Still love your landline? Phone service providers are getting closer to phasing

[mgk920]

How much more in taxes and fees are you willing to pay to ensure that everyone has the equipment and signals to place and receive cellular and other technology phone calls?

Mike

[SP Cook]

Isn't that "Universal Service Charge" supposed to help offset the costs of providing service to rural areas?

Not exactly.  The USC goes to two things.  The vast majority of it goes to subsidized phones given to low income people, which has nothing to do with their location.  The remainder subsidizes broadband construction in places where it makes no economic sense to do so.  Now, of course, VOIP exists, so broadband = a phone, but with 42M people unable to get broadband, and the roll out rate being a few hundred thousand people per year, it will never reach "universal" status, which POTS achieved nearly 80 years ago.

[kkt]

Is there any guarantee that there's cell signal in every valley in California? Although it is the most populous state, there are still some pretty remote areas in the Mojave. It would be pretty shitty if you lived there and some pissbaby CEO decided you weren't allowed to have outside contact with the world anymore because his $122.4 billion revenue company wanted to free up some cash for stock buybacks or his ninety-sixth yacht.

Here's the map of where landline service was proposed to be removed: https://www.newsweek.com/att-map-shows-california-areas-that-could-lose-service-1870227#slideshow/2349580

Frankly, there's no guarantee anyone had to have landline service. Landline service exists where it did because it made sense to provide it, because revenue and profit.  If someone built in an area without landline service, it was probably up to them to pay the costs of getting a line to the house.

If landline services were to go away, cell towers would probably be added in those areas to compensate, since there's a profitable reason to install them.

Universal access was an announced goal of pre-breakup AT&T.  They added telephone service to a lot of remote places that couldn't really be justified economically.  It worked out because high long-distance rates subsidized service to small towns.  It was worth while because calling for firefighters or an ambulance was deemed to be more important than cheap long conversations to distant places.
 

[Rothman]

I was amazed at the holes in coverage in PA on this last little trip I was on...obvious terrain issues notwithstanding.

[vdeane]

Discussions of cell towers versus land lines and VOIP and aspersions to "buggy whips" and whatnot, miss the point.  Almost any habitable place in the country, at one point, has POTS.  This was, more than anything, a governmental decision.  Given the choice, AT&T 1.0 and its imitators (Contel, Centel, Frontier, GTE, United, etc.) would have "cherry picked" towns and cities, and left remote people to do without. 

Fact is the roll out of cell phones, and the roll out of internet or "good internet" has not been the same.  There are 100s of 1000s of places, and thus millions of people who cannot get a cell phone signal and never will.  It does not make economic sense to provide service there, because the return on investment is not going to happen. 

If, as I do, you accept that just telling rural people "too bad" and "figure it out" is a moral, if not political, non-starter, then the question is does government require POTS to stick around, require/subsidize cell service and or internet where it makes no economic sense, and fund it how.  Taxes, or sticking it to AT&T 2.0 and Verizon?

Well, there's really no good reason we can't make the same governmental choice to ensure universal access to broadband.  It's not as if it made "economic sense" to extend POTS service universally, but back in the day, we used to do some things for the common good, not just because of economics.

Also, if you had bothered to look at the map that was posted upthread, you'd realize that the areas that AT&T was proposing dropping coverage are predominantly the urbanized parts of California, not the rural areas.

Maintaining obsolete POTS infrastructure costs money.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that it could well be a hindrance to the expansion of more modern technologies.  Even many urban areas in the country lack proper fiber internet.  I'd much rather see the telecommunications companies work on expanding broadband than maintaining obsolete copper.

[kalvado]

Discussions of cell towers versus land lines and VOIP and aspersions to "buggy whips" and whatnot, miss the point.  Almost any habitable place in the country, at one point, has POTS.  This was, more than anything, a governmental decision.  Given the choice, AT&T 1.0 and its imitators (Contel, Centel, Frontier, GTE, United, etc.) would have "cherry picked" towns and cities, and left remote people to do without. 

Fact is the roll out of cell phones, and the roll out of internet or "good internet" has not been the same.  There are 100s of 1000s of places, and thus millions of people who cannot get a cell phone signal and never will.  It does not make economic sense to provide service there, because the return on investment is not going to happen. 

If, as I do, you accept that just telling rural people "too bad" and "figure it out" is a moral, if not political, non-starter, then the question is does government require POTS to stick around, require/subsidize cell service and or internet where it makes no economic sense, and fund it how.  Taxes, or sticking it to AT&T 2.0 and Verizon?

Well, there's really no good reason we can't make the same governmental choice to ensure universal access to broadband.  It's not as if it made "economic sense" to extend POTS service universally, but back in the day, we used to do some things for the common good, not just because of economics.

Also, if you had bothered to look at the map that was posted upthread, you'd realize that the areas that AT&T was proposing dropping coverage are predominantly the urbanized parts of California, not the rural areas.

Maintaining obsolete POTS infrastructure costs money.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that it could well be a hindrance to the expansion of more modern technologies.  Even many urban areas in the country lack proper fiber internet.  I'd much rather see the telecommunications companies work on expanding broadband than maintaining obsolete copper.

Yet there are costs of such programs, and they can quickly climb into unaffordable range. Love it or hate it, but entire Thruway was built faster than I-81 reroute in Syracuse - and telecom is working the same way.
I still believe a big push for 5G was not to satisfy urban need for 1080 quality youtube on a bus to Manhattan, but to get quick boost for the broadband coverage. People making a tragedy of any new cell tower certainly think they can get things just out of thin air...
Then there is Starlink - I hope 911 routing can be worked out with some effort.   
 

[mgk920]

is I-87 through Adirondack Park in New York still a cell phone dead zone?

Mike

[Rothman]

is I-87 through Adirondack Park in New York still a cell phone dead zone?

Mike

Not as bad as it once was, given the bad press about people getting into accidents and not being able to contact authorities.