AT&T Internet speeds low-income neighborhoods

This screen grab of a map put together by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance using FCC data shows the neighborhoods with Internet speeds of 3 megabits per second (mbps) or less. The neighborhoods marked in red have speeds of less than 2 mbps.

(National Digital Inclusion Alliance)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - A law firm with attorneys from Florida and Ohio is threatening a lawsuit after a recently published report that says AT&T denied access to high-speed Internet connections in low-income Cleveland neighborhoods.

The law firm, Parks Crump, notified the telecommunications company of its intent to file a lawsuit in a letter sent Monday to AT&T's most senior officials. The attorney who signed the letter, Daryl Parks, said a lawsuit would be filed if he and the company could not reach a resolution.

The law firm claims that AT&T customers in some of Cleveland's lowest income neighborhoods - Hough, Glenville and Stockyards, for example - have been without AT&T Internet speeds of more than 3 megabits per second (mbps) for about 10 years, according to the letter.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), alongside an organization called Connect Your Community (CYC), published a report on these findings in March 2017. The report was done as a "part of a six-month effort that began when CYC and NDIA learned that residents of many Cleveland neighborhoods were being declared ineligible for AT&T's 'Access' discount rate program, solely because they couldn't get AT&T connections at the 3 mbps download speed that was then the program's minimum requirement," the letter states.

While conducting their research, the NDIA and CYC determined that AT&T had not invested in upgrades to its infrastructure in a majority of Cleveland census blocks "where the individual poverty rate [is] above 35 percent," according to Parks' letter. The infrastructure that these low-income neighborhoods lacked was standard in middle-income Cleveland neighborhoods and in most suburbs, the groups claim.

The patterns revealed in the study "constitute strong evidence of a policy and practice of 'digital redlining,'" Parks' letter states. "Redlining" refers to income-based discrimination that has been documented in the past as being done by banks, insurance companies and ambulance services, according to the letter.

Days after the NDIA report was published, AT&T responded by saying that the full story isn't being told by the data.

"Access to the internet is essential, which is why we've continuously invested in expanding service and enhancing speeds," the AT&T response starts. "The report does not accurately reflect the investment we've made in bringing faster internet to urban and rural areas across the U.S. While we are investing in broadband, we're also investing in technologies that will mitigate some of the infrastructure limitations."

The Parks Crump law firm plans to look further into the NDIA redlining report claims, Parks says in the letter. He also inquired about speaking at a Friday AT&T shareholders meeting in Dallas in order to try and reach a resolution to the Internet speed issues before a lawsuit is filed.

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