SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by edIII on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:46PM
It's interesting that we are all talking about regulation... but I thought DSL *did* have capacity limits like this. There is only so much bandwidth that can actually flow through copper lines, and unlike the artificial scarcity of bandwidth with other broadband providers, DSL limitations were real.
That was the bonus for getting DSL back in the day. On cablemodem any other jerk in the neighborhood could completely suck the bandwidth away from everybody (I was that jerk elsewhere). On DSL I was guaranteed my 3 Mb/s, and it wouldn't be shared with another subscriber. I believe this wasn't bullshit, as I had it maxed out 24/7. Cablemodem subscribers in my area always complained about shitty service and bandwidth, but the DSL subscribers basically reported, "slow, but steady". It also helps to remember that *unlike* coaxial based broadband, that hooks up to fiber, DSL still needs central offices (CO) to deliver all of that bandwidth with telephone grade copper lines over great distances. What the article doesn't mention is just what is his distance to the CO again? Depending on his distance, it might not even matter if extra capacity opens up. In fact, I can see that what AT&T *meant* was something else. It always took me several phone calls and escalations before I got to *anybody* in AT&T that knew their ass from a hole in the ground.
AT&T can be shitty, and I know this personally. I just got the "message" to fully disconnect my relatives landline telephone. It was nice because it worked in a power outage (which they have frequently in their rural area), but AT&T literally raised the price by THREE TIMES in a single pay period. Yeah, I can read in between the lines on that, "Please, oh Please, we just want to exit the market and we need you to close your account". Otherwise they expect to be paid near $100 for an ancient landline telephone with no features, and that's bat-shit crazy.
That being said, I can't immediately dismiss their claims of capacity problems as bullshit, because, this is DSL after all... capacity problems are from design IIRC.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.