AT&T’s Support Of ‘Open Access’ Fiber Competition Is A Head Fake, Community Owned ISP Says
from the fake-competition dept
We’ve talked repeatedly how one way to boost lagging U.S. broadband competition is the support of “open access” fiber networks that allow numerous ISPs to compete over a centralized fiber network. In ideal implementations, like Ammon, Idaho or in parts of Utah, residents have the option of switching between multiple, competing ISPs, sometimes in a matter of moments via a web portal.
We talked extensively about this model in a 2022 report on U.S. broadband competition.
Big telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon have traditionally hated this model because it brings competition to bear on their captive markets, forcing them to compete on coverage, price, speed, service quality, and customer service. But last year AT&T began making noise that it was considering changing its tune and would now be supporting open access under what it’s calling its “Gigapower” joint venture.
What changed AT&T’s mind? One motivator may be the record $42.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies that will soon start flowing to U.S. states as part of the 2021 infrastructure bill. Groups like the EFF have argued that if taxpayer money is going to be spent on fiber expansion, it should be open access fiber networks that not only expand access, but also boost competition and drive down costs.
That’s not in line with AT&T shareholder value, which benefits from the company’s relentless efforts to crush both regional competition and federal and state oversight,
Community owned ISPs that have been building open access networks for decades, like Utah’s massive UTOPIA project, say they believe that AT&T’s dedication to open access is a head fake. UTOPIA Fiber CEO Roger Timmerman says AT&T is building what it promises will be open access infrastructure, then ensuring that it’s the only provider that can actually use it:
“I would not describe AT&T’s Gigapower as open access. Once an end user can subscribe to multiple operators on that system then it’s open access. Right now, it’s not even really wholesale. AT&T is the only end user on it.”
UTOPIA’s network, for example, offers residents in its 20 partner cities access to fiber (at speeds up to 10 Gbps) from nineteen different ISPs. What AT&T appears to be doing is building more traditional wholesale fiber access, then dressing it up as open access to better position itself for billions in taxpayer subsidies. It’s a very AT&T move from a company historically criticized for misleading its subscribers.
Timmerman is quick to note that AT&T wants the kudos and subsidies that come from building open access networks, but it doesn’t want the actual competition:
“They don’t want 10 local providers competing,” he said. “They specifically said in conversations I’ve had, they don’t want the little guys. It’s too much of a hassle.”
Enter Republicans, who voted against the infrastructure bill in question, yet routinely take credit for its benefits. They’re going to spend much of this year taking credit for state broadband deployments they tried to prevent, while redirecting money away from smaller, community-owned open access fiber networks, and toward Trump earlobe nibblers like AT&T and Elon Musk.
So whereas a lot of that money could have been used to dramatically scale up U.S. broadband competition, history suggests it will instead be used to line the pockets of telecom companies that express suitable fealty to MAGA authoritarians. Money that could go to useful community owned ventures with a local, vested interest in the communities they service, will be redirected to monopolies like AT&T, or expensive options that don’t scale like Starlink.
This will, as certainly as the sun sets, be then portrayed by Republicans (and a lazy, broken press) as everything from “populism” to “innovation,” when cronyism would be a far more fitting term.
Filed Under: broadband, community broadband, competition, fiber, high speed internet, municipal broadband, open access, telecom, utah, utopia
Companies: at&t
Comments on “AT&T’s Support Of ‘Open Access’ Fiber Competition Is A Head Fake, Community Owned ISP Says”
DSLReports
Hey Karl, you used to be involved with DSLReports, which hasn’t been working this week. Do you know anything about that?
Theses “little guys” must really be a pain in the ass if it’s too much work for AT&T even with $42B. Or maybe AT&T want to bill their efforts separately.
If the little guys were allowed to get bigger, they would indeed become a pain in the ass for AT&T: as Karl wrote, it would “[force] them to compete on coverage, price, speed, service quality, and customer service”—which they’re not really equipped to do, because they’ve never had to.
Or, as in Canada, they could just buy up all the little guys, relying on “feckless” regulators to do absolutely nothing till it’s too late. I can think of only one still-independent Canadian provider of note, TekSavvy, who are getting screwed by “interim” fiber tariffs—the wholesale rates being more than the incumbents’ retail rates. (They can reasonably do DOCSIS where it still exists in non-fiber form, but DOCSIS sucks: third-party providers can’t do static IPs, for example.)
Re:
There are other independent options – I get my internet from a small ISP based in Williams Lake, BC that is great! they have cheap rates, they never increase prices (and offer a loyalty discount for every year you subscribe plus referral discounts) and the speeds and customer service is great.
They used to just cover BC and Alberta, but I just went to check on thier website and it seems they have expanded a lot, as they now list a bunch of cities in Manitoba, some in Ontario and a few in Saskatchewan.
I think they are still just very under the radar, as almost no one I know (other than a few close friends I referred) has ever heard of them. I know they are a virtual ISP that uses the Shaw network, which is why it’s good and fast – though I worry that once Rogers merges with Shaw (has that happened yet? just realized I don’t even know), that they will pull some kind of BS to screw it up, sigh.
Re: Re:
I think you’re missing my point here. Shaw is a cable network, and the CRTC requires cable providers to allow third-party access to co-axial DOCSIS. The terms are reasonable enough that there are various small third-party providers using it (such as the National Capital Freenet). One might quibble about whether such providers are “of note”, or complain that the third-party providers can’t necessarily provide IPv6 or static IPv4, but never mind that.
The real problem is that new housing developments no longer get co-axial cable (or telephone lines, hence no DSL, but that’s too slow anyway), and per Telecom Order CRTC 2025-13, Bell is allowed to charge $68.94/month for wholesale third-party fiber-to-the-premises access (from 3 Mbps-1500 Mbps; plus a $244.13 installation fee), whereas Bell and its subsidiaries such as Ebox offer lower retail rates. Telus and SaskTel are in the same ballpark. I don’t have cable-provider fiber rates handy, but I don’t recall them being much better.
Realistically, third-party providers can only offer service over cable, and only to homes that still have co-ax. Excepting TekSavvy’s small fiber plant in Chatham-Kent, Ontario (population 103,000), their necessarily-expensive new offerings of Bell fiber, and some fixed wireless services. As happened in the USA, I won’t be surprised if the cable companies eventually get regulatory relief on the basis of this “unfairness”.