Lauren Weinstein@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on AT&T's newest effort to bypass public comments and the California Public Utilities Commission to take away landlines and leave millions of Californians with inferior or no emergency communications services at all. As always, there may have been minor wording variations from this script as I presented this report live on air.
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Yeah, we've talked before in detail about why landlines are so crucial to millions of people in California and even more people elsewhere in the country, but the situation has really become infuriating now because the politics involved are absolutely toxic to consumers.
The thing about Big Tech (including older firms like traditional phone companies), is that they're always trying to find ways to force us to use stuff that we don't want -- like AI for example -- and take away tech that many people need simply to stay alive in emergencies, like landlines. But this is how various Big Tech firms keep their profit streams going, so that billionaire CEOs can continue to enjoy the lifestyles to which they've become accustomed.
AT&T made more than 12 billion dollars profit last year but they're still desperate to rip away landlines from Californians who want and NEED them. AT&T has been minimizing maintenance so that copper landlines break down more, are subject to ever more copper cable thefts, and then leave the affected customers without service for months at a time, presumably in the hope that they'll just go away somehow.
Last year the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously turned down AT&T's request to end landline services, even saying the firm had misrepresented the situation. There were many thousands of public comments on the preceding, overwhelmingly opposed to AT&T's request. Many were from people in rural or other areas who would have been completely cut off from emergency communications without their landlines, since they didn't have access to cable, didn't have reliable wireless services -- if any -- or were just not physically capable of dealing with these newer complex technologies. Landlines are literally the only lifeline for so many.
But if there's one thing AT&T knows how to do, it's how to lobby and donate money to politicians in both parties. So now they've been pushing legislation -- AB470 in the California legislature -- to just bypass the public and the public utilities commission, and do away with pesky public comments. Just smooze with the politicians and make all sorts of promises about the new technologies they'll bring in to replace landlines. And they've already gotten the California assembly to vote 52 to 2 in favor of this travesty, with 19 abstentions -- not exactly profiles of courage there.
And now AB470 is racing through the state Senate committee level with big pro-ATT votes. Our politicians in BOTH parties certainly DO know which side their bread is buttered on. And AT&T is just DROOLING at the prospect of pushing this all the way through the legislature and into law. If you care about this in California, I urge you to do some research on AB470 and then contact your state senators and Governor Newsom to express your opinions on this.
Because AT&T's history is utterly clear. They commit to replace landlines with modern fiber, and in so many places it just NEVER HAPPENS. Just months ago AT&T announced that they weren't even going to bother building fiber in half their areas. Even if you're an AT&T customer without fiber on your side of the street and there's AT&T fiber on the other side of the street, they usually won't bring it to you. Keep in mind that in many developed countries fiber is mandated by the government, but here in the U.S. it's all up to whether or not the firms controlling your area see profit to be made.
AT&T will laugh its way to the bank while depriving millions of Californians of vital communications by killing their landlines. There's simply no logical reason to believe ANY of the promises that AT&T is making to gather the support of politicians and various business groups around the state, because we KNOW that over and over again, AT&T doesn't follow through with their commitments, both very recently and going back MANY years.
If you're in California, tell your elected representatives, tell the governor, they need to care about ordinary people, not fat cat Big Tech like AT&T. Unfortunately, trusting AT&T on issues like this has been shown to be a big mistake. And so is AB470. Period.
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L