[reassembled]

Meanwhile, to my knowledge, ATT is actively pulling all existing DSL service with the only hard line alternative in many markets being a 1Mbps “UVerse” connection over the same copper phone lines. My 6Mbps DSL was suddenly turned into a 1Mbps UVerse line last year, with no warning. This has been happening to my neighbors as well. In some instances, after a big storm knocked out phone lines, ATT took the opportunity to cancel some folks DSL lines under their new policies. If you go to the ATT DSL page you will see that it is no longer being offered as a service.

Fortunately we were able to get Starlink soon after but it’s not a perfect replacement, particularly for gaming, due to the periods of short downtimes we still experience.

[ufocia]

You're lucky that ATT is offering any wired Internet service in your area. I know highly urbanized ATT areas where they offer no wired service. They pulled DSL and put nothing in its place. Fortunately there is another monopolistic wired Internet provider serving the area, but with little competition the pricing is suboptimal from the consumer perspective.

[AtlasBarfed]

Urbanized area should have 5G competitors. They suck, but they exist.

Urbanized should have had municipal wifi and even fiber, but regulatory capture in broadband is a bitch.

Maybe what is needed is a "local wifi collective" that can serve an apartment building from a single fiber or a fiber-to-directed wifi link to the building and then general wifi/wiring inside the building itself.

The fact there is zero innovation on this front shows the power of the regulatory capture by the big two. Nobody even bothers trying anymore, and any politicians that would support competitors have been effectively eliminated from the system.