Although continued traffic growth would seem to indicate companies like AT&T and Verizon will need to continue major spending initiatives to keep up with demand, technological advancements and upgrade programs have made networks more efficient than ever, allowing AT&T and Verizon to report cost declines as much as 40% annually.

Wireless One’s Dave Burstein spoke with Andre Fuetsch, AT&T’s chief technology officer about current telco cost trends. Feutsch said a lot has changed with AT&T’s networks over the last several years.

“We’ve gone from 10 gigabits to 100 gigabits to now 400 gigabits on our fiber,” Feutsch told Burstein. “MIMO and massive MIMO are extremely productive. Yes, I think 40% per year is a reasonable estimate of how our costs are going down. AT&T’s leadership in open white box and SDN will continue to drive that number higher, which is needed as network demand increases.”

Burstein notes Verizon similarly estimated their costs were also falling about 40% annually.

“I have been able to confirm that the 40% Verizon efficiency savings figure is on target if not exact,” Burstein said. “You can replicate my thinking. Traffic has been growing 40% per year. Sales have been roughly flat for the similar time period. If productivity growth hadn’t been a similar 40%, profits likely would have trended down. In fact, they have been flat or slightly increasing.”

While AT&T has been embarked on a costly major fiber network buildout in its local phone service territory, Verizon has been focused on rebuilding and modernizing its core network. The “One Verizon” project is retiring a large percentage of the 200,000 legacy routers, switches, and other hardware in use across Verizon’s network and installing about 20,000 very efficient network box replacements. Verizon estimates its first year cost savings are about 50%.

Although network traffic growth, expansion, and upgrades come at a cost to carriers, technological improvements are covering much of those costs by making networks more efficient and capable of carrying much more data than ever before. When companies talk about their network investments in terms of justifying rate increases, that clearly does not tell the full story.

Verizon Communications has indefinitely suspended plans to charge customers an extra $10 a month for access to Verizon’s extremely spotty and uneven 5G service, which launched earlier this month in Chicago and Minneapolis.

Early adopters were told Verizon would waive the extra $10 fee for the first three months of service. But after receiving mixed reviews about Verizon’s 5G performance and very limited coverage area after launch, Verizon decided to withdraw the charge until further notice.

“This is some of the blowback you get from being first” in offering smartphone 5G service, John Hodulik, an analyst at UBS Group AG, told the Wall Street Journal. “It didn’t make sense to charge people extra money for a service that they’re rarely going to use.”

AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson sent signals to shareholders AT&T was also considering charging a premium rate for customers upgrading to 5G technology in the next two or three years.

(Reuters) – The White House has told two U.S. House Democrats it will not turn over documents that could show whether Republican President Donald Trump sought to intervene in the regulatory review of AT&T Inc’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc.

In March, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Representative David Cicilline, who chairs a panel overseeing antitrust issues, asked the White House and Justice Department to turn over records after The New Yorker magazine reported Trump directed then-National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn to use the Justice Department to block the deal.

The pair wrote that if accurate, Trump’s involvement would “constitute a grave abuse of power.” In February, a federal appeals court upheld a lower-court ruling rejecting a Justice Department challenge to the deal filed in November 2017.

Trump criticized the deal as a candidate in late 2016, saying it would concentrate too much media power in the hands of one owner, and later saying it would raise prices. He has also frequently attacked CNN, a Time Warner property now owned by AT&T, for what he sees as negative coverage of his campaign and administration.

In a letter dated Monday and released on Tuesday by Cicilline, White House counsel Pat Cipollone declined to release any documents, saying he would not provide “protected communications between the president and his senior advisers that are the very core of the executive branch’s confidentiality interests.”

Cipollone added that the Justice Department would be responding “in due course.”

The two Democrats responded in a joint statement that “the White House Counsel has made a blanket claim that all White House communications — regardless of whether they contain evidence of improper or even unlawful activities — are protected by a cone of secrecy,” adding they would “pursue this matter.”

Makan Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a 2018 declaration he had never received “orders, instructions, or directions relating” to the AT&T-Time Warner deal from Trump, Justice Department officials or White House officials.

The Justice Department said in February it would not seek further appeals to block the merger.

In February 2018, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon rejected AT&T’s request to see White House communications that might shed light on whether Trump pressured the Justice Department to try to block the deal.

AT&T lawyers said last year the deal may have been singled out for enforcement, citing as evidence statements by Trump as a candidate and as president that the deal was bad for consumers and the country. AT&T declined comment on Tuesday.

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Peter Cooney

The phone line was allegedly cut by a neighbor. (Image: WEWS-TV)

A suburban Cleveland, Ohio man allegedly cut an AT&T line that crossed his property and refused to allow repair crews to repair the damage, claiming they were disrespectful and “didn’t have no class.”

The cable cut left Newburgh Heights resident and AT&T customer Willie Griffin without phone, internet, or cable service for over a week, and set the stage for a neighborhood dispute that eventually brought police to the scene.

A reporter from WEWS-TV in Cleveland achieved a breakthrough after calm negotiations with Ron Quinones, who eventually allowed AT&T crews to restore phone and internet service.

“I never ever, ever experienced anything like this, I just can’t believe that this happening,” Griffin told News 5. “He told the AT&T guy, that yes he cut the line, and that he’s going to cut my neighbor’s line, and any line that’s running though his yard.”

A police report claimed Quinones admitted to officers he intentionally caused the damage, and told police he was advised to do it by an unidentified utility worker.

“[Quinones] said that he complained to another worker about the [leaning utility pole] and all the wires coming off of it and hanging too low to the ground,” the police report states. “The utility worker said that the fastest way to get it fixed would be if [Quinones] cut them because then they would have to come fix them.”

When AT&T crews initially arrived to repair the lines instead of replacing the utility pole, Quinones would not allow them on his property, claiming he feared for their safety and the safety of his garage. The utility pole owner, FirstEnergy, later conducted a full inspection and denied the pole was unsafe.

The cut cable was located at Griffin’s home where AT&T’s network interface box connected the overhead line with the home’s inside wiring. AT&T crews sought to replace the overhead drop line from the utility pole to Griffin’s home, which initially caused Quinones to object because the utility pole serving her home is behind his. After the dispute attracted coverage from Cleveland’s ABC affiliate, Quinones relented.

“If the cable goes through and he can get it up there without damaging my property, I don’t have a problem with it,” Quinones told the station.

No charges appeared to be filed and the only formal rebuke seems to be a warning from both Newburgh Heights police and FirstEnergy advising residents that tampering with utility lines was unsafe and could result in criminal charges.

WEWS in Cleveland found itself mediating a neighborhood dispute over a cut AT&T line. (1:52)

As AT&T continues to build out its fiber to the home network in its landline service areas, the company estimates it could achieve 50% market penetration by 2023, triggering a growing wave of consumers dropping cable in search of a better deal.

Cowen, a research firm, issued a report to clients indicating if AT&T achieves its expansion goals, it will be a tough competitor to Comcast and Charter.

Both cable companies have pulled back on promotional and customer retention pricing in recent years, allowing customers to follow through on threats to disconnect service. AT&T Fiber is expected to be a frequent destination for those unhappy cable customers. As AT&T’s fiber network expands, it could eventually grab one million customers each from Comcast and Charter, as well as another 200,000 cancelling service with Altice’s Suddenlink.

If the estimates prove accurate, the costs to earnings will be considerable — Comcast will lose around $1.1 billion, Charter $885 million, and Altice $162 million.

AT&T claims it has expanded fiber to the home service to three million homes each of the last two years. It plans to continue expanding fiber buildouts for an additional three years, wiring up communities where a return on investment can be achieved.

To stem customer losses, the cable industry will likely have to relent on pricing and promotions in areas where AT&T Fiber already provides competitive service.

The cable industry has enjoyed a strong speed advantage over most phone companies for the last few years as nearly 100% of cable operators now offer gigabit download speed. In contrast, phone companies are offering gigabit speed in only about 25% of their footprint, with many telco service areas still stuck with low-speed DSL, often unable to achieve the FCC’s minimum broadband speed of 25 Mbps.