“Across the predominantly rural counties in AT&T’s national footprint, only 5 percent of households (217,284 out of 4,442,675) have access to fiber,” the report said. In urban areas, the situation is better but not problem-free. “Seventy percent of households in urban counties still lack access to fiber from AT&T because the company has made fiber available to only 14.7 million households out of 48.4 million total households in these counties,” the report said.

Just 5% have access to real high speed data.

In today’s report, the CWA and NDIA said that “AT&T should commit to capital investment in fiber deployment that would double the number of households passed by fiber in two years. If AT&T invests one quarter of its annual free cash flow (projected to be more than $25 billion) into rapid fiber deployment, it could deploy to more than 6 million locations per year.” That figure assumes a cost of $1,000 per household, which it said “should be realistic as an average cost, given the widespread fiber backbone already deployed.”

Just a one quarter of it’s annual cash flow can reach 6 million with an “M” every year. It is frustrating that everything is there for this to happen. Customers willing to pay, the technology and workforce to make it happen, but it goes because the profit margin isn’t high enough. Not that it’s not profitable, simply that it isn’t profitable enough for AT&T’s time.