AT&T is Attempting to Trick Illinois Consumers Into Supporting Them Under the Guise of “Holding Back Investment”

Over the last couple of months, AT&T has been doing everything they can to push the narrative that SB 1839 is necessary in order keep Illinois safe, when in reality it would allow them to drop the customers that need a landline the most.

The main focus on the bill has been the 911 tax increase, which would cost someone outside of Chicago about $8 more per year or a Chicago resident about $13 more per year. What isn’t being talked about much is a small segment in the bill that would allow AT&T to drop landline customers that are either not profitable, or not profitable enough for the telecom giant.

These customers are the people who typically need landlines the most since they either live far enough away from a cell tower that they get poor reception (rural areas about 8+ miles from an Interstate highway), or they are part of a much older crowd that prefers landlines over cell phones, possibly even requiring them for certain medical equipment.

Lately, this is the ad that AT&T has been promoting on Facebook:

According to AT&T it’s a minor state law that is holding back investment and not the conscious decision made by the company to misappropriate its share of nearly $400 billion the U.S. government gave and allowed telecoms to collect since the mid-1990s to upgrade the nation’s fiber optic capacity. One has to wonder if it’s a state law or conscious decision that caused AT&T to avoid upgrading broadband infrastructure in areas of Cleveland that are predominantly poor and African-American.

Perhaps the biggest irony of all is the website gives just a few sentences about how the state needs to be “modernized” and that’s why you, as a consumer, should fill out your name/address and hit submit to send your state legislator an email detailing why you want the governor’s veto overridden.

All of this while AT&T does their best to avoid modernizing the areas that need it the most.