Broadband in the Boonies, Holiday Edition

Dear Santa,

You so delivered on last year’s wish list—no cancer recurrence, continued employment during a challenging pandemic, and virtually no COVID among family and friends—that I feel almost sheepish for making yet one more request before the year’s end. But as you’re in the request business, here goes:

Could I please have my broadband back sometime before 2022? 

It’s like this:

As you likely know as you fly over the west coast, we’ve suffered from the drought/wildfire one-two punch over the last couple of years. It’s devastating for those who’ve lost lives, homes, and livelihoods. It’s also not great for trees, which weaken, die, and, when soil is loosened by saturation, fall down, sometimes taking power and phone lines with them.

Such was the case here. A small oak bit the dust (or, in this case, mud) and took my phone line with it. (Which, as you know, I still require as I receive no cellular service in my rural outpost and rely solely on DSL for the 5-megabit-down connection my ISP laughably calls “high speed internet.” I mean, sure, I can still stream video, but the quality of that stream is such that when I watched Peter Jackson’s Get Back, I was convinced it was a documentary about the Dave Clark Five’s disintegration.)

“Ho ho ho,” you ho as you read my plea. “Just call my good friends at AT&T and report the outage! This isn’t something Santa should have to handle!”

Santa, I hear you. Really, I do. But word may not have reached the North Pole: AT&T is run by some pretty terrible people. The company funded the creation and operation of One America News, a far-right propaganda outlet that actively supports the dismantling of American democracy. Like you, Santa, I’m a liberal (though I am interested in knowing whether or not the elves are allowed to organize), and this bothers me. But lots of corporations do terrible things and sometimes you have to hold your nose when said corporation provides the only means of Getting Something Terribly Important Done.

When not undermining America, AT&T is also doing its best to create a hierarchy of broadband haves and have-nots. The haves are those living in densely populated, medium-to-high income areas, who enjoy the company’s lightning-fast fiber service. The have-nots are those with lower incomes, and people like me who live in rural areas. For this latter group, AT&T has cut off sales of DSL service without providing a fiber alternative. Those existing DSL customers have been grandfathered in, but the service is rife with obscene overage charges and the crumbling infrastructure that supports DSL receives very little support as AT&T focuses on more lucrative services.

Now Santa, I know you’re both capitalist and socialist, and the Grim Overlord of your personality may sympathize with AT&T. It’s their company and they can do what they want with it. But the Downtrodden Worker within also recognizes that AT&T is allowed to operate as a monopoly. It has complete control over the phone lines that were once connected to my home. At one time, it leased those lines to other ISPs so that they could provide a more reliable DSL service (without data caps). When it decided to exit the DSL business and leave its rural and low-income customers high and dry, it cancelled those leases and took its infrastructure with it, leaving millions unserved.

And just between us, Santa, I’m not sure that’s a good long-term strategy. Given its support for the aforementioned One America News, I understand where AT&T’s corporate sympathies lie. But I’m not certain that baring a Hydra tattoo is going to help when a passel of gun-toting former rural DSL customers drag the nearest C-level exec to a convenient light pole. Sure, these folks want their authoritarianism served up hot ‘n’ spicy, but you’re also fucking with their ability to binge watch Tucker Carlson’s Frisky Fascist Follies, and that’s gonna sting.

But I digress. I did call AT&T and was promised a visit to fix the problem three days after it occurred. Then that visit was canceled and another visit promised three days after that, which was notable largely for its complete absence of a technician to fix the problem. A call the following Monday informed me that my problem was a priority. On Tuesday we clarified what exactly that meant—“They’ll be there today.” Wednesday’s call was devoted to the definition of the word “today,” because Tuesday’s tech was another no-show. Later in the call, the very nice lady with the southern accent (they all have that accent with the idea, I suppose, that you’re less inclined to scream out obscenities at someone who sounds like Melanie Hamilton) did her best to take a gentle umbrage when I accused her of being yet another lying mouthpiece for one of the nation’s worst companies (“Well fiddle-dee-dee, Mr. Breen!).

As I write this on Wednesday afternoon, I’m not hopeful. The help bots @ATTHelp have done their darnedest to hide my complaints by offering me no help via DM (“Let’s get to the bottom of this, Chris! Please call 800-288-2020 and ask for Melanie!”).

And I’m not hopeful, Santa, because despite Melanie’s protests that the weather is interfering with my repair, the truth of it is this: Landline and DSL service is dead to AT&T. They’ve laid off countless techs who supported technologies that they want very much to disappear. If they can use overage charges and wretched customer support to force more customers to cell phones and a broadband option less costly to maintain, the greater chance the company can safely pull the plug on these things once and for all because “no one uses them.”

Except those with low incomes or who live in rural areas. Them? Pfffttt…

Santa, that’s very very naughty. Given that, one more request:

When you drop by Joe Manchin’s home to pick up the year’s sack of coal, please save the majority of it for those who haunt AT&T’s executive boardroom.