Closing This Summer: Verizon To Scoop Up AOL For $4.4 Billion 153
MojoKid writes with this excerpt from Hot Hardware: We learned this weekend that AOL's dial-up business still has over 2 million customers who pay on average just under $21 per month for service. Regardless of how strange that seems to those of us that salivate over the prospects of gigabit Internet, folks are still clinging to 56k modems are adding millions to AOL's bottom line. However, also recall that AOL has a massive digital advertising platform with a heavy focus on the mobile sector and also owns a wealth of popular web destinations including Engadget, TechCrunch, and The Huffington Post. With this in mind, it shouldn't be too surprising that Verizon has offered AOL a marriage proposal. Verizon is acquiring AOL for an estimated $50 per share, which brings the total value of the transaction to $4.4 billion. Here are stories from The New York Times, NBC News, and NPR on the proposed sale, which it's worth noting isn't yet final, and is subject to regulatory approval.
Re:AOL is still around? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
You obviously weren't using these cables [slashdot.org]. They'll give you the warm, rich sound you've been looking for.
Re:AOL is still around? (Score:5, Funny)
I pay for an AOL account. It's for my Mom in rural Montana. I've tried to explain to her that she can use my Dad's local dialup account, use Gmail, and save me $35/month but they just don't grasp that you can share a dialup but keep mail separate.
I got a letter in the mail from her once. Inside was a funny email someone sent her. She printed it out. Put it in an envelope. With a stamp. And mailed it to me.
Hopefully my own children will put me in a home with I get that way.
Re: AOL is still around? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your mom is ultra hipster! Snail mailing an Email is so meta it caused my mustache to uncurl!
Re: (Score:3)
My thought exactly.
And yet they do, much to the consternation of any IT or tech savvy people who have to work on peoples computers that has that AOL crap software AND the people have Verizon FIOS, Comcast, Cablevision or Optonline and yet they still insist on using that dreadful, horrible, useless AOL software rather than a modern browser like Chrome or FireFox.
Re: (Score:2)
btw I realize that the AOL program actually incorporates Internet Explorer but I'm not a fan of IE and pretty much tell everyone to use FireFox or Chrome.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
When floppies started going away, AOL started shipping their software on CDs.
That was their downfall. They should have shipped CD-RWs.
$21 paid to AOL (Score:5, Insightful)
$100 for a 56k modem
Not having to talk to Comcast PRICELESS
Re: (Score:2)
$100 for a 56K modem
The USB modem at Amazon.com is $10-$20 and works just fine with your Win 8, Mac or Linux system.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Not really. Don't know about Mac or Win8 but do know about Win7 and the last couple of Ubuntu releases (it's hard to acquire Linux on dial-up).
Win7 does handle the USB modem fine but the sharing your connection has changed to sharing your connection with another Win7 computer. No more basic NAT like XP had.
Ubuntu doesn't even ship with a dial-up client so ideally you have to figure out what deb you need and figure out how to download it. If your knowledgeable and know how to set up PAP secrets, the chat stu
Re: (Score:1)
Are you talking about the popular one from Lenovo? If so, you might want to considering buying an old USR Courier. We get better connection rates at work with our Couriers. I work in downtown Seattle, so other than an expensive T1, dial-up is our only option. We share five phone lines between over twenty people so faster connection speeds are critical.
Re: (Score:2)
I had a USR Robotics USB Modem that worked as well as my Sportster until a power failure took it out. Now I have a computer with a serial port and an old Sportster.
I'll note that I once picked up an AOL branded external modem, total piece of crap and would quicky train down to about a 0kb connection. Was lucky to load one page. So in rural areas it is worth getting a good modem.
Re:$21 paid to AOL (Score:5, Funny)
Not being ABLE to talk to Comcast...because you're modem is taking up the phone line...PRICELESS?
Re: (Score:2)
Downloading a copy of Grand Theft Auto V in just a little over 1,030 hours... err... maybe Comcast isn't quite so bad as all that.
I still have dial-up (Score:2)
Though not with AOL. I don't use it often but its simply there as an emergency backup to our unreliable cable broadband service which seems to go down about 1 or 2 days a month with no explanation or apology.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a Vivid ViViFi adapter for that. Their an Australian company that uses Wi-Max (Sprint's old 4G protocol; although at a different frequency so you can't use old Sprint hardware). You can pay when connecting if you need some emergency GB when your Internet goes down. In the US, I just use to tether via Sprint (I had an unlimited plan, but that was 3 years ago so I'm pretty sure that plan is gone now).
Re: (Score:2)
My DSL provider actually provides free dialup with every account, for emergencies and/or if you're on the road and just need to check your mail or something. I didn't even know about it until I saw a mention of it in some obscure corner of their website. Tried it for a laugh and hey, it worked! :P
Ah ... AOL .. so overrated ... (Score:3)
Yeah, this is the same AOL who 'bought' Time Warner when they were massively overly valued in the dot com silliness, using over-inflated funny-money stocks.
Time Warner couldn't puke them out fast enough to get them off their back, because AOL was so grossly inflated in value it wasn't funny.
I sincerely hope from what I've heard of Verizon that they choke on AOL like Time Warner did.
Honestly, is AOL worth $4.4 billion? Someone better be doing some proper due diligence on this one.
Re:Ah ... AOL .. so overrated ... (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, is AOL worth $4.4 billion? Someone better be doing some proper due diligence on this one.
With annual revenue of $2.5 billion [google.com], probably. Seriously, this is something you could have checked out.
After dialup disappeared, AOL had plenty of cash in the bank. So they became a type of venture capital. They bought Huffington Post, Tech Crunch and many others. Since they actually have a lot of web traffic, they started an advertising business.
If you consider that Google and Facebook are essentially ad companies, with ad networks that span far beyond their own website, AOL is another one. Any time you see a video ad on the internet, there's a decent chance it's from AOL (but please use adblock, malware gets into those things).
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, after AOL purchased Time Warner for $160 billion or so of what everybody knew at the time was grossly overrated stock, AOL is not an entity I've kept tabs on.
At the time that was happening everybody was like "wait, Time Warner has publishing, TV, print media, movies, and AOL has ... email?".
Which means an awful lot of people were shaking their heads and thinking some executives had lost their mind, and that AOL had pulled off a massive scam .. which Time Warner came to realize.
Well, if AOL is an a
Re:Ah ... AOL .. so overrated ... (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, after AOL purchased Time Warner for $160 billion or so of what everybody knew at the time was grossly overrated stock, AOL is not an entity I've kept tabs on.
Google finance is your friend. Any time you want to know if a company is worth their stock price, check out their revenue and profits.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, thanks ... I know ... it was a rhetorical statement. I just don't care what they're worth.
Stock valuations have been available on the intertubes since ... well, since AOL was relevant.
So, your pedantry meets my indifference to what AOL is worth, because I don't give a damn.
Re:Ah ... AOL .. so overrated ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
At the time that was happening everybody was like "wait, Time Warner has publishing, TV, print media, movies, and AOL has ... email?".
At the time, I was thinking AOL only thinks of the Internet as "content" rather than a global interconnected network. And it's become even more true today to the average consumer. Buying a content company is a lot more logical than you would think - but they were a bit early, considering they had dial-up to work with.
Re:Ah ... AOL .. so overrated ... (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time that was happening everybody was like "wait, Time Warner has publishing, TV, print media, movies, and AOL has ... email?".
At the time, I was thinking AOL only thinks of the Internet as "content" rather than a global interconnected network. And it's become even more true today to the average consumer. Buying a content company is a lot more logical than you would think - but they were a bit early, considering they had dial-up to work with.
I was an employee at the time and you partially hit the nail on the head there.
Steve Case was by far the best CEO I've ever worked under. Both naturally charismatic and a strong long term vision. As far back as the Q-Link days he never wanted to be a service provider or a technology company. He wanted to create a new medium for people to get their content and us buying TW was supposed to be the realization of that idea.
Unfortunately Steve had no idea what he was getting into going up against the entrenched old media execs and his allowing them to retain some control was AOL's undoing.
At the time of the purchase teams at AOL had developed working POCs for streaming music and video delivery that worked with minimal buffering at 19.2k while retaining good quality (of course that was before HD took off). What Apple did with the iTunes store we had done long before. All we needed was the keys to the TW media kingdom and the digital media landscape would have looked a lot different. We all know what old-media thinks about digital content though...
Steve's last misguided act in the saga was to sacrifice himself to get Ted Turner out, but there was no one that ever replaced Steve's drive and passion and TW took more and more control.
Contrary to gstoddart's uneducated understanding of things, AOL was the only profitable (mostly due to the dialup income) portion of TW after history had been re-written. TW bled the money out and into other money pits until there was nothing left and they finally let AOL go.
AOL always got a bad rap and many of my co-workers were afraid to admit they worked there. It was a good company that filled it's role very well. It was never a service meant for those with technical ability. It was meant for those that barely wanted to know what a computer was and it served them very well. It saddens me still how things turned out and that they've fallen into typical flailing around that many companies seem to do these days when trying to chase short term profits.
Re: (Score:2)
The AOL/TW merger was too little, too erly. It was too little in that AOL didn't take enough control of TW. It was too early in that traditional media didn't start dying until long after Case left. Once traditional media began its slow but inevitable decline, Case could've finally taken the reins over and mandated the switch to internet-based media distribution. But by then, it was too late. The TW folks had taken back control of the board and it was all downhill from there. Specifically, I should say the W
Re: (Score:2)
It was too early in that traditional media didn't start dying until long after Case left. Once traditional media began its slow but inevitable decline, Case could've finally taken the reins over and mandated the switch to internet-based media distribution.
I don't think so, just look at how they are still fighting it while the rest of the world now knows that the "war" is over and digital media won. Rather than embrace it and figure out how to improve their customer's lives with a quality product, they instead continue to invest in DRM schemes that are broken almost as fast as they are released and try to demand that people pay to use content that they have already paid for in another format.
You are right about allowing them too much control though. Up until
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One example was when RR - the cable modem business - temporarily risked losing the "right" to use the cartoon character's likeness because the other part of TW that controls cartoons (Warner Bros? Don't remember) didn't like that we were doing things like using "Beep! Beep!" in our ads ... the official, trademarked term is "Meep! Beep!"
A little crazy, considering Beep Beep [wikipedia.org] is literally a title of one of the cartoons.
But as far as I can tell, they don't have anything registered as a trademark. While the sound is closer to "Meep Meep" I've only ever seen it written as "Beep Beep" even in the cartoons themselves.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
After dialup disappeared, AOL had plenty of cash in the bank. So they became a type of venture capital. They bought Huffington Post, Tech Crunch and many others. Since they actually have a lot of web traffic, they started an advertising business.
Thank you for this explanation. I was really struggling to understand why Verizon would want to pay so much for the dial up business but clearly they want everything else and are just taking the dial up business as part of a complete package, not specifically trying to get that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Ah ... AOL .. so overrated ... (Score:1)
I always thought the model for the value of a company was 1x revenue or 10x net, with consideration for where it was expected to be in the future.
If I'm right (I may not be) , it's over valued, though I may be under estimating growth potential.
Re: (Score:2)
I always thought the model for the value of a company was 1x revenue or 10x net, with consideration for where it was expected to be in the future.
That sounds reasonable, though right now returns are depressed so a lot of people are willing to put up with 13x net in a low-growth stock.
Re: (Score:2)
With annual revenue of $2.5 billion [google.com], probably.
That page shows net income of $120m in the last year, so a P/E over 36, or 2.7% yield. Must be a growth stock.
Re: (Score:2)
They have a new marketing plan. They are going to mail out DVDs with AOL software on them.
Timewarner (Score:2)
An "AOL Time Warner company" .. oh everything old is new again!! :)
Crappy service (Score:3)
In other news, AOL still exists (Score:2)
And is still worth *$4 BILLION* apparently.
The first salvo against Net Neutrality? (Score:2, Insightful)
Net Neutrality rules require carriers to treat everyone's content like everyone else's - you can't throttle or restrict traffic based on who it comes from or where it's going.
However, as I read them, the rules are less clear on what content PROVIDERS can do with their own content. And Verizon just bought (primarily) a bunch of content.
I can't charge extra to carry certain content? Fine. Now I buy the content, and change how it's delivered. I have "Huffington Post Free Edition," with limitations on speed
Re: (Score:3)
I predict we'll see a lot more of these vertical mergers of content providers and networks, and there will be an increasing wave of "subscribers only" offers in the near future.
None will benefit the consumer.
Re: (Score:3)
You just made the case for what I have been proposing for a long long time. The problem isn't a network problem, it is a captive last mile customer base problem. Change that dynamic (last mile) and you change the world.
Each Municipality should build out its own last mile infrastructure to a COLO facilty and then companies like Comcast, Netflix and Time-Warner can find creative ways of providing services the customer (us) actually want. As long as the BIGTELCO companies have a captive audience, then we (the
Re: (Score:2)
You sound a lot like me in 1998.
I doubt this will happen any time soon, but it really is going to be the way to go. The same model worked great for long-distance service.
Re: (Score:2)
The Beauty of my solution is that it would simply take one municipality to pull this off, and make it work. Even if the big Cable/Telco companies didn't want to play, smaller more nimble companies would swoop in and provide new and interesting offerings. Unlike my current provider of content, which insists that a few dozen Shopping channels might be enough.
Re: (Score:1)
Some of us enjoy not living in a 'municipality'.
Re: (Score:2)
I predict HuffPo will tell us how awesome that is, too.
Are they actually dialing up... (Score:1)
...or are they attached to their email address? I have "dial-up" through Earthlink, but only to keep the email address alive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
AOL will allow one to convert a paid account to a free one when one cancels --- one keeps all one's old e-mail addresses, and they've increased the number of free ones allowed per account so one doesn't have to delete any.
I had a paid dial-up for a long, long while and would probably still have it if they hadn't cancelled the members.aol.com webhosting --- if they'd charged for that separately and maintained it, I'd still have it.
Re: (Score:2)
I think I still have a free account. I vaguely remember them talking me into it back when I got broadband at the turn of the century. I don't remember what my username was.
AOL? (Score:4, Funny)
Lucky for Verizon, AOL's 56k isn't that much slower than their supposed "broadband" DSL.
Re:AOL? (Score:4, Interesting)
Verizon is rolling backwards in technology. First, they stopped rolling out new FiOS. Then, they forced their remaining customers onto Uverse with a flawed modem [ron-berman.com]. Now, they're giving up and rolling all the way back to dial-up. Probably gaining mostly customers who chose AOL so they wouldn't have to deal with Verizon.
Seriously, the NVG510 modem they rolled out for Uverse has a flaw that blocks the Internet from working for hours or days at a time and redirects all web traffic to an error page. There is a workaround involving rooting the modem and changing some settings and DNS servers, but the only firmware updates Verizon has put out are to block people from rooting the modem.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? U-Verse is AT&T, not Verizon. I'm a Fios customer and I'm....still a Fios customer?
Re: (Score:2)
Oops...yeah...I have no idea why I lumped AT&T in there. If you're already a FiOS customer you get to keep your FiOS. They aren't running any new fiber (since 2010!!). It's done.
AT&T is really just the T-1000 of the telecom industry (wish I could link to Stephen Colbert's 2007 video but here is the general idea - http://consumerist.com/2011/03... [consumerist.com])
You have to ask yourself how I got the facts that wrong and still got modded so high.
Re: (Score:2)
They're still rolling out in NYC as of at least last year (link [fiercetelecom.com]) but they're certainly not expanding to new areas. It's sad, great service despite the company providing it!
I am fucking flabbergasted (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. It was spun off from Time Warner back in 2009.
Re: (Score:2)
Does AOL still exist ?? WTF ?
Hey, do you want some CDs? :D
Can you hear me now? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
not all dialups accounts are in use (Score:1)
Some number of those accounts are because people don't want to change their email address. To them it's like changing a phone number that they have had for 20 years - so they pay.
I am not sure how that breaks down - but I do believe that 5 or so years ago, the AOL dialup business was at 30-40 million subscribers.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Will you abandon AOL-hosted sites? (Score:4, Informative)
Given my great distrust of Verizon, I'm seriously considering abandoning/boycotting any site currently hosted by AOL, such as "Engadget, TechCrunch, and The Huffington Post."
Re: (Score:2)
Relevant to my comment above: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5... [theverge.com]
Verizon Leadership (Score:3, Insightful)
I can not understand the leadership at Verizon. They seem to always do the opposite of what they should do.
For example, when the iPhone first came out, Verizon turned Apple down and lost quite a few subscribers to ATT. I wonder if the executive that made that decision kept his job?
More examples:
Red Box deal
Intel TV assets
and now AOL
There never appears to be a coherent thought process. The layoff thousands 3 weeks ago, going to lay off a lot more on May 22nd, yet there is money to waste on AOL. Funny thing is, I will probably be laid off after this year's contract negotiations are over, but my son will start working for Vz in June.
I bet they bag Wireline with the load debt so that Wireless books look great.
Just great... (Score:3)
If you thought cancelling your AOL account was difficult before...
Now you get to deal with the Verizon Customer Retention Specialists!!!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, if you can get a Verizon rep to promise FiOS to some of the places where they're still using AOL dial-up, that would be an amazing deal.
Another write-off coming? (Score:2)
Good thing AOL pissed away $100 billion dollars [latimes.com] a few years ago, otherwise Verizon wouldn't have been able to buy them now.
Of course they were never really worth that $100 billion, but it must have been fun pretending they were.
Forgotten Dialup Charges? (Score:2)
There's still probably some substantial revenue coming in from forgotten AOL subscriptions from elderly folks who thought they needed it to access the internet, but probably not 4.4B worth.
Re:"clinging to dialup" (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just grandmas. I work for a high-end web dev company in Seattle, and almost a third of my coworkers still have @aol.com addresses. I do too because dial-up is the only option where I live. Plus, it's nice to have had the same email address for nearly twenty years.
You (and they) know you can keep your aol.com e-mail address if you cancel your paid dial-up service, right? I understand you apparently have other reasons to keep it, but...
Exede (Score:2)
What place can get dial-up but not satellite broadband?
Re: (Score:3)
Here where I live, there are mountains and trees blocking the view of the satellites and they're not my trees to cut down. As I'm 40 miles from the big city there is no cell service either. Phone lines are shit as well, 26.4 connection.
Re: (Score:2)
What is it actually like using internet with 56k nowadays? I imagine most sites can't be usable.
Re: (Score:2)
It's pretty much unusable. Even what looks like a relatively simple, plain site these days is hundreds of kilobytes in size (which, when you are downloading at maybe 3 or 4 kB/s, takes quite a while to load!)
It's not just a matter of 'patience' either, as many sites actually fail to render properly as the downloading of various page elements just times out.
Re: (Score:2)
Get yourself a cheap PC and install Squid on it, then configure all your browsers, etc. to use that as a proxy. Think of it as a huge, multi-user, multi-platform, multi-browser shared cache. If you find an interesting article on CNN and share it with your wife/roommate/dog, there's no need for them to re-download the entire thing. You can also switch from, say, Chrome to Firefox if a page doesn't render as expected and not have to refetch all of it. Once one person on your LAN fetches http://example.com/ima [example.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Squid helps less and less as more sites go to HTTPS. I do have it locally installed but my son now refuses to use it and he's of age now so I can't really force him.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, but with a 26.4 connection it's pretty shitty. Too many sites take it for granted that everyone has a highspeed connection and load lots of graphics, videos and other crap. Noscript really helps though.
Re: (Score:2)
Greater use value (Score:2)
Satellite costs more than dial-up but provides more use value [wikipedia.org] to the subscriber. Think of it this way: satellite's throughput is a hundred times faster, but it doesn't cost a hundred times more.
Re: (Score:2)
We’re 250 miles north of Toronto
What, like the North Pole?
Re: (Score:2)
Wait a second. $500/month is high rent? In a big city like Seattle. That's very cheap rent.
Re: (Score:2)
Seattle does suck (not just the airport), but try to find any apartment for $1100/month in SF or LA.
There is a reason big city salaries are higher.
Re: (Score:2)
Most peo
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, in 2015.
My parents live about 5mi outside a tourist town in rural WI, and their only broadband option is data-capped satellite, and even that was prohibitively expensive until last year. The local Big Telco (VZ) stated definitively that "it wasn't worth the investment" to run the lines and hardware outside of the city limits, and the smaller local telcos don't have the money to do it (a few experimented with wireless and a few other ideas, but the heavy foresting and hilly terrain make stuff like that
Re: (Score:2)
AOL and Time Warner split up years and years ago.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You mist have been living in a cave. It was major news 6 years ago.
AOL is still very much alive (Score:5, Informative)
Did I miss something? There is no company called AOL.
Apparently you missed a lot of things. There very much is a a company called AOL Inc which has annual revenues of around $2.3 billion. [wikipedia.org]
Time Warner bought them out like 10 years ago.
It was 15 years ago and you have it backwards. AOL bought Time Warner, not the other way around. AOL shareholders owned 55% of the merged company.
Is Time Warner the one selling off the AOL branch of products?
AOL was spun off from Time Warner six years ago into an independent company.
If so, this is a Time Warner-Verizon deal.
No it isn't. Time-Warner has nothing to do with this deal.
Re: (Score:1)
> AOL was spun off from Time Warner six years ago into an independent company.
AOL owned 55% of TW. Did TW spin off AOL or did AOL, acting as the controlling entity of TW, spin off a dying product they called AOL.
Re: (Score:2)
AOL owned 55% of TW. Did TW spin off AOL or did AOL, acting as the controlling entity of TW, spin off a dying product they called AOL.
AOL shareholders owned 55% of TW at the time of the merger. That control structure changed almost immediately but technically it was AOL buying TW despite TW actually being a much bigger entity in terms of assets and revenues at the time. TW management really ended up controlling the combined company so not long after the merger most of AOL's leadership was pushed aside.
As for your second question, it's a distinction without a difference. The entity that was AOL Time Warner in 2002 wrote off $99 billion
Re: (Score:2)
Time Warner bought them out like 10 years ago.
You really got your facts backwards. Aside from the fact that AOL has been spun off again, AOL is the one who bought Time Warner back when their stock price could buy a small country.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The US has plenty of infrastructure for electricity and roads. But for plenty of people, low population density is a good thing and they'll gladly trade off not being profitable to a telecom to be able to live in an area where they can easily afford a large home on a relatively large chunk of land.
That said, I'm all for Internet becoming a public utility.
Re: (Score:3)
Two million on dial-up? One tenth of that would've still made me surprised. USA truly is a third world shit-hole in many ways.
Because some people choose to live in the countryside instead of the city? Or that dial-up might be cheaper and a lot of people don't use bandwidth the way you do? I think you have weird priorities.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Excuses excuses. Population density doesn't explain why places like Seattle have such shit Internet - or many other urban areas with similarly shit access, for that matter.
Existing middle-mile routes have plenty of capacity (dark fiber, spare wavelengths or even simply unused megabits, depending on who is selling) available on them, and it's not terribly expensive in the grand scheme of things.
The public isn't necessarily asking the telcos to run last-mile fiber to Joe Ruralman's ranch from the nearest town
Re: (Score:2)
Excuses excuses. Population density doesn't explain why places like Seattle have such shit Internet - or many other urban areas with similarly shit access, for that matter.
It doesn't have to in order for it to be true elsewhere.
Existing middle-mile routes have plenty of capacity (dark fiber, spare wavelengths or even simply unused megabits, depending on who is selling) available on them, and it's not terribly expensive in the grand scheme of things.
"Terribly expensive" is a relative term - if you're the cable company and could spend the money that would bring faster speeds to 1000 people, or even faster speeds to a million living in a highly populated area, you make the best choice for your company, because as of yet, the infrastructure is NOT a public utility.
The public isn't necessarily asking the telcos to run last-mile fiber to Joe Ruralman's ranch from the nearest town which could easily be 50+ miles away - Joe Ruralman probably has satellite or something - 99% of the public is merely asking for decent access in their town, and if it's a town with more than some arbitrary number - say 1,000 households - there aren't that many excuses that can accurately justify why those households don't have better access.
Of course there are when there's hundreds of cities across the U.S. that have populations of hundreds of thousands or millions, unlike you