13,000 AT&T workers in the SE on strike as contract negotiations fail

[thewayne]

The union says negotiators sent by the company did not have actual authority to negotiate, AT&T says "CWA's claims ... are not grounded in fact".

I think I know which side I'd tend to believe.

Major internet outages are reported in North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, which AT&T says will be remedied by Tuesday morning.

It is to laugh. Odds are the managers who are getting into trucks to do fixes and installs haven't touched tools in 5-10 years and will be incredibly slow and inept.

My heart goes out to anyone in the area who is stuck with AT&T for internet service while the strike is on. Back shortly after we'd moved back to Cloudcroft in '09, our cell carrier was Alltel, and they were fantastic for rural area coverage, which was what we needed. Wonderful in other things, too: they literally called me about a problem with my bill, which saved me $300! Anyway, they got bought out by Verizon, as these things happen. EXCEPT in our area, where such a merger was deemed anticompetitive, and they were given to AT&T! SCREW THAT! I knew what kind of service my friends got with AT&T, so we cancelled the contract, switched to Verizon, and have had pretty good service ever since. There's no way I'll do business with an AT&T company if I can possibly avoid it.

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/17/nx-s1-5079614/att-workers-strike-contract-negotiations

The Slashdot comments, at least at this time, as kind of amusing.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/08/18/0228218/as-17000-att-workers-strike-some-customers-experience-prolonged-outages

Comments

[silveradept]

This is the power of unions, being able to say "that's crap, negotiate better" and being able to back it up with something. I can't imagine AT&T will continue to have plenty of willing customers.

[thewayne]

AT&T's advantage, and that of most ISP's, is area monopoly.  This is something that the government should not allow, but since it has been captured by so many industries, it is something that we're stuck with.  Here where we live, we have two ISPs.  Fortunately, one is vastly superior to the other and we've been quite happy with them.  Throughout the village of Cloudcroft, they undertook - at their dime - to install fiber up to every property wall!  If you wanted fiber internet, they were happy to light it up for you.  If you wanted nothing, or the other people, they were fine with that.  No cost to you unless you wanted their service.

[silveradept]

Yes, monopolies with profit motives can make for some very crap service.

Good on that other ISP. I keep waiting for mine to do some fiber laying in my area, because I'd be more than willing to have them give me a solid speed boost. Alas, they are working on the "if there are enough customers in your area that want it done, we'll do it," so that's probably not going to happen for a long while.

[thewayne]

I don't know if you have the option, but in Phoenix, Verizon offers a wireless 5G WiFi router that is pretty amazing.  The device requires power, and that's it.  You connect your device to it, and it is really fast.  Might be worth checking out.  The one problem with it is you'd lose any ethernet, unless you bridge your existing router to it.  No idea if that'd be an issue for you.

[silveradept]

Ethernet connections are important to me and mine, and where I am, wireless communication is more likely to suffer disruptions in weather or similar situations rather than wired. So.