This makes me glad that I'm not an AT&T customer

Shame I didn't read that an hour ago, I had a salesman from AT&T come to the door mentioning they just put fiber into the neighborhood. Would love to know what the corporate line about that is. Of course, my ISP (Comcast) has their own issues.
 
I can very easily see AT&T moving your billing to the "enhanced privacy" plan if you signed up and then routed all your traffic through a VPN, too.
 
Mercutio said:
I can very easily see AT&T moving your billing to the "enhanced privacy" plan if you signed up and then routed all your traffic through a VPN, too.
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I'm sure everyone will be reviewing everything on every network there is. It's only a matter of time.
 
They can't do anything internal to your LAN unless you let them. Worst case, you can always make SSH tunnels between all your clients.
 
Mercutio said:
They can't do anything internal to your LAN unless you let them. Worst case, you can always make SSH tunnels between all your clients.
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I'm sure you can, but ordinary people have no clue.
 
I'm simply disgusted by the way big corporations try to appropriate themselves of what should be considered private life.
 
ddrueding said:
This made me pause for a moment. They do rent modems with integrated router/wifi, so technically they are on your LAN. Has anyone checked if their TOS lets them sniff around there?
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Sure, if you're dumb enough to use them without sticking a router of your own on the internal interface. I usually have my customers have provided devices flashed to modem-only mode if possible.

Comcast actually no longer gives end users - even businesses - any administrative control over devices they provide. They give you a limited login so that you can fiddle with QoS/NAT/Firewall/DHCP settings, but the new models ALSO create at LEAST two other public WLANs, called xfinitywifi and CCBIxyzpdq. None of my customers have managed to get those networks shut off, though admittedly I haven't tried calling about it myself.

I've been looking in to using Rpis as security appliances and it turns out that it's utterly trivial to set one up for ad-blocking. I suspect it's entirely based on hosts file blocking and there's probably a performance penalty, but since setup is as simple as running wget and a shell script, it could probably be made a reasonable defense from ISP-enabled stupidity.
 
First thing I did when I got my Comcast service was swap in my own internet-only modem, connected directly to the wire flying in from the pole to optimize SNR.
 
Mercutio said:
Comcast actually no longer gives end users - even businesses - any administrative control over devices they provide. They give you a limited login so that you can fiddle with QoS/NAT/Firewall/DHCP settings, but the new models ALSO create at LEAST two other public WLANs, called xfinitywifi and CCBIxyzpdq. None of my customers have managed to get those networks shut off, though admittedly I haven't tried calling about it myself.
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Put the modem / router in a Faraday cage?
 
ddrueding said:
First thing I did when I got my Comcast service was swap in my own internet-only modem, connected directly to the wire flying in from the pole to optimize SNR.
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The modem is on a pole? What is the noise that you are trying to avoid? Isn't that an issue for the utility to correct?
 
Comcast in my neighborhood runs on poles behind the property. The coax comes directly from the pole to the attic in the back of the house. The speed a cable modem can achieve is limited by the signal to noise ratio on the line, normal installations that include hundreds of feet of cable, splitters and other devices increase the noise on the line and potentially slow your connection. Since I'm buying the fastest thing they'll sell me, it was in my best interest to reduce SNR as much as possible. Best way to do that was meet the line as soon as it entered the attic and connect it directly to a modem. No extra cable, splitters, or other equipment.
 
mubs said:
More AT&T shenanigans
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In all fairness to AT&T it looks like a lot of the places where this is happening are in the middle of nowhere. It's just not profitable to run the same array of services to areas where you have houses on 1 acre or 5 acre lots. People have to expect if they choose to live in a place like that, they're not going to get the same amenities as they might living in a town or a big city. In fact, a lot of these places will probably revert to dirt roads as the funding for repairs dries up. I'm no fan of AT&T, but in this case AT&T didn't tell these people to move where they did. If high-speed internet or other amenities like having stores within walking/biking distance is important to you, then you'll generally have to live in a denser area.
 
jtr, you can get 20 miles outside Chicago's city limits and find areas that don't have good internet access, let alone the unpaved roads and farmhouses of middle America. We let these companies get away with murder in the hopes that they'll deliver on their promises and that is exactly the behavior that needs to be ended.
 
Mercutio said:
jtr, you can get 20 miles outside Chicago's city limits and find areas that don't have good internet access, let alone the unpaved roads and farmhouses of middle America. We let these companies get away with murder in the hopes that they'll deliver on their promises and that is exactly the behavior that needs to be ended.
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For what it's worth, there are places in NYC where you can't get decent internet access. Granted, it's not that many but they exist. That said, AT&T or anyone else shouldn't make promises they can't keep. That's really the heart of the issue here. They promised something which in the end they couldn't deliver and still make a profit on. Companies love to do that just to gain customers. AT&T probably knew before making their promises that they just couldn't profitably have fast Internet service in less dense areas.

And to think I initially felt bad when we dropped our copper AT&T land line in favor of VoIP service with TWC. It seems like AT&T managed to gouge their Internet customers to make up for loss of wired landlines.
 
It doesn't matter if they can't make a profit on something or other. They're the common carrier. They can make profit in other places and for that matter in a lot of cases they're accepting money in the form of tax rebates and subsidies that are supposed to support the un- or less-profitable activities of providing services to low-density areas.
 
The real question here would do they have a legal monopoly in these areas? Obviously in that case they're obligated to provide service regardless of whether or not that service is profitable in each and every case. If not, they might still be obligated if they accepted government subsidies to provide service.

I suppose they could also use profits from more profitable areas to subsidize unprofitable services but that might not go over all that well with the customers in the more profitable areas. There might be a good argument for a farm or other business which by necessity must be in the boondocks to get Internet service which is subsidized by someone else but that argument falls apart for people living in McMansions in the exurbs. Honestly, same thing with roads and other government services to these types of developments. If the people who want to live there can't afford the true cost of goods and services then they can't afford to live there. So yeah, you can argue for subsidized services to low density areas sometimes, but not for low density residential. NYC or Chicago obviously need farms elsewhere to feed people, but the surrounding suburban or exurban developments offer no benefits whatsoever, except possibly to those who choose to live there.
 
I'm not surprised at any of that. Both Verizon and TWC have virtual monopolies in large swaths of the city. And both suck in their own way. If you have service problems, you'll get lip service and maybe in two weeks someone will come by to see what's the problem. I had to fix my last issue on my own. There was water seeping into the signal splitter outside. Cleaning off the corrosion, and resealing everything, fixed it. For now. TWC needs to replace the splitter and cable terminations. Lots of luck getting them to come. They'll say their system shows my service is fine. Sure it does-because I made a temporary fix.

That rant aside, we need to start holding these companies accountable when they make promises they don't keep.
 
jtr1962 said:
In all fairness to AT&T it looks like a lot of the places where this is happening are in the middle of nowhere.
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jtr, AT&T made promises to get some concessions, then hasn't kept the promises. That is the real problem. I don't think they were naive enough to not know what they were getting into when they made the promises.
 
jtr1962 said:
In all fairness to AT&T it looks like a lot of the places where this is happening are in the middle of nowhere. It's just not profitable to run the same array of services to areas where you have houses on 1 acre or 5 acre lots. People have to expect if they choose to live in a place like that, they're not going to get the same amenities as they might living in a town or a big city. In fact, a lot of these places will probably revert to dirt roads as the funding for repairs dries up. I'm no fan of AT&T, but in this case AT&T didn't tell these people to move where they did. If high-speed internet or other amenities like having stores within walking/biking distance is important to you, then you'll generally have to live in a denser area.
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Then AT&T shouldn't have agreed to do it. Of course, I don't believe for a second they ever intended to, at least not after they ran the numbers of what it would cost.
 
We can only get 3mbps down/ 768kbps up DSL where I live now. It's significantly slower than HughesNet, but leaps and bounds more reliable. I wouldn't mind if they ran cable internet or fiber out this far from town, but I know it's probably never going to happen. We're lucky to have DSL, from what I've heard.
 
sedrosken said:
We can only get 3mbps down/ 768kbps up DSL where I live now.
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That sucks! I was able to get 3mb/3mb cable in 1997 via @Home cable (bought by Comcast) in SoCal. Nearly 20 years later and things still suck for large portions of the U.S.

The small number of data carriers are stifling the vast economic potential from millions of people that should have decent internet by now. /endrant
 
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