On 28 January 2013 10:35, Warren Bailey <wbailey@satelliteintelligencegroup.com> wrote:
Spoken like a true ATT customer..;)
I've had an AT&T FTTU in my bedroom closet, which was an Alcatel HONT-C (4 POTS (unused), 1 Ethernet; 155.52 Mbps upstream and 622.08 Mbps downstream; shared with at most 32 users), and AT&T California outright refused to provision the U-verse internet at anything higher than 18Mbps downstream and 1.5Mbps upstream, at a time when their web-site loudly offered a 24Mbps tier for the general public for 10 extra bucks. Yes, this was at a time when VDSL2 users were already provisioned 24Mbps down and 3Mbps up; FTTU users weren't privileged as such (and probably still aren't to this day). AT&T FTTU experience starts with the installation: you have a fibre technician that calls you prior to the date of the centrally-scheduled appointment, and tells you that you'll have an extra appointment prior (and in addition) to the original pre-scheduled appointment date. He'll also likely confide in you that that's the way things work at T -- he has to schedule his own appointments for FTTU ONT installation, and no single customer is beforehand informed of any such appointments. Then in a misunderstanding that something can be done to get the advertised speeds that certainly must be supported by the installed ONT, you can spend hours with sales, tech support and the AT&T California executive office, who will all give all sorts of excuses that you are too long from the CO / VRAD / etc etc. Whereas in reality AT&T is simply too lazy to update their FTTU provisioning profiles, and not a single FTTU installation is being offered any internet services above 18Mbps. (Somehow, it is my impression that noone in the company even knows this for a fact -- I've not had a single over-the-phone representative confirm that 24Mbps tier is never offered for FTTU.) Note that even if you disregard the fact that Verizon successfully delivers 25/25, 50/20 and many other tiers over essentially the same technology, the simple math of 622/155 divided by 32 users turns out to be higher than 18/1.5, and especially several factors higher than the 1.5 part of 18/1.5. This does not even account for many people getting the cheapest and slower tiers, or the fact that the whole point of FTTU BPON is overprovisioning support. Well, that's AT&T for you: already has the network, already has the price structure, already has the marketing going, already has all the passive and active equipment installed that's capable of vastly superior speeds, already has the customers willing to pay more each month for faster speeds, and already has customers abandoning FTTU services because of artificially-imposed speed limitations, yet T still can't be bothered to flip some provisioning bits. C.