AT&T May Sell Off Many DSL Markets

[ShawnCowden]

AT&T May Sell Off Many DSL Markets
Upgrades Schmupgrades
by Karl Bode 7 hours ago tags: dsl · business · alternatives · bandwidth · AT&T U-Verse · AT&T DSL Service · AT&T Southeast · AT&T Midwest · AT&T Southwest
We recently noted how AT&T's U-Verse expansion is essentially over, and if you haven't seen your market upgraded yet you probably aren't going to. So what happens to a little less than half of their current customers still on older DSL technology? Like Verizon -- who offloaded millions of users in somewhat ugly deals with Frontier and Fairpoint, it appears that AT&T is looking to sell off many DSL markets and keep their focus on wireless.

AT&T's recently on record stating that they can't find an "economically viable" way to upgrade these users, despite a looming increase in faster and less expensive last mile DSL technologies. The company's also recently on record stating that they believe DSL is "obsolete" -- a troubling claim since that's their primary product. According to the latest DSLPrime newsletter from Dave Burstein, all signs point to the fact that AT&T's gunning to sell many DSL markets off, provided they can find a buyer.

AT&T May Sell Off Many DSL Markets - Upgrades Schmupgrades | DSLReports.com, ISP Information

 

[mmckenna]

AT&T has a lot of plans like this.
Standard analog telephone service is falling out of favor, and AT&T wants out of the business. AT&T has no plans to replace the current crop of 5ESS central office switches, only plans to keep them running. I work directly with AT&T Major Accounts as part of my job, we get our local incoming and local outgoing trunks for them, along with overflow long distance, toll free, etc. They have made it known to us they they want out of the local telephone business, there just isn't any money in it anymore. The cost of maintaining and expanding traditional twisted pair outside plant is getting expensive. They are moving to fiber distribution with last mile copper. Eventually, most urban areas will see fiber out to most neighborhoods rather than large count copper.

Since traditional DSL relies on these copper plants, it's getting to be a business they want out of. If they can't feed to the local terminal with fiber, they want to dump it. This is going to hurt some smaller ISP's as they have depended on the LEC's for access to their copper plants. To be fair, this has been a real burden on the LECs, being forced to provide pairs to CLEC's as well as the other mom'n'pop phone and DSL companies out there. The money they make back off the access fees isn't enough to support the outside plant.

Traditional telephony service is a dying trade, and I'm probably the last of traditionally trained phone guys. Most of the equipment I originally trained on is gone, replaced by VoIP. Even my 26 year old PBX now runs an IP backbone and Linux processors.

AT&T is dropping a lot of their old timers and hiring younger techs that know much less about traditional phone systems and more about fiber and broadband. Between cellular and VoIP/broadband services taking over, our children will likely never know what "real" telephones were.

On the upside, we've been hiring these old time Bell guys as quickly as we can. I've got a couple of staff and they are a great addition to our team. They have the traditional knowledge and experience that is hard to find. Better troubleshooters you'll never find. Give them the right tools and there isn't much they can't fix. I love working with them. Their work ethics are much better than we find elsewhere, too.