AT&T Publicly Humiliated over crappy internet

[Donut417]

Summary

Effectively an AT&T customer in California was sick and tired of his crappy 3 Mbps internet connection. So he decided to publicly humiliate AT&T. 

 

Quotes

Quote

 "Aaron Epstein spent $10,000 to buy an ad in The Wall Street Journal to tell AT&T’s CEO he wasn’t happy with his internet service "

 

Quote

But it’s been estimated that there are millions of Americans who don’t have access to any access to home internet at all, let alone broadband (which itself is arguably not fast enough), and they can’t all afford ads in the WSJ. Besides,

Quote

If anything, this story highlights how little power the public has when it comes to their internet access — if you need to have $10,000 to publicly humiliate your ISP, we’re doing something wrong.

 

Quote

Now, AT&T has him hooked up with a fiber connection, and he’s getting over 300 Mbps up and down.

My thoughts

As the article lays out many of us in the US dont have any good options for internet. If you do have a decent option is probably your only one. I just think it was funny that he publicly humiliated a large telecom to get better internet service. Hopefully someone who is a Comcast sub could lay down $10K to publicly humiliate them over their data caps. LOL. 

 

In truth during the whole mess we have been in for this last year, I think it has shown how important decent internet is. The internet is essential for many to work, go to school and for entertainment purposes.  I think its cool that this guy not only got faster internet but a call from the CEO of AT&T. 

 

Sources

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/12/22280964/att-provides-fiber-after-newspaper-ad-media-coverage

https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/1360630818482364419

https://twitter.com/raju/status/1356958555824414721

 

[HerrKaLeu]

Ha ha. I just ditched AT&T 25 Mbit DSL a few months ago to get Spectrum 400 Mbit cable. AT&T was at least stable all the time, Spectrum cable modem trips out almost daily and needs to be re-set. 

 

so yes, we don't have really good choices. 

[Vishera]

America is behind most of it's allies when it comes to Internet and health care...

I am sitting here happy with 1Gb/s and the best ISP you can ever have. (I am from Europe)

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, HerrKaLeu said:

Ha ha. I just ditched AT&T 25 Mbit DSL a few months ago to get Spectrum 400 Mbit cable. AT&T was at least stable all the time, Spectrum cable modem trips out almost daily and needs to be re-set. 

 

so yes, we don't have really good choices. 

Last I checked Spectrum used to use Puma 6 chipped modems. They were known to have issues but they still used them. I have Comcast and I bought my own modem, never have any issues. Other than the data caps. At least you dont have the data caps. 

[mariushm]

5 minutes ago, HerrKaLeu said:

Ha ha. I just ditched AT&T 25 Mbit DSL a few months ago to get Spectrum 400 Mbit cable. AT&T was at least stable all the time, Spectrum cable modem trips out almost daily and needs to be re-set. 

 

so yes, we don't have really good choices. 

If the modem has some bugs or memory leaks or something that makes you reset it often, you could just get one of those programmable outlets and have the modem turned off at 2 am and powered back at 2:01 every night (or whenever you don't use the internet)

 

I just rented another place and they already had internet cable from one of the two big providers , paying 12.5$ a month (in local currency) for  500 mbps down , 25 mbps up  ... and the cable modem has decent wireless besides 4 gigabit ports , my phone connects at 433 mbps but it probably can do more than that.

 

 

[circeseye]

8 minutes ago, HerrKaLeu said:

Ha ha. I just ditched AT&T 25 Mbit DSL a few months ago to get Spectrum 400 Mbit cable. AT&T was at least stable all the time, Spectrum cable modem trips out almost daily and needs to be re-set. 

 

so yes, we don't have really good choices. 

get the modem swapped out, it shouldnt act like that. ask for a arris tm1632. best modem ive had from them

[Donut417]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

If the modem has some bugs or memory leaks or something that makes you reset it often, you could just get one of those programmable outlets and have the modem turned off at 2 am and powered back at 2:01 every night (or whenever you don't use the internet)

 

 

Spectrum supplies customers with modems I believe. If I were that person Id just tell them to give out a modem that freaken works. 

[TheBahrbarian]

4 minutes ago, Vishera said:

America is behind most of it's allies when it comes to Internet and health care...

I am sitting here happy with 1Gb/s and the best ISP you can ever have. (I am from Europe)

I actually don't think the U.S. is all that bad when it comes to internet infrastructure. At least according to Wikipedia, when it comes to average speeds the U.S. is 11th in the world. I'd say that's pretty good, especially since most of the issues that do exist with internet in the U.S. are due to geographic limitations. Lots of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and are very spread out, this inherently is going to limit internet options. 

 

But hopefully soon even this won't be an issue with the advent of Starlink.

[camieabz]

18 minutes ago, TheBahrbarian said:

I actually don't think the U.S. is all that bad when it comes to internet infrastructure. At least according to Wikipedia, when it comes to average speeds the U.S. is 11th in the world. I'd say that's pretty good, especially since most of the issues that do exist with internet in the U.S. are due to geographic limitations. Lots of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and are very spread out, this inherently is going to limit internet options. 

It's sometimes better to look at median speeds, if available. One person on 1Gig and 19 others on 10 Meg, shows a median of 10 Meg, but an average of 59.6 Meg.

[WereCatf]

21 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Last I checked Spectrum used to use Puma 6 chipped modems.

I had a Puma 6 - based modem myself for a while and I found a ton of security-vulnerabilities in the firmware, making it easy to gain telnet- and SSH-access into it, probe my ISP's internal network, other customers' modems, view the certificates on it and all that. It was also horribly easy to make it crash, I found a ton of ways of doing that as well. Now, I don't know for sure that the vulnerabilities weren't just something stupid the manufacturer (Fritz!) did or if they stemmed from Intel's SDK for it, but from what I saw, I'd hazard a guess it was the SDK.

[TheBahrbarian]

2 minutes ago, camieabz said:

It's sometimes better to look at median speeds, if available. One person on 1Gig and 19 others on 10 Meg, shows a median of 10 Meg, but an average of 59.6 Meg.

That's true, I see your point. But from what I can tell, the US is still 13th when using median speeds. So I believe my point still stands.

[Donut417]

Just now, WereCatf said:

I had a Puma 6 - based modem myself for a while and I found a ton of security-vulnerabilities in the firmware, making it easy to gain telnet- and SSH-access into it, probe my ISP's internal network, other customers' modems, view the certificates on it and all that. It was also horribly easy to make it crash, I found a ton of ways of doing that as well. Now, I don't know for sure that the vulnerabilities weren't just something stupid the manufacturer (Fritz!) did or if they stemmed from Intel's SDK for it, but from what I saw, I'd hazard a guess it was the SDK.

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31122204-SB6190-Puma6-TCP-UDP-Network-Latency-Issue-Discussion

 

There has been a discussion about the Puma 6 issues going on for years for at DSLreports.com From some of the light reading I have done, it seems the whole Puma line has had issue. Just the Puma 6 had much more issues than the previous models. So much so I think all the cable modem manufactures switch to Broadcom for the Docsis 3.1 modems. 

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31122204-SB6190-Puma6-TCP-UDP-Network-Latency-Issue-Discussion

 

There has been a discussion about the Puma 6 issues going on for years for at DSLreports.com

Latency-issues? Pfft, that's peanuts compared to the  glaring vulnerabilities allowing for SSH- and Telnet-access and for DoS-attacks.

[flibberdipper]

Now we just gotta publicly humiliate Comcast over these bogus-ass data caps. A cord-cut family of 4 trying to stay under 1.2TB is not that great, especially when only one person (aka me, the person who doesn't pay the bill) gives a shit.

 

480p YouTube on a 350/25 connection hits different though.

[Letgomyleghoe]

47 minutes ago, TheBahrbarian said:

I actually don't think the U.S. is all that bad when it comes to internet infrastructure. At least according to Wikipedia, when it comes to average speeds the U.S. is 11th in the world. I'd say that's pretty good, especially since most of the issues that do exist with internet in the U.S. are due to geographic limitations. Lots of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and are very spread out, this inherently is going to limit internet options. 

 

But hopefully soon even this won't be an issue with the advent of Starlink.

uhhh no, lmfao, other countries in europe are able to supply 1g or even faster internet in the most rural areas, for good prices. it's because we don't have enough competition. There are 3 providers in my area and out of all three I can only get comcast, I'm paying $150 a month for 150/15 unlimited, fucking ridiculous. The US has some of the worst infrastructure compared to other first world countries of an equal caliber.

[Sauron]

Great, 10k for 300mbps...

[Donut417]

22 minutes ago, flibberdipper said:

Now we just gotta publicly humiliate Comcast over these bogus-ass data caps. A cord-cut family of 4 trying to stay under 1.2TB is not that great, especially when only one person (aka me, the person who doesn't pay the bill) gives a shit.

 

480p YouTube on a 350/25 connection hits different though.

Im in a similar boat. My parents pay the bill but im the only one who seems to give a shit. My dad just rolls his eyes at me when I mention the data cap. He rolls his eye's too loudly at me Ill just set all my games in my steam library to download. That will show him. 

 

4 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

I'm paying $150 a month for 150/15 unlimited,

I dont understand why they cant just standardize pricing across the US. We pay $86 for 200/10, but we dont have unlimited. But with unlimited its still no where close to $150/m. 

[Letgomyleghoe]

9 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Im in a similar boat. My parents pay the bill but im the only one who seems to give a shit. My dad just rolls his eyes at me when I mention the data cap. He rolls his eye's too loudly at me Ill just set all my games in my steam library to download. That will show him. 

 

I dont understand why they cant just standardize pricing across the US. We pay $86 for 200/10, but we dont have unlimited. But with unlimited its still no where close to $150/m. 

It's $30 extra for unlimited, so I'd normally be paying $120. Apparently Century link is in my area with 940/940 for $65 a month unlimited, but they require me to use their "totally free" modem so I'm a little sketched on that.

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, TheBahrbarian said:

I actually don't think the U.S. is all that bad when it comes to internet infrastructure. At least according to Wikipedia, when it comes to average speeds the U.S. is 11th in the world. I'd say that's pretty good, especially since most of the issues that do exist with internet in the U.S. are due to geographic limitations. Lots of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and are very spread out, this inherently is going to limit internet options. 

 

But hopefully soon even this won't be an issue with the advent of Starlink.

The US is not that rural. It's the 36th most urbanized country in the world, right alongside Norway (which has bigger geographical obstacles than the US, relative to country size).

 

It's more urbanized than France, South Korea, Germany, Ireland and so on.

 

Anyway, I think you may be right about internet speeds on average not being so bad in the US. Data caps and pricing can make the situation worse though.

[clumsypeeqok]

As someone who used to work for AT&T the only thing here that surprises me, is the fact they actually did something about it.

[Lurick]

Just now, clumsypeeqok said:

As someone who used to work for AT&T the only thing here that surprises me, is the fact they actually did something about it.

They probably only did because of the large amount of PR it got, if it didn't get national attention they would have probably sent them a gift card or something, lol.

[clumsypeeqok]

Just now, Lurick said:

They probably only did because of the large amount of PR it got, if it didn't get national attention they would have probably sent them a gift card or something, lol.

I mean yeah of course. Its just I'm surprised they even cared? Like I don't think their image really looks worse because of that? Like they're already redlining the very bottom.

[flibberdipper]

38 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Im in a similar boat. My parents pay the bill but im the only one who seems to give a shit. My dad just rolls his eyes at me when I mention the data cap. He rolls his eye's too loudly at me Ill just set all my games in my steam library to download. That will show him.

I have added insult to injury, my dad refuses to set it up so I can even view our usage according to Comcast's shit through the app or site, so I have to manually total up everything according to our router, and if the power goes out, so does the usage stats up to that point.

 

Whenever I'm able to get a job, I'm really considering just throwing $30 a month at him since he cba to use the $30 bucks he's saving by only paying for one storage unit as opposed to two.

[TheBahrbarian]

21 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

The US is not that rural. It's the 36th most urbanized country in the world, right alongside Norway (which has bigger geographical obstacles than the US, relative to country size).

 

It's more urbanized than France, South Korea, Germany, Ireland and so on.

 

Anyway, I think you may be right about internet speeds on average not being so bad in the US. Data caps and pricing can make the situation worse though.

Yeah I see what you mean. I was doing some research to try and find a good metric to figure out how "spread out" a country's population is. Unfortunately population density isn't a super useful metric here, but it at least gives us an rough idea (I think the US is around 90 people per sq. km). 

 

I definitely agree that most of the internet issues here in the US are related to prices and competition. Because our average/median speeds are relatively high. I guess I am lucky to live near the east coast where a 1gbit plan is only like $75/month for me.

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, HerrKaLeu said:

Ha ha. I just ditched AT&T 25 Mbit DSL a few months ago to get Spectrum 400 Mbit cable. AT&T was at least stable all the time, Spectrum cable modem trips out almost daily and needs to be re-set. 

 

so yes, we don't have really good choices. 

Same things happened with me and Xfinity. Has better internet but it would go out all the time. Switched to my own modem and router and that problem stopped. Haven't had to reset my router or modem more than a few times this entire year. Compared to a daily occurrence it is basically to the point where I never have to reset it unless something very weird happens.