Is the Telephone Dead?

GigaOm reported this week that AT&T asked the FCC to eliminate regulatory requirements that it support a landline network and to provide a deadline for phasing it out. Essentially, they want to get out of the landline telephone business. Today, less than 20 percent of Americans rely exclusively on switched-access lines for voice service. So, essentially, they want to stop serving 1 in 5 Americans who haven’t switched.

Now, to some degree what they are asking for makes sense if they wanted to provide the same level of service digitally that they do over the old analog network. During the great Northeast blackout a few years back, the phone was one of the few things that still worked. Would that be the case if there was no copper network? Whatever you can say about copper telephone service…it has become very reliable, and AT&T’s profits from it, while reduced over the last few years, remain significant.

However, AT&T wants the federal government to seize power in this area away from the various state and local regulatory authorities and eliminate state requirements that a carrier serve all people in a geographic area. These are the areas where cellular service is spotty and internet service is nearly impossible to come by. Also, while Emergency 911 services on VoIP services have improved, it is still an issue. Every person should have the right to have a reasonably priced method of communication with the outside world available to them, be it telephone, internet, or a combination thereof.

If AT&T is expecting the government to force the elimination of traditional telephone service like they did analog broadcast television, we would hope the government response is for AT&T to come up with something just as reliable and deployable before any discussion can begin. Trying to make the government do their dirty work for them is ridiculous.

We still keep our landline service, despite dabbling in VoIP and owning cellphones. We have a hard time trusting big corporations, but oddly enough, trusting the telephone company to provide traditional telephone service is something we can do more than trusting the cable company. That is not to say the telephone company thrills us with their service either. It is just harder to mess up a traditional telephone.

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• AT&T to FCC: Let My Landlines Go! (gigaom.com)
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• AT&T Begs FCC to Phase Out Landlines Completely [At&t] (gizmodo.com)