the big T's next purchase was this layoff site just to simply shut down all the comments and info sharing. After all, every employee knows within the company, everything is a big secret!
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It wouldn’t surprise me if... T stock fell off a cliff tomorrow after our earnings report details another 800K+ DirecTV customers pulled the plug... and then Randall comes out and says it’s okay, those customers s—ed anyways... everything is fine
It wouldn’t surprise me if.... John Donavan and Randall were secret lovers
Okay your turn...
My mom uses her iPhone and iPad 99% of the time anyway.
Like most people unless you live in a rural area with spotty wireless service. Would be interesting to see how much traffic is generated on these old lines minus the robo calls. Residential customers don’t even call in reports anymore unless their broadband is affected. In fact a lot don’t know it has been out in a lot of cases unless T notifies them that it has been repaired. Lot of times the field doesn’t even know there is a damaged cable unless a business customer calls in. Call into the center to get customer info on a cut or damaged cable. 600 pair cut with maybe 100 workers and maybe 10 reports.
@xni Right on Brother. Landline till I Die
Everyone knows where the phone hanging all the wall is in an emergency. My 5 year old can dial 911 at the wall phone in an emergency without looking for what couch the cell phone fell into. Can make a call during a long power outage when cells are already dead. I’ll keep it forever and most I know feel the same. That is at least 50 more years I hope. Landline 4 Life.
I don't think u could give these wire centers away and make money off the copper unless u were going to sell it for sc-ap. The fiber should always be a money maker. I think government subsidies will be the only thing to keep the local loops going.
My kids don’t know how to use a “telephone” and only watch YouTube and Netflix on handheld devices. It may already be too late for T to get with the times.
Most of those small towns had cable tv companies come in and place fiber so we already lost the customers anyway...
Arguing over the viability of copper facilities is like saying we need to bring back the golden age of coal mining... things change, technology is changing like it or not. It will take time to transition from copper to all wireless fiber based plant but make no mistake that is the plan. Take any small town more than say fifty miles from a major city or highway. Right now you have a C.O. supporting copper and maybe few fiber cables in the underground, on poles and in the ditches that requires constant maintenance. The customer base is shrinking rapidly and future generations simply won’t pay for a landline. This same town can be supported by one or two cell towers and maybe someday pole top antennas providing cell service and broadband.
I was a technician then engineer and now moved onto other things. My parents have a landline and the copper loop runs almost 12 miles with half a dozen repeaters along the way. In conduit and on poles all the way to their house. As much as I like them having reliable landline they can use, from a business perspective there is no way the company is making a profit on their account. My mom uses her iPhone and iPad 99% of the time anyway.
The “old facilities” were all built on tax credits and govt incentive programs. They were then claimed for their tax depreciation for next few decades. The system was built on the people’s dollar, maintained on the people’s dollar, and depreciated to shown gain from the people’s dollar. The people then had to also pay their dollars to use it. Now you can’t rob them any further so now you say take it away. Maybe a govt incentive program to remove it to huh? What is the ROI on past and present golden parachutes? What is the ROI on all the lobby dollars to deregulate and remove people’s communication choice? Those dollars could have gone a long way to maintain the facilities. And what are “cooper cables” used for anyway?
Wireline....is still very reliable...keeping mine until...even with having the latest tech at hand. Over 40 years..I miss my old school techs..they taught me soooo much when I came in 1977. Critjcal thinking mattered. To this day I can work things out relative to today's tech. Great foundation. My gratitude to those who came through the fire.
Please share the link to this website in Q messenger to all everyone in your org. They need to know where they can vent and share information that management is trying to suppress.
By old facilities I was referencing telephone poles and cooper cables placed decades ago that have a depreciated tax value to net zero. In many cases especially those in rural areas where no fiber or broadband was built out, we have almost no working customers. So.... “genius” this company pays hundreds of millions of dollars to own “facilities” with no tax value and almost no revenue being generated. This equals a negative return on investment along with a huge liability owning old, deprecated poles that could fall over. Of course we still need wired services to connect homes and businesses across our 21-state footprint however that does not mean we should continue owning/maintaining poles, conduit and duct that supports 98% copper only facilities in rural areas when you can serve the entire town off fiber to couple cell towers and provide cell service and wireless broadband via LTE. We pay franchise fees, license fees, pole and conduit rental along local and state taxes in rural areas with maybe a 5% take rate. The future is fiber to the cell tower in rural areas, fiber to the business and neighborhood in major cities and pole top antennas fed by fiber as 5G is deployed. There is zero future and or profitability owning/maintaining 50 year old telephone poles with old chewed up copper on them so grandma can have a landline and some repair tech can play 1950’s phone man...... Genius!
“Old facilities. Old technology. “ What new facilities and technology are available genius? Are you saying wireless is new? Are you talking about 5G that may have 10% penetration by 2026 if we’re lucky? Do you understand your cell phone only travels magically through the air to the nearest cell tower? Then it has to use the “old technology, old facilities” all across the country and even under the ocean to reach a destination. Why do you constantly bash the use of a home phone or a wired tv or internet connection? Why does someone else’s choice of an available product to purchase get you so riled up? I have been reading your comments for over a year and have had enough already. Come clean bro. If AT&T shut down everything with a wire tomorrow, do you realize your only form of communication would be a cb radio or walkie talkie? No cell, no internet, no tv, nothing. So please stop. Learn how all the technology works and how it depends on other technology to operate. If you want to make some smart reply, use your brain instead and trace my comment to where it came from, the way I did yours. Then come see me.
At this point they could give some of these territories away and be money ahead. The old facilities have deprecated out and cost millions to maintain
Question is who right now will buy the facilities and territory with the old technology. Last couple of companies that made that bet are near bankruptcy.
They paid $1 for this site.
I don’t think any of it’s a big secret within T, Randall has told the press and investors the direction of this company starting in 2016.
Reduce headcount, automation, cut budgets, wireless and media/streaming services will be the future.
Don’t expect large scale wireline builds. Buildings will be sold, facilities will be sold, territory will be sold, portions of the business will be sold.
We are all just hanging on for the ride trying to finish up a career or figure out a way to adjust and continue a career.
In the meantime we still have customers on copper landline/T1/Fiber/business/satellite/wireless accounts paying for service so at least a percentage of employees will survive the next 5-10 years.
@wuq....lots of folks have their head in the sand and then wonder why they show up to work and the door is locked Some only listen to what the company says. some only listen to what their union says. Theres a lot of real estate between those 2 places. This is a good site to get some info.
Seems like every topic on this site only has a few thousand views, max. This is a small percentage for total number of employees the company has. Maybe some day the rest will figure it out. It’s like the day you learned Santa Claus ain’t real
Randall will probably pay billions for this site... and pocket a lot of money for himself.