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Mark Lewis and his wife bought a house in Winterville, Georgia, in August 2012. They figured getting Internet service would be as simple as calling up AT&T, because the prior owners had AT&T DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). The neighbors also have AT&T DSL service providing about 3Mbps.
"The previous owners had left their DSL modem and everything in the house," Lewis told Ars. But when he called AT&T, the company said they were "at maximum capacity, but if someone else in your neighborhood terminates their service that should open up something for you."
In October 2013, two of Lewis' neighbors moved out, and he called AT&T to see if that opened up a spot for him. The answer was no. It continues to be no.
Lewis isn't alone. Nearly a decade after AT&T promised the US government that it would bring broadband Internet service to 100 percent of its wireline telephone territory, many people who are desperate for AT&T Internet face a maddening problem. They can get AT&T phone service through the DSL-capable copper cables coming into their homes, their neighbors have DSL Internet service from AT&T, but they themselves cannot get wired Internet service because AT&T claims its network is full.
A handful of people like Lewis, people who have been refused DSL service by AT&T, contacted Ars after we last wrote about AT&T's broadband shortcomings. Together, these stories highlight a confounding situation involving minimal oversight, miscommunication, and millions of customers left with sub-broadband speeds or no Internet service at all.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:41PM
problem is that there is a disconnect at many big ISPs between the lowly non-university, less debt ridden, cannon-fodder staff that does the actual heavy lifting like receive bill payments, inquires / questions, phone calls etc. and the degree-educated, debt ridden, well air-conditioned "upper" management:
after being fed up with my crappy 1 Mbps upload speed on regular ADSL (god it takes ages to get a good ration on bit-torrent) i wiresharked my DSLAM to find the MAC and thus the manufacturer (huewei) and doing some goggeling on available line cards, i decided to get GPS co-ordinates of the DSLAM, print out the specs of the available VDSL2 line-card for the dslam and proceeded to check the ISP website for VDSL2 availability.
the "cannon-fodder" staff was all "DENIED!" "NO HAVE!" and ... thus leaving me with the impression of "go away!".
thus i continued my "good bit-torrent ration" mission by going to one head [sic] office and demanding to see "upper" management.
i presented all my documents and chit-chat and voila .. yes the DSLAM in question does have a VDSL2 line card already and ta-da it would require a cisco-router, a vlan capable switch, VDSL2 modem and a business package (thousand bucks a month).
Riiight...
anyways, i guess there are friendly people in the world (oops this guy's been a "virus-free" customer for over 5 years already) so i got a email that said that indeed it was possible for me to get a consumer-grade VDSL2 service. double the price of my old adsl package. no cisco router, vlan switch needed, just a new (flakey) huewei VDSL2 modem would be required.
thus back at the "cannon fodder" shop i was informed that i needed a new modem and ... ta-da ... a new physical cobber cable (connection).
at this point i just gave up and thought the F-word very loud but played along for the sake of "good bt ratio".
a few days later the installation crew showed up and i asked them reluctantly how long it would take to install the new ~400 meter physical copper cable?
educated in the trenches, the two installers just looked at each other and said "what new cable? we are just going to connect this lamp to your cable and then proceed to disconnect the cables in the DSLAM and connect a battery to figure out which cable is yours and then just switch that cable over to the VDSL2 linecard ..."
*smirks* all around.
well i was up and running, improving my "bt ratio", a few hours later.
unfortunately the huewei vdsl2 modem/router was a real dog and switching it for a dumb-as-nails VDSL2-2-ethernet media converter and adding my intel-gigabit(!) ethernet NIC to the VLAN 53 in pfSense fixed that ...
"upper" management bids their time until all educational incurred debts have been paid back, leaving the "cannon fodder" crew to do day-by-day business (and corporate income) and thus it helps to know what is technically possible and available if dealing with all stuff "internet connection"...