AT&T is saying, in its comments on the FCC National Broadband docket, that it needs to shut down the PSTN (public switched telephone network) in order to divert resources used to maintain POTS (plain old telephone service) onto efforts to expand its national broadband network. I believe in the free market economy.
Instead of shutting it down and disconnecting millions from communications with others, why doesn't AT&T just sell off that part of its business to someone who will happily take it off its hands?
Someone pointed out that it is all a smokescreen, e.g. a convenient excuse for not wiring rural areas with broadband. Perhaps. Others have pointed out that it may be a strategy for manipulating the intercarrier compensation rules or easing out of some of the Universal Service Fund obligations.
Madness!
PSTN and POTs aren't going anywhere soon as this US of A is NO where close to being ready to transition away from the stable, secure, infrastructure and institution that is landline telephone service which took blood sweat and tears to install, underground, where the wind can't blow it away!
I, for one, am not looking forward to having to resort to blowing smoke signals to communicate with the outside world in the event of a national disaster and I'm stuck, like after the wireless towers and transmitters have fallen to the ground and the battery in my VoIP phone finally dies the 7th day without electricity. No sir. The last man standing will be the one with a terrestrial traditional Ma Bell telephone service or the dude with the satellite phone and who other than Bin Laden operatives in the mountains of Afghanistan owns a friggin satellite phone?
To say the country is ready to navigate to a 100% broadband telecommunications network that relies on wireless signals and a nascent network of fiber that needs electricity to operate at the end user's residence is premature at best.
Wasn't it Judge Green who said "give me landline telephone service or give me death?"
Instead of shutting it down and disconnecting millions from communications with others, why doesn't AT&T just sell off that part of its business to someone who will happily take it off its hands?
Someone pointed out that it is all a smokescreen, e.g. a convenient excuse for not wiring rural areas with broadband. Perhaps. Others have pointed out that it may be a strategy for manipulating the intercarrier compensation rules or easing out of some of the Universal Service Fund obligations.
Madness!
PSTN and POTs aren't going anywhere soon as this US of A is NO where close to being ready to transition away from the stable, secure, infrastructure and institution that is landline telephone service which took blood sweat and tears to install, underground, where the wind can't blow it away!
I, for one, am not looking forward to having to resort to blowing smoke signals to communicate with the outside world in the event of a national disaster and I'm stuck, like after the wireless towers and transmitters have fallen to the ground and the battery in my VoIP phone finally dies the 7th day without electricity. No sir. The last man standing will be the one with a terrestrial traditional Ma Bell telephone service or the dude with the satellite phone and who other than Bin Laden operatives in the mountains of Afghanistan owns a friggin satellite phone?
To say the country is ready to navigate to a 100% broadband telecommunications network that relies on wireless signals and a nascent network of fiber that needs electricity to operate at the end user's residence is premature at best.
Wasn't it Judge Green who said "give me landline telephone service or give me death?"
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