AT&T, the telecom company in our area, stopped selling new DSL Internet Digital Services in October of 2021. This is the Internet service delivered over what was your phone line starting around 2001.
It’s been obvious for some time that AT&T have simply wanted their ‘copper’ digital internet subscribers. especially in our high maintenance low-profit-margin rural areas to Just Go Away.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxqvkq/atandts-decision-to-kill-dsl-could-leave-millions-without-broadband
‘copper’ meaning the service was delivered over the original pairs of copper wires originally used for telephone calls.
In urban areas, switching to fiber optic has been easy and yields handsome returns, so they focused on that, not us,
Not So out here. So, they are letting us go.
This was achieved through low priority reponses to support calls, spotty and unreliable service, and indifference to systematic failures. I call that ‘attrition’- We will not dump you just yet, will just become gradually unusable.
The only shining light it the AT&T linemen who are genuinely dedicated and helpful, given the horrible company they work for, some for many years.
Now I believe AT&T propose to end all DSL services in our area and likely nationwide, altogether around June 2022,
I have been unable just yet to site the information other than that provided by couple local repair shops but, it seems credible.
Alternatives. If you live ‘in town’ or even some areas outside the City Limits then Xfinity/Comcast Cable works well when you wade past some of the most disliked corporations in America.
(Full Disclosure- I install these systems for clients)
Their service, I grudgingly admit, is fast & reliable but their billing often gets screwed up and their support can be hopeless at best. However– again– their Linemen (And I guess Linewomen?) save the day with their dedication to the cause of getting things up and running– IF the Dispatch System does not screw up,
which nearly always happens!
Alternatives?
Terrestrial Wifi: Signals are sent up to 10 miles over the ground with little or not latency, BUT you must be with line of sight, at least from the top of something near your property, of their transmitter.
http://www.smarterbroadband.com
http://www.digitalpath.net
Starlink.Com : Elon Musk’s Low Earth Orbit Satellite Internet.
Little or no latency- NOT to be confused with Hughes.Net Satellite Internet
MIFI: Or, Internet over Cell Service-
“Verizon Local” using 5G again aimed at urban areas may make it out here but it not yet a Reality.
ATT/Verizon/Sprint Internet over cell net
.. TBA– Continued.