Looks like Google isn’t the only fiber player in town. From the AJC…
AT&T is looking to build new fiber optic networks for “ultra-fast” broadband service in Atlanta and dozens of other cities.
AT&T’s new service, for consumers and businesses, is called AT&T U-Verse with GigaPower, the company announced Monday.
…Beth Shiroishi, president of AT&T Georgia, said [Georgia] is at the top of the list of those where investment in ultra-fast fiber optic networks makes sense.
AT&T, however, will make its decision on which areas to enter based on local regulations. In metro Atlanta, the company is considering adding GigaPower in Alpharetta, Atlanta, Decatur, Duluth, Lawrenceville, Lithonia, McDonough, Marietta, Newnan, Norcross, and Woodstock.
“AT&T’s new service… is called AT&T U-Verse with GigaPower.” Of course it is. Anyway, sign me up for 1.21 gigawatts’s worth so I can drop comcast asap.
I guess they had to use “GigaPower” rather than “fiber” since they’ve always hawked the DSLish U-Verse as a fiber service.
Whatever happened to all of that excess fiber capacity that was installed in the late 90’s and early oughts before the big comm companies (Nortel, Lucent, etc.) went belly up? You would think they could use the existing infrastructure instead of installing new pipes and such. Or am I misremembering the whole tech bust?
I imagine some of that was private fiber. I think AT&T still owns a lot of fiber in the ground but it isn’t all accessible to private households or even businesses. There is “fiber” and then there is “fiber”. It gets confusing rather quickly.
I’m sure J_T can back this up:
There is a such thing as too much fiber.
Personally, I think Denis Leary said it best (from about 7:50 on):
Colon Blow from AT&T. All the fiber you can handle!
https://screen.yahoo.com/colon-blow-000000540.html
There is lots of dark fiber in the ground, but most rights were leased/sold in the ‘telecom winter’ ~12-14 yrs ago.
Back then, I helped ATT investigate the whole ‘FTTH’ or ‘FTTC’ which stand for Fiber to the Home and Fiber to the Curb for Residential and Commercial. At that time, the cost of the last mile for Fiber was still prohibitive (access rights, trenching, equipment, training personnel, etc.) and the use cases were comparing 56 K dial up to 100 Mb fiber… No demand back then for streaming video like now.
Also in the news today was Netflix’s criticism of Uverse’s declining download speeds compared to competitors.
And you are expecting it to be cheap, I’m sure. You’ll be making the decision: Is my video streaming and need to have the status of saying “I have “fiber” REALLY worth the monthly I am paying. Which I expect will be 150-200 per month for the touted service. Remember- this is AT&T! How much bandwidth does one really need, honestly, in a home?
And if it has the U-Verse in its name at all, it already has a black mark.
There is fiber running down the streets and we all have copper running from the pole to our house with uverse or comcast. The only change will be the drop cable, installing a fiber optic cable or hybrid of copper/fiber and likely electronics upgrade in the cabinets on the street (i think).
Purely reactionary P.R. I prefer Google Fiber and if it weren’t for the threat, AT t would not care.
Translation: “Us too! Us too!”
PLEASE don’t let this keep Google from coming here! I am sure a straw-poll would have most of us preferring the overlord of Google to one we already know at AT&T.