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Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ok, but there are still paying customers on the end of that infrastructure. Are they not profitable enough?
The article brings up DSL, but I thought DSL was a short haul technology (you have to be pretty close to a branch office or something)? Would it really affect rural customers anyway? I'm also curious if the newer faster fiber technologies are sort of "subsidizing" the carrier's copper business.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ok, but there are still paying customers on the end of that infrastructure. Are they not profitable enough?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ok, but there are still paying customers on the end of that infrastructure. Are they not profitable enough?
At one time, 80% of AT&T's capital value was the copper in the local loops. AT&T was then, in effect, the world's largest copper mine. Fortunately, this fact was not widely known in the investment community. Had it been known, some corporate raider might have bought AT&T, terminated all telephone service in the United States, ripped out all the wire, and sole the wire to a copper refiner to get a quick payback.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the U.S. rural telecoms access has always existed because of government mandates supported in part by government subsidies and taxes. It would definitely be more profitable to drop support for large parts (land mass, not population) of the U.S. entirely.
So the maintenance costs are driving this?
This really hits home for me. I'm using a DSL modem and still have landline phone that is far more reliable for me than my cell phone.