AT&T, the biggest telecommunications company in the United States, has a problem: analysts say consumers are dropping traditional landlines faster than expected. The company, which still gets 32 percent of its revenue from its landline business, is reporting its second-quarter financial results and is expected to talk about how its traditional phone service is contracting.
AT&T is not the only company facing a changing environment in the communications business. All of the major U.S. telecommunications companies – AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel – are figuring out how to make more money from customers as they spend more time sending text messages or browsing the Web on their cellphones, rather than talking.
At the same time, as the U.S. cellphone market gets saturated – about 85 percent of American consumers already own a cellphone – phone companies are finding that growth is slowing…
AT&T has been losing landline subscribers each quarter at an accelerated rate since 2006. It dropped 7.4 percent in 2007. Analysts said the economic downturn could also have an effect on the landline business. They say consumers looking to cut expenses will drop their landline – which can cost up to $60 a month – before they drop their wireless phone plan.
Wait till I stop laughing. The Death Star hasn’t paid serious attention to client and customer needs since Alexander Graham Bell.
Can you say, Magic Jack.
20 bucks a year or 25 a month ? Hmmmm !
See Ya, AT&T.
Judge Green’s 1982 Modified Final Judgment assured that this would be the case for generations of consumers. His actions removed all innovation from the PSTN.
I don’t understand this West Coast anti AT&T thing. The constant poo poos regarding AT&T and the iphone, the whining about a lack of 3G service. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not great, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that Verizon, Comcast, Nextel, Sprint or any other telecom company are any better. They’re all bloated monolithic dinosaurs.
I haven’t had a landline in over 4 years. With the money I saved each month, I was able to get 2 cell phones (different #s) and broadband internet service.
Adios, POTS.
I’m regularly reminded of a recent meeting my IT department had with AT&T as we were planning a LAN improvement project. The AT&T technicians kept asking us why in the world we wanted to install gigabit switches on our LAN – “most PC’s only ship with 100mb NICs, don’t they?”. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. No wonder they charge boucoup bucks for copper service.
That said, I still prefer the quality of my landline over my cell.
They seem to be making up their losses by jacking up my DSL charges 20%
Yeah I have had the same cell phone number since I was in college (1999). Honestly there is no need for a landline in my mind. I do like what TMobile has done: use a wireless modem as a home base for your cell phone usage. Free when you connect to said modem. Might as well be wired. Shame I got the “Death Star”. I will say once my contract is up I will be looking at the smaller companies that are sprouting up. MetroPCS in the Philly area is giving service for $40 a month unlimited.
If anything it’s progress. We as a society have moved away from the older technology to the newer. We just have to figure out something to do with all that cable.
I dropped my AT&T land line a while back. The only reason I was keeping it was for emergency dial up access for work. Since the people I work for are to cheap to pickup my telephone bill I dropped it. They are nice enough to pay for my cell phone though. It is the least they can do for 24×7 tech support.
West Coast Angus? I’m in Ohio and I hate AT&T too. I really like the iPhone interface, but I’m not getting rid of my treo until I can get an iPhone on a different carrier.
I got rid of my land line 2 years ago, the fabulous deathstar customer service just sealed the deal. When I missed a payment when I was laid up with a broken ankle, they dropped my voicemail service which caused my service package to get broken up into separate services which doubled the price. When I tried to get it fixed they flat out refused to give me the package price for the 2 months that they jacked up my bill.
Get a Trac Phone now.Those bastards want it all.I love my cell phone but I hate the carriers.Any idiot that thinks they are good business people have never really done business with them.F#$Kem all.
#9 – Good luck waiting for that iPhone on another carrier. About the “best” you could hope for would be T-Mobile, and that means zero 3G coverage. As I’ve said before, the iPhone will never be on Verizon or Sprint (Apple’s not going to redesign the entire thing to run on CDMA).
AT&T maintains the network of packet switches that run the Internet. Kill AT&T and you kill the Internet. You bunch of nitwits think all that happens by FM. (F**king Magic) Drop your landlines might hurt the company, but you will end up paying more in some other way, because AT&T is the phone network. All other companies are just sucking off their talent and abilities now because of the government’s mandated break up of the company when Robert Kennedy’s old lady was caught in bed with a phone installer. The demanded competition, and competition boils down to you pay someone else to pay AT&T to keep the phone system working.
Has anyone read a book called “The Raping of Ma Bell”?
AT&T was national asset, bell labs developed every major technological innovation that we enjoy today.
I’m not old enough to have seen what things were like before the breakup but what happened a few years ago in the Los Angeles market was just shitty. When Cingular wanted to buy up AT&T Wireless the FTC said OK but you can’t keep both networks you mus divest one of them. Along comes tmobile and buys up Cingular’s 1700 MHz network leaving the new Cingular with the better spectrum (800 Mhz) but less POPs. over the last few years LA has had to invest billions to make the network better. Now here’s the punchline, Tmobile is owned by Dutsch Telecom the German government owned telco. Since Cingular could not keep both networks and all the spectrum, the customer got screwed as Cingular scramble to bring the 800Mhz network up to par.
#10, , I had as large a gripe about Verizon. When we moved, it literally took more than 2 months to transfer the DSL with Verizon(the house’s previous owners had DSL, so it was not an installation issue with the house). I finally gave up, went with comcast, and ended up having to pay a $50 get out of my contract fee, despite the fact that I felt they were at fault by moving my DSL installation readiness date 3 times.
My point, they all suck, ATT included. It’s just that most aren’t bad until you actually need to use customer sevice.
Bottom line: They all suck.
We’re no better off than when Ma Bell controlled the whole phone system. Sometimes “deregulation” just doesn’t work. This is one of those times.
It’s like well water vs. city water. If something goes wrong with the city water, it’s everybody’s problem and something gets done. If you end up with arsenic or e. coli in your very own personal well water, you’re fucked. Get ready to shell out $40,000 to solve the problem.
In the case of telcos, we’re fucked.
#13, Moto,
AT&T was national asset, bell labs developed every major technological innovation that we enjoy today.
Damn !!! I always thought it was Thomas Edison that invented the electric chair, Marconi the wireless transmitter, and the British Royal Air Force RADAR detection.
I’m not old enough to have seen what things were like before the breakup …
Then let me tell you a few of them.
Bell, the common name for AT&T, owned the entire telephony market with the exception of a very few pockets of local community owned systems. Telephone quality was poor compared to today with static and multiplexing that allowed listeners to hear others. The service was expensive and long distance was a very expensive and cumbersome undertaking.
Only Bell leased equipment could be used on the system. You could only rent them, not own them. Bell also wired the inside of your home using Bell wire and Bell junctions. If you wanted an extension or second phone, it could only be a Bell product installed by Bell. If you wanted different styles of phones or even colors, you paid extra. Don’t forget, the electronics were the same in every phone. (it should be noted that those phones could sure take a beating, man they were built tough)
Can anyone picture how the internet would have played out if we had to rent a modem from Bell and pay them by the minute for connections? Before the breakup, only the largest companies that could absolutely afford and need it had intercity connectivity.
Competition was relegated to a telegram offshoot called Teletype. When Teletype was bought by AT&T and folded into their operations, a newer system called TELEX came about. It was operated by Western Union and the Railroads over telegraph wires. They also created the microwave transmission network for a higher quality, faster service.
There was no innovation on the Bell Network. It was still using the same analog technology in 1980 that had been developed in the 1920s. While Bell did do a lot of work in its New Jersey labs, most of that was for military use and patent sitting. It was not until after the breakup that telephony took a leap forward. Competition brought us newer, lighter phones, digital transmissions, and cell phones.
In my personal experience, AT&T customer service is pretty good, if a bit slow.
\RANT ON\
A couple of years ago, an AT&T salesman came to my door and talked me into trying their Sat service (Dish Network), and a newer phone plan. What he promised me, and what Dish Network installed were 2 very different things. It turns out the AT&T salesman had an old contract that did not show the current plans. Even though their salesman was at fault, Dish Nitwits charged me $500 to cancel my service early. AT&T admitted their mistake, and eventually paid all of the BS Dish Nitwit charges.
The phone service the stupid salesman talked me into was crap also. I had an old plan left over from Illinois Bell that I was gradfathered into, and after a couple of levels of escallation, I was able to get my old plan back. All I had to say that was if they could not fix this for me, I was going to cancel my POTS line and go with WOW. That quickly got me up the chain to a supervisor that could restore my old service.
AT&T is VERY sensitive to looseing POTS lines. Just tell them you are about to switch, and they work pretty hard to make you happy. My local phone service costs me $35 bux a month with caller ID, and is ROCK solid.
We also have a Trac Phone. They are a great deal if you do not gab alot. It costs us $100 a year, plus 20 to 40 bux every couple of years for a new phone.
Don
What ever happened to that notion of increased solar activity, knocking out the wireless communications? Or at least, fuzzing it up a lot? It hasn’t happened, to my knowledge. If anything, the local weather knocks out the wired service more often than not. However, if a tornado or hurricane does take down a cell tower. It’s going to be down for a lot longer than it takes to repair some snapped phone cables. So I quess you take your chances either way. Only cell xmiters in the city are least likely to be toppled (rare acts of terrorism excluded). AT&T controls the price of both wireless and wired access. So if they want to slow down the wired loss, they can just boost the wireless rates. But obviously they’ve been advertizing wireless as the modern solution, so how is this problem a surprise to them now? Did they really expect everyone to have TWO PLANS?!
AT&T a national treasure… Don’t make me laugh. For 20 years Bell Labs idea of innovation was Princess phones and 201B modems. It wasn’t until after the breakup that real innovation appeared in the market place. But, as a retired telecom manager for a mid-sized west coast company, I agree that all service providers are crooks and thieves.
It took 2 people to maintain the 1500 voice lines in our company, 1 tech to program the PBX and maintain the physical equipment, and 1 billing person to audit our monthly phone bills and fight the constant over-charges and phony charges. Monthly, a third of our numbers seemed to drop off our contracted pricing plan. The data side was just as bad. Despite paying through the nose for a 100% up-time guaranteed, redundant, dedicated, national T3 network, the only time I ever saw a credit on my bill for the far too frequent outages, was when I fought for them.
Today, I’m retired in QWEST land. What a joke. They won’t provide anything other than POTS to my house, so I use cellular and a Wireless ISP. Oh, and satellite TV. The only wires into my house are from the (thankfully more reliable) local electric utility.
#16, Mr. Fusion, thanks, you saved me a lot of typing.
I’ve had all 3 major vendors, and the only one with a signal that works everywhere I go is not the evil empire of Verizon, it’s…
ATT. But I’m contract free and should I wish to change, no problema. There are 2 stores within 2 miles, and all the techs know me so I get pretty good service. Can’t say the same for t-mobile or verizon, their service sucks too, but they don’t have the TX coverage of ATT.
I guess it comes down to where you live as to who’s the best.
>>Did they really expect everyone to have TWO PLANS?!
Sure! Maybe three! Two cell phones and a CrackBerry.
People are much more important now than they were 25 years ago. You can NEVER be out of touch.
The ATT terms of service contract could have been written by MS. Even if you liked them before you read the contract you loathed them after you read the contract.
Not everybody can be that rude, crude, short sighted and greedy. They must have talent.