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Comment by bm1362 | Hacker News Reader

It’s not destroying the infrastructure, it’s abandoning it. The article states that prior to this ruling they’re required to maintain or replace with comparable functionality for existing copper customers.

This ruling let’s them abandon them altogether from what I gathered.

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I would guess mining the copper would be worth it, unless this causes a huge price drop (and maybe not even then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_theft: ”Some have argued that the "genie is out of the bottle" now and drops in commodity prices will not result in corresponding drops in thefts. In fact, it is possible that thefts may actually increase to compensate for the loss in value.[citation needed]”

Ok, but there are still paying customers on the end of that infrastructure. Are they not profitable enough?

Since they have local monopolies they can trust they will regain the user but on infrastructure that is cheaper to maintain.

My understanding is rural access is often unprofitable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund

Yet we've been paying into this fund decades, which was supposed to pay for rural access. Now, Relieving the telcos of this obligation despite them not completing universal access amounts to corporate welfare for those poor starving giants. Then there's E911.

    Of a bigger concern in rural areas will be losing access to 911. A lot 
    of homes still keep landlines just for the 911 capabilities. Under the
    old rules the carriers had to demonstrate that customers would still 
    have access to reliable 911, but it seems the carriers can now walk 
    away without worrying about this.

This is also a health and safety issue.

The sparsely populated rural western states will lose the ability to call 911, but maybe it won't matter so much - with a big percentage of those small rural hospitals that depend on part on Medicaid money going under, anyone needing emergency medical treatment is probably going to be looking at a minimum time of 2-3 hours anyway so what's an extra hour or two?

But you can count on one thing: "Thanks, Obama!"

No, not past a certain point of diminishing returns.

Things that are utilities need to widely available. Power, electricty, water, etc. We grant monopoly status to corporations in exchange for fixed profits and guaranteed service even where not profitable. If we didn't do this, they would have block by block pricing and wouldn't serve areas for arbitrary "reasons"

Yet they still continue to shake the people down. I don't think corporations should run anything last mile. The temptation is just too great.

Maybe they should compete for the service contracts - but even then cost benefit should compare with insourced provision.

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