atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information A prediction about the industry

The topic about retiring POTs lines rises up every so often.

The copper cables that support voice & DSL service are going nowhere. Verizon & at&t continue to cherry-pick the towns/cities where they deploy their upgraded services (FiOS & U-verse respectively) and in those areas, lots of "dark zones" exist.

Verizon & at&t will not lay fiber to every single address in their service areas. It's not going to happen.

So what are the LECs going to do? Provide a cell phone to every single household (including the elderly....like my aunt....who have never owned one) tell them "good luck" and then rip out the entire existing copper infrastructure?

I'm with you Paul. What are they going to do with the tens of thousands of square miles that have no wireless coverage? My guess is you'll start seeing a universal service charge where there hasn't been one before.

People who write these type articles usually live in their own little world.

I don't deny that VoIP & cellular service have decimated POTs. But the author never really answers the "what about great grandma?" concern other than to continue hammering on "make Internet and cellular service available to everyone". Not every grandma and great grandma has a computer or knows how to use a cell phone.

With all of the computer bugs, viruses & hackers out there just itching to cause havoc with computer networks, the TDM network remains a fairly safe haven.

Verizon has abandoned the build out of FIOS where in live in their former GTE territory in the Fredericksburg, VA area. Their former Bell Atlantic areas are lit with FIOS.

From what I've been told, they have made this decision based upon the fact that the GTE areas are more rural and less-likely to land sufficient subscriptions to the service (per square mile).

Although I live within the city limits, I am happen to be in the tiny corner that was annexed from Spotsylvania County decades ago. This meant that we landed into GTE territory and the existing utility boundaries. This caused a huge issue with 911 with the differing emergency agencies, but I'm hoping that they worked out by now. Thankfully, I haven't had the need to test it.

We do have DSL available through Verizon and HSI via Comcast Cable, but it is priced way above what Verizon's FIOS would be when the services are compared.

I love Comcast.

Someone please knock me in the head. I can't believe that I would say such a thing since I hate them, but they are our only option in my hood for a 'full-services' package.

I kind of like the idea of declaring the Internet as a public utility and putting it under the same protections, requirements, and subsidies that the PSTN gets. Anyone who has looked at the Net Neutrality stuff can't tell me that the free market is going to work out well for us. It will end up being like cell phone plans where they will charge for everything on top of hefty bandwidth fees.

If they do restructure, they damn sure need to make it easier to figure out. Every time I look at USAC and USF crap I just want to scream. They also need to make it more transparent where and what all that money is going for.

Re: Grandma...as harsh as it sounds, in a few years, all the grandma's will have gone to the Big Central Office in the Sky.

so there will be no Grandmas in 2018 ???

Speaking from experience...

It's getting more and more difficult to locate a plain old dialtone in NYC basement feeders...and the copper plant is definitely in need of massive repair in all five boroughs.

However, in rural NEPA where I live, Verizon has no problem supplying anything that will work on a twisted pair, as long as you're paying for it. And the copper is downright pristine - I'm about 24K feet from CO and have a DSL...measly 3.0 over 0.768, but that's way better than anything I've ever seen in the city from a distance standpoint.

I agree with dexman's statement regarding FiOS and U-verse...they lay it down only where the money is, which is understandable, especially since these projects have been less profitable than expected from what I've heard...

As I've stated in another thread...I'm never giving up my copper dialtone or my ringdown circuit...

Ed-
We have the same problem in my county: northern half was Bell, southern (my) half was GTE. Even trying to work with them as an ILEC has created problems because you need to know if the service address was formerly Bell or GTE. Northern half getting services, southern half not so.

Before I moved four years ago, I could not get DSL even though I was less than 10,000 feet from THE CO!

As for universal cellular access: good luck! If I get north of I-80 in west/central PA to the NY border there are two areas (not large areas, either) where I can get cell service.

Bill