AT&T Faces Allegations of Favoring Rich With Fiber
AT&T is under fire in California and Ohio for allegedly neglecting low-income households as the carrier deploys fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband service. AT&T targeted wealthier communities for its fiber-to-the-home service in California, said the Haas Institute at the University of California, Berkeley in a Tuesday report. An earlier National Digital Inclusion Alliance report alleged AT&T denied high-speed internet access to low-income neighborhoods in Cleveland. Citing the NDIA data, a civil rights law firm Monday threatened a lawsuit against the company. Future research could look at whether the reported income disparity is a nationwide issue for AT&T, said Berkeley doctoral candidate Garrett Strain, the report’s co-author, on a media conference call.
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The median income of communities in AT&T’s FTTH footprint is $94,208, which is 34 percent higher than the $61,911 median income for all AT&T California households, the Berkeley study found. The median income is 44 percent lower than FTTH in DSL neighborhoods ($53,186) and 29 percent lower in U-Verse fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) neighborhoods ($67,021), the report said. The study showed an income disparity in 56 California counties where AT&T provides wireline phone and internet service, representing 71 percent of the state. Also, the report found 42.8 percent of California households without at least 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds, the FCC’s high-speed broadband standard. Nearly one in five households (18 percent) has speeds less than 6 Mbps download, which the California Public Utilities Commission defines as underserved, it said. The report correlated U.S. Census Bureau information with public FCC Form 477 data showing broadband availability as of June 30.
The Berkeley authors urged the California legislature to reassert state authority over broadband network deployment by repealing a 2012 law (SB-1161) limiting such oversight and adopting legislation to set enforceable fiber deployment benchmarks for all providers. CPUC also should hold hearings this year across the state on broadband availability to inform a broadband report due in 2018, they said in the report. The Utility Reform Network agrees with those recommendations, TURN Telecommunications Director Regina Costa said on the conference call. California policymakers should hold AT&T and other providers accountable for communities left behind, she said. “Public oversight and intervention is needed to ensure universal and affordable access to high-speed communications services.”
Communications Workers of America commissioned the Berkeley report while negotiating union contracts with AT&T in California and elsewhere (see 1703230016). “This really has nothing to do with our bargaining and trying to get a contract with AT&T,” CWA District 9 Vice President Thomas Runnion said on the call. “But it is something that our workers have been talking about with the public.” Berkeley’s Haas Institute isn’t involved or familiar with the AT&T labor talks, said report co-author and Haas Institute Program Manager Eli Moore. The motivation was that broadband access is important and AT&T is the state’s biggest carrier, he said.
Across the country, AT&T could soon have to defend a lawsuit on alleged income disparities in Cleveland following an NDIA report that also showed an income disparity for fiber broadband services (see 1703100037). Citing the report, an attorney from the Parks and Crump firm alerted AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson Monday that he may file a lawsuit on behalf of low-income communities in Cleveland. Parks Crump is known for civil rights cases including the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The letter was copied to the AT&T board, Ohio government leaders, and Communications Subcommittee and other U.S. House members.
Cleveland broadband consumers "have been and continue to be irreparably injured by AT&T’s deliberate pattern and practice of offering critical fast home broadband service disproportionately to residents of high-income zip codes, while offering only much slower and inherently inferior service to residents of low-income zip codes,” attorney Daryl Parks wrote in the letter we obtained. “Whether or not AT&T set out deliberately to injure them, they were injured nonetheless.” Parks asked to meet with Stephenson and to address the AT&T board at Friday’s shareholder meeting, recommending AT&T work with the firm to address the matter. “Should this collaborative approach be rejected, Cleveland Broadband Consumers will be compelled to use whatever lawful means are available to them to seek redress,” he said.
AT&T doesn’t discriminate among customers, an AT&T spokesman emailed. “We don't favor any demographic when it comes to providing any service we offer. … We would like nothing more than to serve every customer who wants our services.” AT&T invested more than $7.25 billion in California wireless and wireline networks over the past three years, the AT&T spokesman said. Focusing only on one company and wireline broadband ignores that wireless broadband has made internet more affordable to people regardless of income level or where they live, he said. Also, the Berkeley study ignores AT&T efforts to reach more than 140,000 unserved and underserved homes and small businesses in California through the Connect America Fund by 2020, he said. Many of those communities will get fixed wireless broadband of at least 10 Mbps, he said.