Notably this is occurring at a time where AT&T is trying to get out of its obligation to provide landlines to any willing customer, at least in California.
I had an hour long conversation last week with an AT&T tech who was waiting for his supervisor. He came over to ask me whether I knew anything about fiber availability on the neighborhood. Turns out they sent him out to hook up my neighbor with fiber, but he couldn’t find the fiber hookup that was supposed to be there. I told him that, three years ago, when ATT came and was about to tear up our private cul de sac,the homeowners’ association chased them off because it would have cost us 20k to properly resurface the drive. So there were no fiber hookups. (I can get fiber myself but it would mean a wire from the pole across the street - all my other wires are buried, so I don’t want the ugliness). They had sent him out to switch the neighbors to fiber so they can deactivate the copper POT network in the area. His supervisor didn’t believe him that there were no hookups, so he was waiting on my driveway for the supervisor to come out and see for himself.
Anyway, he was telling me that ATT routinely lies about fiber availability and promised speeds. For example, even though they send me solicitations saying they can provide 5Gb speeds, the network equipment in the area only supports 1/5 that.
