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AT&T Blackmails America: No (Phony) Fiber Upgrades Until You Kill Net Neutrality

Phillip Dampier November 12, 2014 AT&T, Consumer News, Net Neutrality, Public Policy & Gov't 1 Comment

ransomAT&T is putting its gigabit fiber network upgrades on hold as long as President Barack Obama continues to insist on robust Net Neutrality for American broadband.

AT&T Randall Stephenson told Wall Street investors attending this morning’s Wells Fargo Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference that the current state of “uncertainty” created after President Obama delivered remarks Monday in favor of strong Net Neutrality protections makes any investment in fiber upgrades too risky to continue.

“We can’t go out and just invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities […] not knowing under what rules that investment will be governed,” Stephenson said, excluding the two million customers already upgraded under AT&T’s Project VIP, AT&T’s effort to boost its wireless infrastructure in rural areas and upgrade U-verse to handle incrementally faster broadband speeds. “We have to just put a stop on those kinds of investments that we are doing today.”

But Stephenson’s accusation that the president’s strong support for Net Neutrality is responsible for putting AT&T’s plans on hold ignores the financial realities that have been a part of AT&T’s proposed upgrades since the company first announced them in April 2014.

Construction of Verizon’s fiber to the home FiOS network required significantly enhanced spending for several years, much to the consternation of Wall Street, that frequently criticized the project as too costly. In contrast, there have been few complaints about AT&T’s much larger 100 city fiber project because financial reports show no significant spending increases or large-scale capex investments by AT&T. In fact, on Friday — three days before the president made his remarks on Net Neutrality — AT&T announced investment cuts of at least $3 billion for 2015.

Stop the Cap! has reported AT&T’s fiber upgrades lack appropriate financial support and will require billions in increased investments to offer more than a handful of demonstration projects limited to new housing developments and multi-dwelling units where construction costs are considerably lower.

Stephenson admitted that most of the company’s Project VIP upgrade effort is now nearly complete, allowing the company to return to “normal” spending levels seen when major upgrades are not underway.

“You say okay, here has been the [increased spending in the budget], those projects are finished, we spiked it,” Stephenson said. “Now we’re bringing it down to a more normal rate.”

Stephenson reminded investors that they will see a dramatic savings in investment spending starting late this year.

“Just the cost [to AT&T over the last few years of Project VIP and] to be putting away this much investment, [it has been] a big operating expense block […] that we have been dragging through the last three years as we did all these buildouts,” said Stephenson. “You will see in 2014 the fourth quarter that [level of] capex start to tail off.”

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d0764
d0764
9 years ago

ATT is corrupt as hell. I call in for internet service and request the 50 meg package (Well within their range. Only 400ft away from the main thing. Cutoff is 18000ft since they don’t have fiber in the area) and when the technician gets here (at my parents house) he tries to tell us that internet speeds don’t go faster than 10 megs in the US. Said anything faster doesn’t exist which my parents would have believed if I wasn’t there. Had to fight them just to install it and now they throttle the damn connection every time it shows… Read more »

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