AT&T Screams “Fiber” and yet America Gets Crap Wireless. It’s the Next Corporate Bait and Switch Using Manipulated Accounting.

Before we address this chart,

Fierce Networks summarized the current AT&T announcement to ‘shut down the copper’ wires and plans to “pass” 50 million residential and business locations with fiber optics by 2029.

• “The headline news is that AT&T is boosting its goal to deploy fiber, now planning to pass 50 million locations by year-end 2029
• “Perhaps more interesting is its plan to shut down its legacy copper network
• “AT&T will use a new product called AT&T Phone Advanced

The story continues with AT&T explaining that this new technology will be a replacement for AT&T’s copper-based customers. “AT&T has created ‘a new innovative product” called AT&T Phone Advanced….is going to serve most of our existing copper-based customers.”

As we will discuss, Phone Advanced is a seriously flawed product, that is not new, but started in 2012, with AT&T’s failed attempts in 2012 to ‘shut off the copper’ with the IP Transition. In fact, AT&T’s Terms and Conditions for ‘medical devices’ or e911 shows what the company really thinks:

According to AT&T,

“It works just like a traditional landline phone, and it works with many of the services that our POTS landline customers are used to using: Think fax machines, medical monitoring devices, alarm systems, even elevators,”

But as we discuss, this appears to be smoke and mirrors about the applications as the ‘Terms and Conditions’ reveals holes in AT&T’s announcement, December 2024

“AT&T makes no warranty that AT&T Phone Service is appropriate for or capable of use with monitored burglar or fire alarms or medical monitoring systems or devices. Use of such systems is at your own risk. Not only may AT&T Phone Service be interrupted, delayed, or insecure, it may be incompatible with such systems or devices, and will not work in the event of a power or network outage, and may not work for other reasons.”

And in 2012, AT&T’s FCC filing using the AT&T IP products footnote: AT&T information stated that the applications the company filed were ready for action, and yet, footnotes revealed that medical alert and alarm monitoring were missing but would be coming soon.

“2012: Wireless Home Phone and Wireless Home Phone and Internet currently does not support alarm monitoring, medical alert and credit card validation applications.”

“2012: However, AT&T currently is developing enhancements that will provide all of these applications which we plan to introduce in the [CONFIDENTIAL — NOT FOR PUBLIC DISCLOSURE].

There is a litany of other problems with this technology and the plan to shut off the working networks for crap wireless instead of fiber to the home. But the idea that lives are at stake with these items and AT&T wants to do this to most customers on copper is ludicrous. Or is it worse when AT&T claims this is new and innovative but is just a retread of the past.

The IRREGULATORS have seen all of this before. The subplot is: AT&T is attempting to get rid of all regulations and obligations throughout America. Moreover, it is a bait and switch to move those currently on an old copper wire to wireless because it makes the company more money.

But what is presented here now indicates that AT&T is actively dismantling the state telecommunications public utilities and claiming and creating a ‘second network’, but still charged to local wired customers. Moreover, it never even mentions that the copper wires are part of this state utility and that the carrier of last resort has been sliced and diced.

History shows AT&T will not bring fiber optic to the home services unless there are government grants, and it is not going to be held accountable for letting the state critical infrastructure deteriorate, which is still charging customers extra and moving the budgets and perks to be used for their wireless business.

The complete shell game with the manipulation of the number of access lines, and the foisting of a seriously flawed piece of technology, is a sign that they will claim that the tech didn’t work but we have this wireless solution; it won’t be fiber to the home to most customers, even though the households paid about $3000 — $10,000 dollars for upgrades they never received. (It varies greatly by state and how long the customer had started being charged.)

AT&T has not included California in their plans Here is a story of one senior who decided he wanted his fiber optic upgrade and spent $10,000 on a Wall Street Journal ad and received national attention — AT&T claimed it was already upgrading his neighborhood. In fact, we filed with the state multiple times on the previous failed fiber optic deployments that started in thru 1990’s. We also filed pertaining to the manipulation of the accounting that distorts the total number of copper wires that are still in use and were slated to be shut off. .

90-Year-Old Spent $10 Grand on WSJ Ads; Got AT&T to Bring Fiber — What about the 70+ Million Locations in AT&T’s 21 States?

AT&T is currently a holding company that controls the state telecommunications public utilities in 21 states, which covers almost 75–88 million “locations” and over ½ of the US population as it controls most of CA and TX and Illinois. The utilities were part of the original AT&T Bell system and are the ‘footprint’, as shown on the map above of rhea current AT&T.

Manipulation of the accounting of households “passed”.

We believe that AT&T’s fiber “passes,” despite the company’s deceptive nomenclature, will not bring fiber to the home. Rather it will deploy the fiber infrastructure to connect cell tower sites and will force customers onto wireless — even broadband satellite, regardless of the hype. We believe that because AT&T controls these 21 states and along with Verizon controls most of the wholesale prices for wireless, US prices will never go down substantially. This is dismal news for most Americans, who want a fiber broadband connection to the internet.

And AT&T isn’t even going to be doing the building of the fiber but will use other “open Access carriers — i.e., renting other companies’ competitive networks and claiming it is now AT&T.

Footnote from the announcement:

“Total locations’ includes consumer and business locations (i) passed with fiber and (ii) served with fiber through commercial open-access providers.”

Worse, compared to overseas prices for communications, America is paying 5–20 times more for telecommunications, cable and internet. What makes this even more egregious is that our providers apply data caps and throttle data speeds. AT&T and Verizon are the largest wireless providers and also control the majority of wireline networks.

The IREGULATORS believe this is a massive bait and switch and needs to be halted immediately. However, there appear to be obstacles to protecting the public interest rights.

Institutional Amnesia, the Rewriting of History and America’s Failed Fiber Plans.

The largest obstacle is the institutional amnesia of the current staff, the rewriting of history by the providers and the omission of primary facts that should have been presented by the FCC and the NTIA. Worse, all of the state 5-year broadband plans that are required by the NTIA to get a piece of the $40+ billion BEAD funding for state network upgrades, never, mention that America was supposed to be a fiber optic nation, state-by-state.

In fact, every state has had multiple changes in state laws to fund a fiber optic future. For example, Ameritech which controlled 5 states: IL, IA, WI, MI, and OH all had plans for a fiber optic future starting 30 years ago. (On the map it is the AT&T holdings between CenturyLink (now Lumen.) and Verizon.

The Chicago Tribune, February 14, 1993

“A telephone in every home, an early goal of the original Bell System, is no longer enough for today’s heirs to the Bell legacy. Ameritech, Bell’s Midwest offspring, is putting forth a new mission, one it says is “a prescription for America’s future”: providing full-motion video and data access, as well as voice phone service, to every home and business that wants it.

“Ameritech promises this new goal to be the centerpiece “advanced universal access” and formally adopted it late last year. A key component is replacing copper-wire service with optical fiber that can easily carry video signals and high-speed data transmissions.”

At the same time, Ameritech and Pacific Bell, now AT&T California, both filed at the FCC plans to upgrade major cities, known as video -dialtone

30+ years ago, this plan for the 5 Ameritech states, now part of AT&T, was never completed because directly after the merger of Ameritech with SBC, SBC would sell off parts of what was built to a small cable company named WOW, and that would do the next bait and switch in 2005, claiming it was rolling out a fiber optic network called U-verse, but in the end it used the existing aging copper wires.

U-Verse was supposed to have 18 million households upgraded by 2010, but it was never seriously competitive as it is based on copper and couldn’t do high speeds. AT&T then decided to buy DirecTV and then Warner Brothers — a bucket of expensive mergers that did not go well.

AT&T Is Letting the Wired, Public Telecommunications Utilities in 21 States Deteriorate — for 5G and Streaming?

The IRREGULATORS position is simple — America paid for a fiber optic wire to the home that was supposed to replace the existing copper wires. And this included rural areas as well as low-income urban areas. America should be demanding investigations into what happened.

But that is not history but a continuous, ongoing problem. The changes in state laws and the FCC’s inability to audit and investigate basic financial reports has meant that the overcharging and the cross-subsidies have grown and continue today.

Where did all the money go? Why is there a Digital Divide?

To Reframe: AT&T’s plan for fiber, then, is really a plan to use the utility perks to build their wireless business. Note that wireless requires a fiber optic procure with an invisible extension cord. And while satellite does not require fiber, this is not building an infrastructure to last decades; this is a service, which at this point can’t seriously replace fiber to the home or office.

WE WILL FOCUS ON 4 PRIMARY AREAS

1) The information supplied about the fiber optic deployments is deceptive on multiple fronts, from the number of actual fiber optic customers and future plans to the accounting of the number of copper lines in service that will be impacted.

The opening chart shows that AT&T has only 9 million actual fiber optic subscribers, though AT&T claims it has 28 million locations “passed”.

2) AT&T has manipulated the accounting of the lines, using the word “voice”, leaving out ‘data’ services using the copper wires or even VOIP and DSL, not to mention ‘special access’

3) To be continued: Next Part: The AT&T ‘Advanced’ tech is not new, or innovative, and this is a bait and switch to push a seriously flawed wireless product that AT&T is claiming will be used for the majority of wireline customers.

4) To be continued: Next Part: The 30 Year Arch: How many times did AT&T and Verizon pull this same bait and switch? We will be addressing the subplot of how these companies failed to upgrade their state utilities and created the Digital Divide, only to be rewarded with government subsidies and institutional memory to hold them accountable.

The IRREGULATORS is a consortium of senior telecom experts, analysts, auditors and lawyers, who are not funded by any outside corporate source. Our agenda is to not let these corporations harm the public interest and hold them accountable now.

============================================================== Let’s Analyze the Current AT&T Plan and Technology

According to AT&T financial reports and FCC filings,

1) AT&T has only 9 million fiber optic to the home or business subscriber lines in 2024, only 10–12% of locations in their 21 state footprint, estimated at 75–88 million business and residential locations.

All the rest is hype. In order to show just how out of whack this is, AT&T has 75–85 million locations in the 21 states it covers. And the range is because there are different presentations from AT&T that supply this information.

To put this into perspective, returning to the history, Pacific Bell (AT&T California) had announced 5.5 million households would be upgraded to fiber optics by the year 2000 and spend $16 billion. Ameritech’s 5 states: IL, OH, MI, WI, and IA, were to have 6 million lines of fiber by 2000.

And all of this was for the Information Superhighway of the 1990’s; U-Verse was supposed to be fiber to the home and turned out to use the existing copper wires, and it wasn’t announced until 2004.

§ AT&T does not have fiber optic services passed and available to 28 million locations capable of delivering a wire to the home telecom service.

Chart: The number of locations passed by AT&T fiber by year.

Problem 1: Any home within 1000 feet is considered passed. One has only to read the comments on community boards to know that this is a major problem. A wire can be across the street but still not available via a fiber connection to the family 100 feet away. But it does greatly increase the ‘locations passed’, covering more space.

This distance was established in the AT&T-DirecTV merger where AT&T was required to put in 12.5 million fiber optic lines to the home or business.

Problem 2: Notice that in 2024, the number of lines is 28 million, but the accounting for 2022 only showed 17 million. The leap in the number lines from 17 million to 28 million that appear to be made up.

Problem 3: AT&T keeps claiming additions of 3 million fiber optic subscribers, but the track record and history gives us a vote of no confidence

Multiple times, AT&T announced it will be adding 3 million fiber optic lines.

In 2021, Ars Technica reported:

“In 2021, AT&T plans to increase its fiber footprint by an additional 3 million customer locations across more than 90 metro areas,” AT&T said. This would raise AT&T’s fiber deployment to about 18 million homes and businesses.”

And there has been a continuous stream of projections about a future to have 50 million locations “passed”, This is a clip from the 2017 Annual report claiming it would have 60 million —

But this is all about the wireless bait and switch. In 2024, the company is once again claiming to be doing 50 million locations by 2029, but the fine print shows this is not going to be fiber to the home but is fiber to the press release and cell site.

2) Manipulation of the actual accounting of the copper wires currently in play and the claim that there are now 2 networks, the copper wires and the shiny fiber broadband and wireless networks.

This excerpt is from the AT&T 2nd quarter 2024 report, and on the left are the ‘connections’ of the consumer wireline side of the business and on the right the chart above shows connections from the other lines of business, for wireline services.

Fierce Networks quotes AT&T, explaining that only 5% of the ‘residential’ customers are using the copper voice networks.

“Only 5% of our residential customers are still using copper voice technology,”

And the second part of the quote claims that there are now 2 networks.

“Right now, we are operating two parallel wireline networks: our copper network and our modern fiber network. The copper network is very inefficient.”

This is a not obvious shell game of massive proportions.

AT&T has manipulated the accounting of the lines, using the word “voice”, leaving out ‘data’ service using the copper wires or even other copper-based services, from VOIP and DSL, not to mention “special access”, data lines, including alarm systems.

Moreover, the quote uses the word “residential”; these are NOT all of the lines as it also left out all business lines.

The quote also claims that there are 2 networks; the copper wires and the fiber and wireless networks, and it reveals just how out of whack the conversation to replace the copper wire

In fact, AT&T is pro-wireless, and not pro-fiber to the home.

AT&T’s stated position is, there should be services with satellite or wireless and that would be with government subsidies. And government subsidies, BEAD, should not focus on wired or fiber solutions. And it shows that AT&T has no intention of fiber to the home with these fiber deployments. This is from this latest investor meeting to discuss the 3rd quarter results.

“I actually think a BEAD construct that looks and says, hey, there are homes in the United States that are best served by satellite. They should be served by satellite. It’s the best way to get bandwidth to them. And that number is probably somewhere between 0% and 8%. There are homes in the United States that are absolutely best served to get some scale broadband and by fixed wireless. And there are homes that are best served by actually having a wire running it for them, either a hybrid fiber coax connection or a fiber connection.”

Sounds good, right?

The 2 excerpts above are from the AT&T 2nd Quarter 2024 showing the connections and on the left are the “consumer” wireline results and on the right includes some of the other lines of business, specifically broadband.

Where are the residential voice lines, representing 5%?

§ If it exists it would be in the “Retail Consumer Switched Access lines’, (though there is another line item called “Legacy Voice and Data”, that does not show up or match these figures).

The caveats, ‘voice’, ‘residential’, ‘copper’ wire, are being done and worded this way because the actual number of copper wired services and the plans to close down million more lines that are being laid out — is deceptive.

By referring back to the chart and putting it simply, there is 1 line item called Fiber Broadband Connections for 8.79 million connections. This would mean that all of these other connections are NOT fiber broadband. And if there appear to be only 1.468 million “Switched access” lines, then all the rest are most likely uncounted copper connections.

But there is no guidance on exactly where the copper wires vs fiber optic wires are — and if there were 2 networks shouldn’t these be identified as such?

Do the Math so You Understand.

Each of these items has a number of connections, but one has to know this is filled with caveats, as large amounts of lines in service, especially business data lines, are all missing, and they can be copper-based.

• DSL uses copper and it is supposed to be on the chopping block.
• The VOIP Consumer Connections would most likely be copper.
• U-Verse voice service is copper-based.

Missing

• Data Services, including Special access,
• Copper alarm circuits, elevators, government services,
• No data lines listed for either the consumer or business services.
• No Business access Lines listed, copper or fiber.

If AT&T only has 8.8 million fiber optic connections, this would mean everything in these numbers as well as a whole collection of lines that are not here, would all have a copper-based line that is up for being removed.

Some of these other accounting of lines may be available in other docs, such as FCC or state regulatory filings, but it is clear that the use of these specific words are used to obfuscate the facts and exactly how many copper wires are still in use. This is the underlying subplot unknown to most, but hidden in plain sight.

Summary:

• The 5% number of ‘copper’ lines is garbage and is only ‘residential’ and only voice
• There are only 8.8 million fiber optic connections.

Punchline:

• We now estimate that 13–21 million lines, representing — 30–65% may be in use with VOIP, DSL, U-verse but also data services, like alarm circuits or government office, small business stores to hot spots.

`

AT&T left out basic material facts

• The copper wires are part of a state telecommunications public utility,
• The copper networks were already written off,
• The copper should have been replaced at least 2–3 decades ago
• Customers have been paying for that upgrade in high phone rates,
• But also added, made up junk fees
• Companies got government subsidies, including high-cost funds, universal service
• And other buckets of money.

what we are losing

We have been critical of AT&T and the accounting they have used for decades. We summarized the different ways the telcos. Including AT&T were manipulating the accounting of access lines, to make it appear that the ‘copper’ isn’t really a lot of lines.

The Copper-Wire World of AT&T: The Reason to Investigate AT&T, Now

The state telecommunications public utilities entire premise was that every customer within the franchise area gets service because the state’s infrastructure and construction were averaged — and this 100% coverage means 100%; it also meant 100% of the customers would be charged a bit extra to fund the state upgrades. And this was always rural areas and inner cities. And AT&T et a. all had these state-by-state agreements in place.

But, over the last 2 decades, even though customers, not the investors, have been the primary de facto investors, the companies manipulated the accounting to make these processes appear that it was not profitable to do rural areas — even when the companies had actually charged customers thousands of dollars for the upgrades.

We will continue by covering the ‘new innovative tech’ and why the Digital Divide solution requires fixing what we just presented.

3) To be continued: Next Part: The AT&T ‘Advanced’ tech is not new, or innovative, and this is a bait and switch to push a seriously flawed wireless product that AT&T is claiming will be used for the majority of wireline customers.

4) To be continued: Next Part: The 30 Year Arch: How many times did AT&T and Verizon pull this same bait and switch? We will be addressing the Subplot of how these companies failed to upgrade their state utilities and created the Digital Divide, only to be rewarded with government subsidies and institutional memory to hold them accountable.