Telecom Stocks Plummet After Report Shows Many Cables Lined With Lead
from the comes-around-goes-around dept
While the telecom industry did manage to successfully defang U.S. consumer protection regulators for the better part of the last decade, they’re still facing some notable headwinds. Broadband growth has dramatically slowed, their cable TV customers are leaving in droves, and while they are getting a ton of new subsidies via the infrastructure bill, a lot of that is going to very popular new publicly-owned competitors.
But there’s another major worry: a new report by the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) showed huge swaths of telecom cabling installed years ago was coated in lead, posing significant health concerns. In response, AT&T did was AT&T always does, which was basically pretend that none of it was real:
Based on information shared by The Journal, it appears that certain of their testing methodologies are flawed and one of the companies responsible for the testing is compromised by a conflict of interest.
But the pressure is on to remove and re-install any lead-coated cabling, and the mounting costs of such a project (estimated to be somewhere around $60 billion) pummeled already reeling telecom stocks for most of last week:
The telecom stocks were already having a rough year. Over the past 12 months, including today’s results, AT&T’s stock is down 34.1 percent. Verizon is down 37.4 percent over the past year. Lumen and Frontier are down 84.2 percent and 52.8 percent during the past 12 months, respectively.
There’s some irony here given that the telecom industry has successfully engaged in one of the most successful lobbying campaigns in recent memory. The Trump FCC was basically a puppet for industry, and the Biden FCC has lacked any competent voting majority thanks to both inherent fecklessness and the industry’s assault on the nomination of Gigi Sohn. Lobbying couldn’t conquer reality, though.
With AT&T’s network being the oldest, they likely face the greatest costs. And while consumers will inevitably be the ones to pay for it (either through higher rates or the government bailing AT&T out with taxpayer money), maybe we could instead use some of the money AT&T reportedly stole from the U.S. school system to fund the repairs instead?
Filed Under: dsl, health, lead, networks, phone, public, telecom
Comments on “Telecom Stocks Plummet After Report Shows Many Cables Lined With Lead”
Misdirected panic.
So much panic over a hazard that only exits within a few meters of the cables themselves. If you’re really concerned about lead, a much higher priority ought to be replacing the lead pipes that are still in use supplying water for people to drink. Only after that is taken care of should resources be expended on removing the far less important cables.
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Hmm… remove lead-coated wires, or whatabout lead pipes that still exist in some places?
Whataboutism notwithstanding, the lead-coated wires are a telecom property-and-issue. The pipes are either a homeowner issue or a municipality issue. And the Flint water crisis has already sparked at least some municipal effort.
So… why not both?
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Not only that, lead pipes that don’t have a change in contents are usually relatively safe in most contexts.
Lead-clad cables, on the other hand, usually exist in three places: running through a body of water, mounted on power poles, and running through conduit.
Ars already did a piece about AT&T’s Lake Tahoe lead-clad cables. That’s an issue because the contamination can spread to the entire lake’s ecosystem.
On power poles, the cables are under constant weathering, leeching into the surface environment.
In conduit, the problem isn’t that big for the average person. However, for linemen and their families, it’s a HUGE issue, as decommissioned lead-clad cable is just sitting there deteriorating in an enclosed space where the linemen have to work. So they’re breathing this stuff in and getting it on their clothes and skin, and then going home to spread it there.
So yeah; lead-clad cables that haven’t been used in 40 years and are just sitting there are a problem. Lead pipes that are properly sealed, not so much — until someone decides to increase the bleach content so the sealant layer is stripped off, exposing the lead.
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What does “change in contents” mean here? The Flint crisis was caused by the lack of orthophosphate (which used to be present, but that’s not really relevant: had it been orthophosphate-free all along, things would’ve been even worse). With proper orthophosphate levels, drinking water—even with lead piping—might be a negligible source of lead compared to other sources like fruit juice, spices, or vegetables grown in contaminated soil (at home or on farms).
(I also wonder whether the replacements for lead pipes will eventually have their own crises. Maybe they’re leaching something else, such as BPA or its probably-harmful replacement, BPS.)
Is direct burial common? Maybe you counted that under “body of water” (groundwater). They’d probably leach a lot more than pole-mounted cables, and water contamination tends to be a major concern with lead.
Your statements about worker health are reminiscent of asbestos, which we now know should often just be left alone.
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If you want a real horror story about led were money and corruption is the common theme, look up Picher, Oklahoma. It’s the final chapter of the Trail of Tears.
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Oh geez, I never heard of this place before. That is bleak. Our government has done them so dirty it’s mind boggling.
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I keep hearing things like this in the US, but is it really only possible to deal with one set of problems at a time?
Are the people who need to deal with telecom cables the same people who deal with water pipes? Are the same areas affected by both problems at the same time?
I’ll agree that the people of Flint, Michigan have more important demands than broadband installations, but for others there’s a valid concern about where the lead leaks to even if they have new water pipes.
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Actually reading the WSJ article might bring to you a different conclusion.
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Indeed. If you read the WSJ article, virtually every reference to lead is weasel worded. Might, possibly, etc. are all over the place, making sure every statement is “factually” true, but likely overstating impact and hazards.
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Almost all of this type of cables are sold for scrap and are shipped to China to be burned to retrieve metals. Lead will return to us via clouds.
Don’t forget deadly toxic PCBs used by power companies in transformers on street poles as coolants for most of 20th Century. 50 lbs per transformer of toxin counted for health risk in parts per billion. Thousands of transformers were replaced in past 2 decades and nobody knows what happened to PCBs from old ones.
Almost all telecom-cables intended for being buried were “coated” (actually encapsulated) with a lead-sheath until somewhere in the 80’s (if I remember correctly) when the practice stopped and different plastics became the norm.
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Yup. The change started in the 1960s, and went until the early 1980s in some places. By 1986 new leaded cables weren’t being deployed and for the most part, companies were replacing the ones that existed with plastic-coated bundles with higher capacity. But for underwater and conduit cables, they often didn’t pull the old cable, and it’s still sitting there.
Not, you know, can’t deliver service.
Just lead.
Well, now we know why there has been such an exodus from cable. Cable causes brain damage.
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But be careful. If your cord contains lead, you definitely shouldn’t be cutting it.
So how big will the fund be for linemen who were knowingly exposed to lead for decades?
A new round of late night commercials to watch…
Humans are stupid.
Lead has been known to cause health issues for a very long time and yet it continues to be used and later found, thus causing yet another problem.
Those making these bad decisions walk away with the proceeds leaving their mess for someone else to clean up, rinse and repeat. But remember folks, climate change is a hoax perpetrated by china to affect our economy .. or some such tripe.
Wall Street is bad for everybody’s health.
challenges and concerns faced by the telecom industry
The situation described in the blog highlights the challenges and concerns faced by the telecom industry in the United States. The discovery of lead-coated cabling installed years ago poses significant health risks, and the costs of removing and re-installing such cabling are estimated to be substantial, affecting the already struggling telecom stocks.
The telecom industry’s successful lobbying campaigns in the past have influenced regulatory decisions, but the reality of health and infrastructure issues cannot be ignored. AT&T, being the oldest network, is likely to face higher costs in addressing the lead-coated cabling problem.
The blog suggests that consumers may end up bearing the burden of these costs through higher rates or potential government bailouts using taxpayer money. However, it also raises the idea of using funds from other sources, such as money that AT&T has reportedly obtained from the U.S. school system, to fund the necessary repairs.
Regarding the mentioned keyword IT staff augmentation companies, it seems unrelated to the blog’s context, as it focuses on the telecom industry’s challenges and not specifically on IT staff augmentation services.
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“The discovery of lead-coated cabling installed years ago ”
Like they forgot or something
“struggling telecom stocks”
They could easily reduce salaries at the top but do not
“The blog suggests that consumers may end up bearing the burden of these costs ”
As always
They have no intention of repairing anything, those cables will remain in place. People will be told to just use wireless. Some owners of landlines are refusing to repair them.
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I think you just replied to an AI summary of the article, with a link to the promoted product site in the last para.
easy target
Trump’s fault, just like all modern day evils, even though these lead lined cables were laid before, during and, after orangie.
But don’t you worry:
-Telecoms will be fined
-Politicians will be paid
-the Middle Class will pick up the tab for the 21st century lead clean up.
When will we (humans/American’s especially) stop pissing in our own drinking water?
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Who said it was donny’s fault?