Last week, 90 years old Aaron Epstein took out one quarter page ad in the Wall Street Journal hoping to convince AT&T to release its slowlike-molasses DSL internet to fiber. It reportedly cost Epstein $ 10,000 to remove that advertisement, but apparently it worked. The native of North Hollywood, California, is getting ultra-fast speeds today, and we love that for him.
According to Ars Technica, after Epstein’s story went viral and ended up him interviews with TV channels and a brief mention The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, AT&T came to his house this week and installed fiber optic internet for him and his wife, Anne. The couple now gets more than 300 Mbps speeds instead of the 3 Mbps they got before.
It wasn’t an easy undertaking for the engineers, but they connected Epstein and his wife to better internet in just two days. Epstein’s neighbors two or three blocks away, AT&T already had FIber, but for some reason Epstein’s house wasn’t wired for it Epstein told Ars Technica AT&T said the additional wiring installation cost the company Thousands and thousands of dollars.According to Ars, there was some confusion as to whether AT&T would fully wire Epstein’s neighborhood. AT&T did not state whether its immediate neighbors would get fiber-optic internet sometime in the future now that the lines are installed on their street, which connects a few blocks away to the fiber optic lines in the same neighborhood.
Not everyone has $ 10,000 to put in a newspaper ad, nor should they force ISPs to provide fair internet serviceEven Epstein says it was the media who picked up his story prompting AT&T to take action, not necessarily the ad. But if AT&T can lay fiber in no time someone’s house in two days, even though it reportedly costs them thousands of dollars, it seems like the ISP should be able to do the same for more neighborhoods – especially areas where The only option for residents is AT&T DSL.
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However, Epstein has been lucky in that regard. He has a choice – if you can call it that – between AT&T and Spectrum, but he wanted to switch completely to AT&T because his phone service runs through them.
Last October AT&T announced that it would no longer offer DSL as a new service. Those already paying for DSL, like Epstein, could keep their service, but the company would no longer sell DSL plans. This is a big problem, because for many Americans, AT&T DSL is their only ISP option.
A joint report from the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDLA) revealthat AT&T has connected newer and more affluent neighborhoods to fiber and has only laid fiber foundations in some uninhabited and disadvantaged areas. Epstein’s case seems like a textbook example of this happening.
An AT&T spokeperson previously told Ars these are “investment decisions are based on the capacity needs of [its] network and ask for [its] Services. ”But you shouldn’t put an ad in one of the country’s biggest newspapers for your demands better service to be heard