AT&T still fails at FTTH, but slowly figures out how to make it work

30 December 2017 by Steve Blum
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AT&T hasn’t fully embraced fiber to the home service yet. At least not judging by my experience setting it up in a newly built, fully fibered apartment complex. But they are making progress.

Originally, AT&T only offered homes in FTTH islands the same service packages that they offered to surrounding copper customers. That still might be going on in single family home developments or in redlined neighborhoods, but they’ve developed genuine fiber packages of up to a symmetrical gigabit for multi-dwelling units. Unfortunately, their customer service reps and installers aren’t all onboard.

Since this wasn’t for my primary residence, I wanted AT&T’s cheapest, bare bones Internet service, in this case, 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload with no contract, at $50 per month and a $99 installation fee, as their website led me to believe. No surprise, AT&T made it hard for me to buy it. As it turned out, they didn’t even sell it.

No contract service isn’t available online, even when you try to order it via an online chat. The call center reps are nearly as clueless. After the obligatory up sell attempt, The first rep I spoke with took my order and told me it would cost $40 per month. That set off alarm bells, since that’s the 12-month contract price. I asked her if that’s the no-contract price and got an uh-hum in return.

Anytime a call center rep answers with uh-hum, it means I don’t know but I’d like you to assume I’m saying yes.

I asked to speak to a supervisor and, after some argument, finally got one. He confirmed what I thought: the $40 rate came with a contract and no-contract service was $50 for 50 Mbps, symmetrical as it turned out. Done deal. A installation appointment was set.

I could expend a couple thousand words describing what came next. The highlight was a surprise early morning service call from an installer who tried to tell me the optical network terminal he had was the WiFi equipped modem I’d ordered. When I pointed out he was installing it in a metal cabinet without an ethernet connection, he just said “it’s pretty powerful”. Right.

Six truck rolls later, I had Internet.

A week after that, I had a bill for $70. It took several phone calls, each more unpleasant for all involved than the last, to establish that 50 Mbps symmetrical service is $70 on a no contract basis, and all $50 gets you is 5 Mbps symmetrical.

Which is what I now have. And it works, although how it will perform when the complex finally fills up is an open question. AT&T’s FTTH service is a good product. They just need to learn how to sell and install it.