My company is getting ruthless

[Aria]

...And I appreciate it.

Basically, we're putting fibre optiks into a lot of smaller communities. Sometimes someone in wee li'l town can get WAY better service than in a major metropolis... but this comes with a cost, so to speak. And that cost is that new customers will get fibre. No exceptions.

Oh, you don't want drilling? Okay, no service. Landlord doesn't want us to drill? No service. You just like copper better? No service. You're going to go to our competitor? Okay, bye. That's pretty unusual for our company, we usually bend over backwards to keep people, but not this time.

My guess: The copper network is being discontinued so we literally can't afford to have new customers on it. We'll be doing everything we can to push the old customers off it, too. I'm interested to see how this goes.

[Mental_Mouse]

Sounds like somebody in the tech department has previously had to support "legacy technology". Seriously, if you don't kill the old system and salt the ground over it, it will be hanging around for the next 20 years, by which time it will be stealing people's souls.

[Arcus]

I wish I could get Fiber where I am. Heck, I had to fight them to replace the copper line that has been failing for two years.

[gerund]

I wish they had done this where I am. Basically 90% of Australia is stuck on a fibre/copper hybrid.

Some premises are getting lower speeds than they previously had on plain old ADSL. They promised where I live fibre to the building, which means the last 20 metres is still copper, now they are saying fibre to the curb, which may mean 150 metres of copper.

[farmkid]

...Seriously, if you don't kill the old system and salt the ground over it, it will be hanging around for the next 20 years, by which time it will be stealing people's souls.

Absolutely.

...Landlord doesn't want us to drill? No service...

I have no idea what the rules are where you live, but you might be able to force the landlord to allow it; since connectivity is a service (utility?) that everyone's been using, it's sorta like cutting off your water or electricity.

[EricKei]

Well...the current kerfluffle about Net Neutrality may say otherwise (please keep debates on whether it should or not, as well as comments about FCC leadership, on Fratching, where they belong). The bit of law that the current FCC is desperately trying to kill and keep dead is the one that classifies ISPs/internet as a utility in the US.

[protege]

Seriously, if you don't kill the old system and salt the ground over it, it will be hanging around for the next 20 years, by which time it will be stealing people's souls.

Much like how people bitched when AOL finally got rid of dial-up connections. One of them was my grandmother, who only used it to check her email. When I told her that AOL was getting rid of dial-up, she lost it. I mean, how dare they try to keep the company profitable? Of course, it's not like she was paying for the account anyway--she was on my dad's family plan due to her being on a "limited income"

[Dreamstalker]

We'd kill for fiber service, or anything cheaper/better/more reliable (I once housesat for a family with fiber, and it was great). 10Mb/s only applies to what's coming into our building, which gets split among at least 18 apartments most of which have at least one wireless network. And the copper wiring is old and has issues...apparently only in our unit as we're the only ones who notice so they're not going to bother fixing anything.

I have no idea what the rules are where you live, but you might be able to force the landlord to allow it; since connectivity is a service (utility?) that everyone's been using, it's sorta like cutting off your water or electricity.

Our management did something sneaky; there's a provision buried in the lease that says something to the effect of any cable provider other than Crapcast is considered a lease violation (IIRC, they were the first company to lay cable in town so probably struck a few sweet deals with managed apartments). Closer to the Boston line two competitors are available, but that area of town is mainly private homes and condos.