte overages. Parts are, apparently, only hard to find in areas you're intentionally abandoning -- but don't want to admit you're intentionally abandoning.
On one hand, you can understand that Verizon and AT&T are simply heading where the real money is. The problem is that after refusing to upgrade many markets, the telcos have lobbied for laws prohibiting these same towns and cities from upgrading themselves (or in some cases engaging in public/private partnerships). When the FCC recently (and quite belatedly) announced they'd be trying to eliminate the most contentious parts of these protectionist laws, the broadband industry threatened to sue. As such, the telecom industry has created a giant painful ouroboros of intentional dysfunction, one that only begins to unravel when we stop letting AT&T, Comcast and Verizon write state telecom law.
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Filed Under: broadband, competition, dsl, investment, parts, repairs, spare parts, upgrade, wireless
Companies: at&t, verizon
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But that's short term. Long term solution would be to inspire competition by allowing initiatives like Google mobile carrier. You know, provide incentives for building infra-structure and letting others do the customer handling. This requires another level of playing field. For now Title II and wireless regulation should do the trick.
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More popular and political pressure will be needed in the US though.
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Moral of the story: Don't give up on the right thing too easily.
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* Not really unlimited.
† OK, when we say "not really unlimited", we mean we're going to tell you all along that it's unlimited until you reach some unpublished number at which point we are going to throttle the heck out of your connection until it's like dial-up and you quit using it.
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If we want to "let different businesses offer different plans", we'd need more than 1-2 providers in a given location.
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"Those who are OK with data caps can purchase plans with them, those who do not can purchase uncapped plans."
I am unaware of any company that offers uncapped plans. Some offer plans that they claim are uncapped, but they're lying. It's the lying that I object to.
If I've bought an unlimited plan and then they limit it, I have a real problem with that.
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If you answer there is no caps for those then the same answer applies to internet. I'm ok with ISPs offering plans with speed caps in peak times but data caps make absolutely no sense. And the current caps don't take into account bandwidth heavy services such as Netflix or other streaming to make things even worse. There's no sane reason why you should cap the data transferred.
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*Parts* are too hard to find
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Re: *Parts* are too hard to find
Manufacturers will continue to make compatible parts if there's a demand for them - the fact that they don't actually purchase replacement parts is why they're no longer being made. I assure you, if they demanded them, they would be built.
Reminds me of a situation I ran into a couple years back where I moved to a new house down the street, and was told I could not transfer my DSL there because AT&T was "out of DSL circuits" for my area... after repeated calls, I finally got one provisioned after I moved, but it was very very flaky.
Eventually it stopped working about a year later, and I was told that it wouldn't be repaired for several weeks as the equipment had too many "broken ports" to move me to another one that worked and needed to be replaced completely.
This leads me to believe the hardware had been failing for some time, and the solution was just to move people from broken ports to working ports until they ran out. There was no plan to replace/repair the equipment until well past it's time, when customers were sure to be angry and frustrated.
If, on the other hand, the equipment had been rotated regularly with spare parts - this wouldn't likely have ever happened. AT&T has not been purchasing replacement parts in advance, they have been purchasing them on an as-needed basis. This is *not* how you maintain critical infrastructure. This is how you run a company and its customers into the ground.
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Yes, even if existing manufacturers somehow balked at the idea of producing terribly common equipment, you could have 5 businesses start up overnight if even 1 telco/ISP said they wanted them.
They will be blaming squirrels next.
Then when DSL disappears completely, cable ISPs can go back to under-provisioning networks, put too many customers on the local loops, and blame file-sharing (or Netflix, or whatever flavor of the month target) for their awful QoS. Win/win!
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Re: Re: Re: *Parts* are too hard to find
Actually, that was the first thing they blamed when I started having DSL issues ;)
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Re: Re: Re: *Parts* are too hard to find
They (and their landline phone predecessors) have been doing that for longer than I've been alive. In all fairness, though, in my part of the country it's usually true.
Squirrels are evil creatures bent on the destruction of all humans.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: *Parts* are too hard to find
We have so many around here - we have accidentally run them over in our own driveway... they're that stupid.
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I have personally witnessed two pole-mounted transformers blow up because of squirrels.
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Indeed they are.
http://lifeisaroad.com/stories/2004/10/29/neighborhoodHazardorWhyTheCopsWontPatrolBrice Street.html
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Re: Indeed they are.
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Re: Indeed they are.
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Yeah, I Godwinned squirrels. So what. If you don't like it, you're like a Nazi.
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http://mikeandmabell.com/
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Re: Re: *Parts* are too hard to find
Unless you are in a monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly. Then you can abuse as much as the Government allow.
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"Manufacturers will continue to make compatible parts if there's a demand for them - the fact that they don't actually purchase replacement parts is why they're no longer being made. I assure you, if they demanded them, they would be built."
This has not been my experience as an engineer. Ultimately, manufacturers have to make a certain amount of money on each product line to keep the manufacturing lines open. We do not make computers and components from the late 70s or early 80s anymore, even though there is demand for parts to keep critical infrastructure going. (I've seen this during my time at JPL and heard about it from my Dad who keeps a production line going)
Being a design engineer for DoD, I have to deal with this problem with all of my designs. I have to make a design that can be supported for 30+ years, including building new/replacement parts far after the design phase. This is a huge risk in the development and fielding of a new system.
In my experience, there are three methods of mitigating risk to parts obsolescence, presented here is list form:
1. Lifetime buy: If a part that I am using is going EOL, I can go to the manufacturer and buy out the stock of parts (either that or convince them to run an additional set of parts for me). Most of my manufacturers offer this option when they EOL a part. This option represents a large outlay of capital both to purchase the stock of components and to store them, and is by definition a short term solution, but it buys me time to come up with a long-term solution.
2. Technical Data package: I can contract with the manufacturer of the parts to purchase a technical data package and possibly the tooling used to build the parts that are going EOL. This enables me to build the parts myself, or sub it out to another manufacturer. This is frequently a large capital expense, but I can keep my current infrastructure going indefinitely using this option.
3. Technology upgrades: I can string the current systems along until a new technology is ready to be fielded. This may require a redesign of my current system, depending upon how the new tech integrates into my current infrastructure.
In examining the situation with the current DSL operators, they appear to be going with a fourth option, which is to let their current infrastructure burn out without any backup or continuation of business plan. This is terrible long term business, sacrificing future profits for short term gains.
I am reminded of my engineering economics class. About half of the class was devoted to making monetary decisions of this type. This case, replacing infrastructure for a DSL ISP, almost is a case study ripped straight from the book. It's dirt simple to make a business case for replacement and upgrading infrastructure. I am curious why the business wonks aren't on board with the upgrades.
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That would be a smart Long Term business plan, long term defined as longer than the next report to the stock market. Would it not be much more profitable on the very short term to simply Not do that?
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That sort of sleaze would happily ruin millions of lives to make a hundred dollar profit
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and that wont happen until those in Congress etc are held accountable for the 'favours' they give any and all companies, receiving 'financial favours' in return.
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What amazes me
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Don't you see techdirt, this is why focusing on NN is misguided -- it won't fix the true underlying issue.
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True, and nobody is saying otherwise. Title II classification is a band-aid -- as someone else said, it's the "least worst" option.
Talking about changing laws as you say is correct (but insufficient). However, it's also the next best thing to impossible, since the very same telcos put immense pressure on legislators to not change a thing. So, before we can fix that problem, we have to fix the political system itself, which is a fine thing to work for, but it's unreasonable to thing that it is possible in a time frame sooner than a few decades (at best).
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I think you will find Techdirt does just that. All while chewing gum, too.
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Don't leave out CenturyLink
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I'll bet . . .
In highly profitable DSL markets, I bet parts are easy to find.
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My DSL/Land Line was Sold to Frontier by Verizon
I will say our DSL never worked better than during that month.
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Google...
Especially FIOS. There's already fiber in the ground and customers. All they have to do is change out the ends for Google equipment. Instant GB ethernet with almost no work.
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Had to wait for a lover to come to me to switch to cable due to comcast screwing me with a contract when I moved.
We have other alternatives for wide-band.. yet too many dam trees lol.
To quote from the hackers manifesto...
..."This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals."...
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