Hacker News Reader

Comment by robotrout | Hacker News Reader

I'm not comfortable with this. If something's going to die, than let it die, but don't get the government involved, legislating it's death.

AT&T has every right, I suppose, to attempt to maximize their profit by trying to get the FCC to use the power of government to change the playing field. I would hope the FCC isn't foolish enough to agree to it, however.

Unfortunately, government likes power. The FCC, having recently orchestrated the death of analog television, is probably feeling a bit cocky, that they have the duty to kill all the old technologies. The two cases are different though.

Analog television was not something that people's lives depended upon. It also was very obviously taking up bandwidth that was in finite supply. These things are not true for POTS. It's time will certainly come, but we're trying to move too quickly, for no reason, on the very flimsy premise that "more people could get broadband faster",

View on HN

You have it backwards. The government is preventing POTS from dying.

AT&T wants the government to relax the rules so POTS can die or not die based on market forces.

The cynic in me says AT&T wants to do DSL/fiber to the high density, high value markets and get out from under the requirement to also provide POTS to the low density, low profitability rural markets, currently subsidized by the high value markets.

See: http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/

* Advance the availability of such services to all consumers, including those in low income, rural, insular, and high cost areas at rates that are reasonably comparable to those charged in urban areas

So, if AT&T drops POTS, what are they going to do to cover rural areas that cannot be covered by copper based DSL and are unlikely to be covered by fiber due to cost?

It's a little more subtle than that.

AT&T can get out of the POTS biz tomorrow by selling it and the pieces that are regulated with it. In fact, AT&T was out of the POTS biz in most of the country and bought its way back in.

They could, for example, do cell phone, long distance, and cable TV without being in the POTS biz.

However, they can't provide DSL capacity without being in the POTS biz.

What they want is a monopoly for certain forms of access without having to provide POTS. (I'm not sure exactly what.)

If we buy their "universal service" argument, the solution is actually to use cell phone revenues to bolster POTS service. There's precedent - they took their POTS revenues to build/buy their cell phone service.

Hmm, you may be right, which puts me in a quandary, since I still want POTS to survive, and I generally dislike government intervention.

If the US is anything like the UK, then there is probably a Universal Service Obligation in place that legally requires telcos to provide phone services within their service area whether or not it's profitable to do so.

The FCC regulates almost all aspects of local exchange carriers. The entire business is so mired in regulation that it would be legally impossible to let it naturally die. Really, the FCC's main responsibility isn't to legislate its death, but to un-legislate the necessity of its existence.

Mobile costs are still too high for landlines to disappear (either as per call costs or as monthly fees).

I think it's mainly because of competition issues (oligopoly) but I don't know the market that well. The second we are able to turn mobile lines into REAL dumb pipes, you'll see the end of most landlines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com