New Data Infrastructure - Don't Care

First a little history lesson of traditional telephone service in Kommiecticut:

Southern New England Telephone Co. (SNETCO): Started as District Telephone Company of New Haven in 1878. It was the very first telephone exchange and first printed telephone book. It became the only phone company in Kommiecticut under the old Bell System. With the breakup of Ma Bell in 1984, SNETCO became a "Baby Bell" with AT&T having a minority share in the company. In 1996 they offered their DSL internet service. I was one of their early customers. Wow! 784kb download and 384kb upload. No more 56k dialup modems. They were a really good company. In the early `90's when I worked for Nortel, I was assigned to Northeast Utilities (now Eversource) as the lead on-site technician. How good was SNET? We had a monthly meeting with the SNET team assigned to N.U. to discuss any service issues or upcoming projects. The SNETCO representatives would bend over backwards to keep N.U. happy. Whenever I had a line trouble, I would call SNET Business Repair and open a ticket. As soon as I had my ticket number, I would call the staff at the central office where the line trouble originated or passed through. The C.O. guys (older experienced techs too old to go up on poles any more marking time to retirement) would ALWAYS answer the phone, take the ticket and circuit number, and get right on it. When the trouble was resolved, they would call right back and ensure the trouble was fixed to my satisfaction. They remained a great company until 1998, when sold to SBC Global.

SBC Global: SNET was purchased for $4.4 billion in 1998 by SBC Communications, which subsequently purchased the old AT&T, taking its name as the "new" AT&T. Under AT&T, SNET was known as AT&T Connecticut. 

In August of 1998, I was no longer working for the company that serviced N.U., so I can't speak to how N.U. was treated going forward. Minor system upgrades brought DSL speeds up to 1 MB download, with promises of major system upgrades and speed increases. 

AT&T: In 2006, AT&T merged the operations of SNET into AT&T Teleholdings, formerly Ameritech, making it a subsidiary of the latter. 

AT&T rolled out it's high speed internet and U-Verse TV on an all fiber network. But the fiber roll out was not on every mile of their footprint. It was only available in urban and suburban areas, and very limited in rural areas like along state roads. It was not available down my back country road, I was stuck with DSL. My speeds were limited because I was at the farthest distance from the remote fiber control box to still get service.

Frontier Communications: On October 24, 2014, Frontier Communications completed its purchase of AT&T's Connecticut operations, including Southern New England Telephone and SNET America, for $2 billion. The company began doing business as Frontier Communications of Connecticut. It is the second former unit of the Bell System to be acquired by Frontier, the first being Frontier West Virginia (originally C&P Telephone of West Virginia) which was purchased from Verizon in 2010. Frontier is still the main "telephone company" in the state today. Since then, there were basically no upgrades of anything, and they can barely keep things in working order. I have witnessed first hand how bad they are having worked 35 years in the industry in another life. Their wires and cables hang too low after tree damage and remain in physical disrepair. Under SNETCo, that would have NEVER been allowed to be. When a pole is replaced after an accident or weather event, the 2-3 foot long piece of the old pole where their cables are attached remains suspended in the air by ropes. and it sometimes takes over a year to have the cables moved onto the new pole. All the other utilities are on site for the pole replacement and move their cables to the new pole. The DSL was upgraded to "up to 3 MB" download speeds at some point, but I never even got 2 MB, and near the end of my time with them it was constantly down. I got fed up with their customer service Guptas in India telling me to reboot my computer AGAIN, and moved to cable internet only with Charter. They offered 100 MB download for a 2 year introductory rate of $49.99 per month. By dropping my landline and all services from Frontier I was actually saving money. My wife and I moved all our telephone service to our cell phones since we only used the landline to order pizza. Until recently, I never speed tested below 115 MB download and 12 MB upload. Now it tests to 200 MB download. I watch streaming services and videos with no buffering. Since the 2 year promotion ended long ago, my current price is $74.99 per month. But... since my wife and I watch so much streaming content, it is definitely worth it.

In recent years, state utility regulators have been coming down hard on Frontier for their legacy of not upgrading or repairing their infrastructure and networks. Everywhere in my area every day, there are multiple contractor cable crews out stringing brand new fiber optic cabling until after dark, and at night are the vans parked on the side of the road splicing the fiber strands. Right now they are going great guns along the major state roads, and they are now going down some of the side roads. I will be interested to see whether they actually come down my rural side road at some point.

As the title says, "New Data Infrastructure - Don't Care" because as far as I am concerned, that ship has sailed long ago. I am very happy with my service and speed, and don't need to pay $155 a month for 5 GB of speed. My wife and I are not gamers and only have our two devices and a home computer, Even if we had a house full of guests our present speed would be plenty of bandwidth.

I believe Frontier is going to experience a poor ROI on this big fiber roll out. Customers like myself were promised upgrades for years, only to see nothing happen and receive piss poor service for what was available are not going back. The only ones that will want this is the gamer types living in their parent's basement eating Hot Pockets that don't pay for a fucking thing anyway, and will convince Mommy and Daddy to get it.