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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

I am not trying to defend Verizon, but the goal of the FCC is to move off of copper lines. However the rules state that phone companies cannot do that if any service is interrupted which also apparently means if a customer doesn't want to move off of copper they don't have too. So which is it? Do we move people to fiber? There are many who hold on to copper lines because they have a central power source whereas fiber does not.

My other concern is, why should they pick up the tab for maintaining connections on an obsolete system if the new one will serve the area?

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The problem is that they refuse to build out fiber in areas where they are unlikely to sell a lot of high-dollar, high-margin TV packages.

In rural and low-income areas, Verizon wants to let the old copper infrastructure rot, but they are uninterested in building out a real replacement. Instead, they push low-margin customers to grossly inferior wireless services.

4G LTE that works without a single wire in your home, with no truck rolls, and throughout the USA is hardly "grossly inferior". Not preferred by some, definitely...but not grossly inferior.

4g lte isn't in those areas either.

4G LTE isn't a valid choice for anyone who wants low-latency (online gamers, and it doesn't even have to be a "twitch" game), or anyone who balks at $205/month for 30gb (AT&T price)

Yes! Datacapped services are not a viable option. It'd be great to move to cell service as my phone gets faster download speeds than the fastest broadband available locally but I'd be capped at 10gb of data or be paying some outrageous amount for more and that's like 3-4 movies worth of space... ridiculous.

4G is datacapped and not net neutral.

Not from Verizon's perspective, sure. But there are a lot of consumer shortcomings to LTE vs a wired connection: slower data rates, more latency, data caps, no net neutrality protection, blocked by trees and terrain, slowed by certain kinds of home construction, slowed by weather, and greater sensitivity to power outages.

LTE is great for when folks are out and about, but at home or work, even a halfway decent DSL line beats it. Fiber kills it across the board.

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