AT&T lobbies against nationwide fiber, says 10Mbps uploads are good enough

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AT&T is lobbying against proposals to subsidize fiber-to-the-home deployment across the US, arguing that rural people don’t need fiber and should be satisfied with Internet service that provides only 10Mbps upload speeds.

AT&T Executive VP Joan Marsh detailed the company’s stance Friday in a blog post titled “Defining Broadband For the 21st Century.” AT&T’s preferred definition of 21st-century broadband could be met with wireless technology or AT&T’s VDSL, a 14-year-old system that brings fiber to neighborhoods but uses copper telephone wires for the final connections into each home.

“[T]here would be significant additional cost to deploy fiber to virtually every home and small business in the country, when at present there is no compelling evidence that those expenditures are justified over the service quality of a 50/10 or 100/20Mbps product,” AT&T wrote. (That would be 50Mbps download speeds with 10Mbps upload speeds or 100Mbps downloads with 20Mbps uploads.