AT&T wants out of landline business
December 31, 2009
The AT&T Communications Inc. corporate headquarters building in San Antonio, Texas. US telecom giant AT&T has asked US regulatory authorities to waive a requirement that it and other carriers maintain costly landline networks.
US telecom giant AT&T has asked US regulatory authorities to waive a requirement that it and other carriers maintain costly landline networks.
AT&T, the oldest US telephone company, made the request in a filing last week with the Federal Communications Commission in which it also asked the FCC to set a "firm deadline" for phasing out wireline service.
"The business model for legacy phone services is in a death spiral," AT&T said. "With an outdated product, falling revenues, and rising costs, the plain-old telephone service (POTS) business is unsustainable for the long run."
The AT&T filing was in response to an FCC request earlier this month for input on plans to extend high-speed Internet broadband to the entire country.
It was published online by technology blog GigaOM.
AT&T said the high costs of maintaining the legacy phone network were "diverting valuable resources, both public and private, that could be used to expand broadband access and to improve the quality of broadband service."
The company said it was being forced to "dedicate substantial resources to an antiquated network and outdated service."
AT&T said that with the rise of cellphones and Internet communications such as VoIP less than 20 percent of Americans now rely exclusively on landlines for voice service and 25 percent have abandoned them altogether.
It said 700,000 lines are being cut every month.
(c) 2009 AFP
2 hours ago
When I got my FIOS I had to pay for the hardware, all of it.
Time to drag out the old HAM rig, just in case :-P
I tend to agree about the redundancy factor though.
We need landlines. Then they dont have total control.
My investigations say otherwise. A rule by the FCC requiring cell towers to have 8 hours of backup power was overturned by the White House 13 months ago, citing legal challenges by Sprint and others to the rule, first proposed in May of '07. Since then, to the best of my knowledge, no other regulations of this sort have been put in place. Apparently, Hurricane Katrina wasn't a big enough motivator...
1) AT&T already adapted U-Verse broadband/TV to its copper infrastructure. Copper is not the issue.
2) POTS can be software emulated over fiber, especially less 0.7 million lines per month. Keeping POTS as a backup STD is not the issue.
3) AT&T's "Universal Life Line" services would have surged with the poverty stricken, State mandated $6.00 POTS, right after the global sub-prime foreclosures converted the worlds assets & retirement accounts.
4) AT&T got stuck with sloppy seconds; broke "Life-Line" refugees, already exploited by banks, and a hard up-sell to AT&T's new broadband U-Verse.
5) POTS and it's "Life-Line" refugees are a lemon, which must be squeezed harder to get the last few drops of juice.
Keep landlines forever. Do your part and get land line service! "antiquated network and outdated service"- what a f'in joke- Azzholes!
Have you ever heard of encryption? Whenever you convey sensitive information it is always prudent to encrypt it. (and it's not hard to do that - no matter what the type of communication you utilize)
Back in the 70s, when Ma Bell ruled the telephone network in the US (see: monopoly), they owned everything related to a telephone - including renting you a phone to use in your house. Now when the government decided to break up the monopoly, they created two classes of providers: ILECs (incumbent local exchange carrier) and CLECs (competitive LEC). Now ILECs were created by splitting up ATT into 7 smaller phone companies, but still allowed these "baby Bell" companies to maintain the copper POTS system. Now in a nutshell the Act that spilt up ATT forces the ILECs to lease the copper lines running to your house to any mom and pop telecom provider at cost - they can't charge a penny more then what they themselves pay. But this only pertains to copper running to the customer's house, which is why some ILECs (Verizon) are moving to fiber to circumvent the whole issue.
Bahhahhhahhahahhha! Are you serious? Here ya go mate, make yourself one of these http://www.stopabductions.com/
Sorry, had to.
It is about time to change the POTS backbone. That is why they use it as an excuse.
But would AT&T be willing to replace it all with fiber-optic lines if they were allowed to make profit from it? We are talking about a huge investment here...
the only reason the phone system is antiquated is because the phone company's have let it get that way. They quit spending money on the networks years ago to make bigger profits, just look how much at&t made last year in a bad economy
You will note that all those billion dollar figures in the news are pre-expences! Meaning that figure is how much money they received that year and is not accounting for employees pay, vendors products, electricity, gas, rent, taxes, etc... Which eats up about all that money.
Landlines are very reliable, but outdated. If they recycled the copper in the wiring, I bet that would cover half the cost of replacing it with a cell system and fibrecable.