AT&T pulls 5G home Internet from New York to protest state affordability law.
… business customers can keep any device they purchased at no charge," AT&T said.
Gee how magnanimous (emphasis mine)
I don’t know if this AT&T service covered all of NY but for sake of my point I’m going to assume it covers most to all of NY. Obviously, not everyone would subscribe to AT&T either. I’m generalizing a bit to make a point.
There are approx 8.5 mil households in NY and 1.7 mil qualified for the previous affordable broadband law (couldn’t find an exact number for this current law).
If they charge $60 for the service that’s a potential total of $512,000,000 for NY.
If 1.7 mil get broadband for $15 that’s $25,500,000.
So AT&T is willing to give up a potential $487,000,00 from all other NY customers just to spite low income families.
Note: this is income before any AT&T expenses, just to be clear and fair.
Old cable guy here. The cost is in laying the lines. That cost is astronomical. AT&T did the math, said, “Fuck it. Not worth it.”
Call 'em evil, but they’re not stupid.
They aren’t laying lines though. It’s the Internet Air program which provides it through 5g.
Sounds like it’s time for a municipal broadband solution. If AT&T doesn’t want the business, fine. Let’s not force them to take our money.
Chattanooga, Tennessee did something like that, but when they tried to expand outside of the city they were shut down
They pulled their wireless home Internet service which mostly targets rural areas where companies like AT&T never laid fiber and have started abandoning their copper networks. It’s a lot harder for smaller rural communities to do municipal broadband because the costs are much higher per household. Not impossible, but more of an uphill battle. In some GOP states it’s even outlawed. In NY hopefully people can get grants for them.
I remember when the US government paid AT&T to get fiber to the curb of American homes.
Then AT&T didn’t. And then the US sued AT&T to get the money back and into the hands of US Americans. Wireless internet is an end-around having to fulfill those promises of a wide bandwidth future. And here is the evidence for that.
These predatory companies make such a huff, like an abusive partner storming out while shouting “you don’t know what you’re missing!”
We do know, and we’ll be fine. 👋
Interesting, so it seems because ATT doesn’t have fiber already setup in NY that they’re pulling out. If more states did this, they probably wouldn’t be able to handle pulling out, financially.
I don’t see what the issue is here. They don’t want to be treated as a utility, but if they stay in New York, they’ll be regulated as a utility. They’ve dealt with it as a phone provider, and choose not to engage in the regulatory environment being put in front of them. It’s a totally reasonable choice for a business to walk away from a market if the cost of doing business would exceed the profits made.
Apple could have done the same thing with the EU. Either don’t put USB-C on their phones, or cease doing business in those countries.
That’s correct, and the fact that Apple caved from the 8-Pin Lightning connector to USB-C is one of many, many reasons I won’t be buying anything Apple again, even second-hand. The lack of a headphone jack is just one more thing that made me certain of it. If I could find a micro-USB device with a headphone jack that serves as a phone, a pager, a calculator, and an audio (various formats - MP2A,MP3A,MP4A,WAV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, etc.) player, all my problems would be solved. I have looked into featurephones, I think I’m going to be moving in that direction next time I upgrade.
fuck apple forever, for sure, because they’re proprietary from soup to nuts. but “caved” moving to a universal standard instead of a proprietary charging cable, as if that’s a bad thing? yeah, man, i dunno what you’re smokin, but you should put the pipe down.
Personally I’d be happy if I never had to touch a micro-USB device ever again. Mini-USB is somewhat acceptable, but USB-C blows the rest out of the water. It’s unquestionably the better USB standard
Find me a USB-C that doesn’t fall out. Every Micro-USB male plug that I’ve used has those two notches at the bottom that hold it in place. Every device I’ve had with USB-C, I have to treat it like it’s super delicate while it charges.
I’ve had many instances of micro-USB bending, some to the point of breakage. This never happened even once with USB-C.
Very much the opposite. The only broken USB port I’ve ever had was a USB-C port for a netbook charger.
How? The netbook era ended way before USB-C is even a thing.
I can literally swing my phone around with its USB C charge cable. As long as I don’t add enough speed for it to make full circles instead of swinging back and forth, it doesn’t drop. If I drop my phone and the cord isn’t long enough to reach the ground, even the sharp stop of ‘no more cord’ tends to not remove the plug.
Lucky you. My experience has been the opposite.
I’ve never had a USB C plug fall out in my entire life, but I have distinct memories of wrapping a micro USB cord around the phone so the plug would maybe make some sort of connection and charge. Same with whatever plug the Nintendo DS used.
Do you have shit devices or shit cords? Because one of the two is causing the problem.
So, all those lines are leased to at&t by the state right? I feel like they could just revoke them and give everyone free Internet.
Until a line breaks and you discover it costs money to have someone fix it. Or a router gets attacked be someone evil and now you don’t have internet. Or … There are a lot of costs to running internet.
I don’t know how the costs compare to what AT&T is charging. I doubt you do either.
Lemmy tends to think everything is free, has no clue about real-world costs.
You could just add an extra tax to cover it and it would be cheaper than your Internet bill since it would be spread out amongst everyone.
Liberals: Tax it!
Also Liberals: What about the poor people!
Public utilities are cheaper than private ones. And it’s not like there aren’t city programs for low income. Cali is far from being the most progressive (in comparison to the rest of the world) and they have plenty of assistance programs for all possible utilities.
Looks like a monopoly to me. That’s practically admitting that they believe consumers don’t have sufficient choice, and they’d rather not compete.
