(credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock)
AT&T’s deployment of fiber-to-the-home in California has been heavily concentrated in higher-income neighborhoods, giving affluent people access to gigabit speeds while others are stuck with Internet service that doesn’t even meet state and federal broadband standards, according to a new analysis.
“Because there is no regulatory oversight of AT&T’s fiber-to-the-home deployment, AT&T is free to choose the communities in which it builds its all-fiber GigaPower network,” UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society wrote in a report released today. “Our analysis finds that AT&T has built its all-fiber network disproportionately in higher income communities. If this pattern continues, it has troubling consequences for low- and moderate-income Californians, leaving many without access to AT&T’s gold standard all-fiber network and exacerbating the digital divide.”
California households with access to AT&T’s fiber service have a median income of $94,208, according to “AT&T’s Digital Divide in California,” in which the Haas Institute analyzed Federal Communications Commission data from June 2016. The study was funded by the Communications Workers of America, an AT&T workers’ union that’s been involved in contentious negotiations with the company.
Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Study on AT&T’s fiber deployment: 1Gbps for the rich, 768kbps for the poor