AT&T dragging Sacramento down

Given the choice, most people would choose the express train over the slow train. In Sacramento, and, unsurprisingly, across the nation as a whole, it seems that AT&T Internet Services is the slow train for internet access.

Judging from data collected by M-Lab that is publicly available, one wonders how aggressively AT&T has been expanding their U-Verse network and converting DSL users to their "faster" service.

The visualization below shows average download throughput by provider for Sacramento. The red Sacramento line is the average of the two.

Sample sizes are not radically different between the two providers, and it's clear that average throughput for AT&T hasn't changed much. One takeaway is, if you want fast internet, your only bet is Comcast. There really is no competition here in Sacramento unless you live in one of the few areas where AT&T has recently invested in more capacity.

Earlier this year, AT&T's CEO, Randall Stephenson, made an offhand remark saying that AT&T deployed DSL in the 1990s to fight off Comcast and that the technology was obsolete. This seems to be true here in Sacramento.

Mobile is the cash cow in the telecom business. Fixed line is not. Is AT&T plowing its money primarily into its mobile business, including the T-Mobile buyout?

It would seem that way, given UBS Research's take on AT&T slowing down expansion of their faster U-Verse service.