FCC Will Let Carriers Abandon Copper Lines Without Offering Adequate Replacements

DooKey

DooKey

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Jon Brodkin, at ars Technica, has written an article that claims the FCC is going to eliminate rules that require carriers to provide replacements for copper infrastructure as it is retired. I'm not sure if this is a hyperbolic claim or not, but I usually believe the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. On one hand,I understand wanting to retire old technology, and on the other hand I know some people have been depending on it for a long time. I guess we'll see how this goes in the future.

As carriers like AT&T and Verizon turn off copper networks throughout much of the country, many people fear that the networks won't be replaced with fiber or something of similar quality. That's why the FCC in 2014 created a "functional test" for carriers that seek permission to abandon copper networks. In short, carriers have to prove that the replacement service is just as good and provides the same capabilities as what's being discontinued.
 
I can see both sides. On one hand nobody is going to be willing to run fiber out to rural areas if they are only allowed to charge suburban connection rates for internet. However, if someone could run the fiber and charge $200/mo for internet, they might be willing to do that. While it might sound ridiculous to charge that much, I'm not sure why someone is entitled to high speed internet when they chose to live in a deep rural area and, it's more likely than not, that a house out in a rural area cost half the price and came with twice as much land as a house in the city which does have an existing infrastructure. So everything ends up being a trade. You might pay significantly less for your house but expect to pay more for your connectivity.
 
Seventyfive said:
I can see both sides. On one hand nobody is going to be willing to run fiber out to rural areas if they are only allowed to charge suburban connection rates for internet. However, if someone could run the fiber and charge $200/mo for internet, they might be willing to do that. While it might sound ridiculous to charge that much, I'm not sure why someone is entitled to high speed internet when they chose to live in a deep rural area and, it's more likely than not, that a house out in a rural area cost half the price and came with twice as much land as a house in the city which does have an existing infrastructure. So everything ends up being a trade. You might pay significantly less for your house but expect to pay more for your connectivity.
Click to expand...

Howabout the side where these fuckers have taken many billions from our taxes to provide service they have yet to deliver, and are now going to turn off service they actually did deliver.

I live in a state where there are no rural distance issues, and they have been given government funds repeatedly to run fiber everywhere fro phone and broadband and half the state is still not serviced and their answer was meh.. 1 megabit is broadband and theres wireless, so fuck off.
 
Mostly going to be rural services. None of these providers give a shit about maintaining or building out to rural American any more. Big city and surrounding suburbs business is their core.

On the other hand, they can make a lot of copper go dark. This will only open up business opportunities for others to service rural areas with mesh networks.
 
I thought that was the whole reason behind cisco and their 4200 series, to cheaplyly bridge sonet/copper/t1/3/old infrastructure and bring them into new rings.
 
Help me understand something here.

ISP's care only about profit.
They can get rid of an infrastructure without a suitable replacement leaving customers with no access.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how #2 allows #1 to happen.
 
AT&T last month finally finished deploying fiber in my urban OKC neighborhood. They had installed the hardware and primary cables a couple years back when Google fiber had OKC on the list to get service. When Google retreated on deployment plans, both AT&T and Cox radically slowed their Gig speed deployments. The fiber service I got last month is supposed to be 50mb down, faster available for more $. Price for this vs the prior copper DSL/phone is about $50 cheaper.

The copper drop was cut at the pole. No more POTS.

As for rural, they either need to deploy updated networks to rural areas OR drop the Universal Service Fund charge since by now most rural areas have basic phone service.
 
Riccochet said:
Mostly going to be rural services. None of these providers give a shit about maintaining or building out to rural American any more. Big city and surrounding suburbs business is their core.

On the other hand, they can make a lot of copper go dark. This will only open up business opportunities for others to service rural areas with mesh networks.
Click to expand...

Thing is it isn't just rural services. They are crap about upgrading services in cities too. My neighbourhood is a good example. The complex I live in specifically is a nice middle class complex, however to one side of me is some more upscale middle class housing, and to the other is some quite wealthy housing. So there is money to be made selling Internet here, never mind any tax subsidies and the like. Not only that, we are close to a phone CO. It's about 3 blocks from my place, maybe 5000-10000 cable feet. So, we'd be a prime area for a fiber upgrade right? Wrong. The phone company continually sends out flyers trying to convince people to get DSL that could be "up to" 6mbps. Meanwhile the cable company's cheap plan is 12mbps, their previous high end plan is 300mbps (that's what I have) and they just rolled out gig service. But there's no fiber in sight from the phone company, no plans for it.

I'm not really sure what their long term business model is. I guess just fiber to new developments and ignore all the older stuff. But it isn't just rural customers, where there legitimately is a ton of expense (which they've been given tax money to cover, but that's another matter). It is urban customers too. They just don't want to upgrade their existing network.
 
Seventyfive said:
I can see both sides. On one hand nobody is going to be willing to run fiber out to rural areas if they are only allowed to charge suburban connection rates for internet. However, if someone could run the fiber and charge $200/mo for internet, they might be willing to do that. While it might sound ridiculous to charge that much, I'm not sure why someone is entitled to high speed internet when they chose to live in a deep rural area and, it's more likely than not, that a house out in a rural area cost half the price and came with twice as much land as a house in the city which does have an existing infrastructure. So everything ends up being a trade. You might pay significantly less for your house but expect to pay more for your connectivity.
Click to expand...

I actually completely agree. My parents recently retired to an old farmstead, where, they are beyond the reach of hydro, water, and telecommunications lines up in northern Ontario. They have a full off the grid setup, and have satellite TV, and they do have internet for about $100 a month - 12 gigabyte cap LTE service. Well, barely LTE would be more accurate. They've found that they no longer need as much internet, and in fact they've even considered dropping the satellite package completely. Whenever I go up there, I take a small mobile hub with a $10 /mo scaling cap. I find that price pretty ridiculous honestly, but you have to pay a little extra for the convenience of internet everywhere.

That aside, if these companies do remove themselves from rural areas, it gives a chance for small startups to maybe come up with something else, and once again, using my parents as an example - there are a few companies that are crowdsourcing towers to do just that.
 
Sycraft said:
Thing is it isn't just rural services. They are crap about upgrading services in cities too. My neighbourhood is a good example. The complex I live in specifically is a nice middle class complex, however to one side of me is some more upscale middle class housing, and to the other is some quite wealthy housing. So there is money to be made selling Internet here, never mind any tax subsidies and the like. Not only that, we are close to a phone CO. It's about 3 blocks from my place, maybe 5000-10000 cable feet. So, we'd be a prime area for a fiber upgrade right? Wrong. The phone company continually sends out flyers trying to convince people to get DSL that could be "up to" 6mbps. Meanwhile the cable company's cheap plan is 12mbps, their previous high end plan is 300mbps (that's what I have) and they just rolled out gig service. But there's no fiber in sight from the phone company, no plans for it.

I'm not really sure what their long term business model is. I guess just fiber to new developments and ignore all the older stuff. But it isn't just rural customers, where there legitimately is a ton of expense (which they've been given tax money to cover, but that's another matter). It is urban customers too. They just don't want to upgrade their existing network.
Click to expand...

It goes beyond them just wanting to roll out fiber. It all depends on what contract the cable company has with the city. More than likely the cable is doing "last mile" copper. They already have fiber in place, it's just that copper is pushed the last mile out to residences. Pretty common. And since fiber is in place I'd bet good money the cable company has a strangle hold on any future fiber development in the area. That leaves the telco shit out of luck.

The same is reversed in areas where the telco has the fiber rights. Cable companies will often have shit for service, or they're pushing their copper infrastructure to the very limits.

You can pull this info from your county zoning board. It's public.
 
I second Seventyfive's comment. The cost to upgrade the ageing rural infrastructure in our country is staggeringly high. That being said the telecos have been milking the Universal Service Fund for decades and given the ridiculous salaries of the executives, I fail to see why exactly they haven't been steadily rolling out infrastructure upgrades. Oh wait. The government didn't mandate it, and greed. Sometimes I forget about that bit.
 
Seventyfive said:
I can see both sides. On one hand nobody is going to be willing to run fiber out to rural areas if they are only allowed to charge suburban connection rates for internet. However, if someone could run the fiber and charge $200/mo for internet, they might be willing to do that. While it might sound ridiculous to charge that much, I'm not sure why someone is entitled to high speed internet when they chose to live in a deep rural area and, it's more likely than not, that a house out in a rural area cost half the price and came with twice as much land as a house in the city which does have an existing infrastructure. So everything ends up being a trade. You might pay significantly less for your house but expect to pay more for your connectivity.
Click to expand...

This so closely mirrors the development issues with POTS its insane. Literally forgetting history. Rural america developed their own POTS systems via collectives and other endeavors for the first 30 years of the 20th century. By the late 20s there was a lot of problems with all these small independent networks. The New Deal which brought the FCC and many others created the Telecom Act of 1934 and at the heart was the idea of universal access for all. That universal access is what causes the telecoms to collect some of those fees on your phone and cable bill. New technology and we are repeating the same steps. Amazing what we fail to learn all while allowing business to collect fees and then walk away from an old system.
 
Another issue that is not being reported is that life and property protection (Security/Fire Alarm) systems rely on POTS for communication.
VOIP Systems are not fully compatible and cause communication problems. The end user is being forced to spend large amounts of money to upgrade their communication infrastructure just for these systems to work.
 
Daarken said:
Another issue that is not being reported is that life and property protection (Security/Fire Alarm) systems rely on POTS for communication.
VOIP Systems are not fully compatible and cause communication problems. The end user is being forced to spend large amounts of money to upgrade their communication infrastructure just for these systems to work.
Click to expand...


I work for a vendor that is phasing out the POTS lines in security panels and going with Cellular cards instead. Since Cell service is ubiquitous everywhere you don't need a land line anymore only a cell connection.

Everything that was once POTS is going cell based and you really only need the cell card when/if your primary internet connection dies, which is what most companies use the POTS lines for as backup to RJ45
 
kydsid said:
This so closely mirrors the development issues with POTS its insane. Literally forgetting history. Rural america developed their own POTS systems via collectives and other endeavors for the first 30 years of the 20th century. By the late 20s there was a lot of problems with all these small independent networks. The New Deal which brought the FCC and many others created the Telecom Act of 1934 and at the heart was the idea of universal access for all. That universal access is what causes the telecoms to collect some of those fees on your phone and cable bill. New technology and we are repeating the same steps. Amazing what we fail to learn all while allowing business to collect fees and then walk away from an old system.
Click to expand...

I was actually saying that rather than people building their own through collectives, the large corporations would be willing to do it on their own without involving the federal government if there were a way for it to be economically feasible. The problem is that if they tried to charge a rate that was feasible, it would be headline news "AT&T rips off old lady, charging her $200 for internet". Therefore they can choose between not doing it at all or taking CAF funds and maybe doing it. To your point, there is always the 3rd option of the state or local governments doing it which, in my opinion, is better than the federal government doing it but it may or may not be better than an arms length transaction between the consumer and the company.

raz-0 said:
Howabout the side where these fuckers have taken many billions from our taxes to provide service they have yet to deliver, and are now going to turn off service they actually did deliver.

I live in a state where there are no rural distance issues, and they have been given government funds repeatedly to run fiber everywhere fro phone and broadband and half the state is still not serviced and their answer was meh.. 1 megabit is broadband and theres wireless, so fuck off.
Click to expand...

Well there's a bit of a mess there because CAF funding is option. We aren't in North Korea so people aren't forced to build out to rural. A company says, Yes I'm willing to do it so give me CAF funds. In the old days, the definition was 4/1mbps but now it's 10/1mbps. If someone is taking new funds they have to provide 10/1mbps but afaik if someone already took CAF funds to build out to rural they aren't under any obligation to update it to 10/1mbps and because, as per my point above, they wouldn't be allowed to make an acceptable IRR, they won't invest to get people up to 10/1. Companies have a legal fiduciary duty to the shareholders to try to make money. They can't go build out 10/1 service and then intentionally lose money on it. That's literally illegal. To give you more insight, you can go back to a 2015 article that states: "Helping AT&T make the decision to take the funds, the telecom signaled, was that the FCC clarified that "(1) CAF Phase 1 recipients will not be subject to any later-adopted broadband measurement requirements; (2) recipients will be in compliance with the requirement that pricing and usage allowances be “reasonably comparable” to urban areas, if they offer identical plans in such areas; (3) acceptance of funding will not trigger reporting requirements beyond the funded locations; and (4) obligations will end within three years."

https://arstechnica.com/information...pts-428-million-in-annual-government-funding/
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/speci...f-ii-funding-despite-fcc-s-changing-broadband
 
westrock2000 said:
Help me understand something here.

ISP's care only about profit.
They can get rid of an infrastructure without a suitable replacement leaving customers with no access.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how #2 allows #1 to happen.
Click to expand...

The ISP's only care about MAXIMIZING profit. The rural networks do not generate as much profit as the urban networks.
 
westrock2000 said:
Help me understand something here.

ISP's care only about profit.
They can get rid of an infrastructure without a suitable replacement leaving customers with no access.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how #2 allows #1 to happen.
Click to expand...
I'll help you out. They care about SHORT TERM profit. If they upgrade the infrastructure, that's expensive and cuts into profits overall for the next quarter, even if it makes them money in the long run. Have to keep the shareholders happy, that's what it's all about!
 
Seventyfive said:
I can see both sides. On one hand nobody is going to be willing to run fiber out to rural areas if they are only allowed to charge suburban connection rates for internet. However, if someone could run the fiber and charge $200/mo for internet, they might be willing to do that. While it might sound ridiculous to charge that much, I'm not sure why someone is entitled to high speed internet when they chose to live in a deep rural area and, it's more likely than not, that a house out in a rural area cost half the price and came with twice as much land as a house in the city which does have an existing infrastructure. So everything ends up being a trade. You might pay significantly less for your house but expect to pay more for your connectivity.
Click to expand...
But they'll take the money to do it by god.
 
panhead said:
The ISP's only care about MAXIMIZING profit. The rural networks do not generate as much profit as the urban networks.
Click to expand...

tetris42 said:
I'll help you out. They care about SHORT TERM profit. If they upgrade the infrastructure, that's expensive and cuts into profits overall for the next quarter, even if it makes them money in the long run. Have to keep the shareholders happy, that's what it's all about!
Click to expand...

So you are both saying they would not provide service of anykind to pre-existing customers?
 
Pai's answer to this was, your cell phone / wireless for internet access in rural areas........what a d-bag. So we see the regression of infrastructure and we get the middle finger.....OR we fork over life savings to get the stuff to our area. Sounds like a WIN - WIN to me.... /s :confused:
 
viper1152012 said:
Lots of stuff runs on copper. Speeds can be higher on phone lines, look at Australia.
Click to expand...


Its not about what it can do, it's about what they can't do with it. They can't force you onto a wireless plan with very low speeds/caps if you have copper to your house. So they claim its too hard to maintain or whatever other BS excuse to scrap it and try and rape people for more money.

And it will happen thanks to that ISP dick gobbler pai since the current admin/gop are hell bent on fucking everyone so their rich buddies/corporations/themselves can accumulate more money.
 
Verizon cut my copper POTS line when they installed FIOS. They didn't even ASK. My neighborhood is a 70's suburb, so lots of old people. So I do wonder, if anyone in my neighborhood didn't go to cable or FIOS, do they still have copper POTS? I doubt it. Verizon left all the gutted skeletons of the phone boxes in the alley to RUST. One is right outside my fence. Didn't remove them, just unhooked everything and left it. What an eyesore. That was 10+ years ago. Verizon sold all their FIOS (Texas) to Frontier about 2 years ago. Those idiots can't find their ass with both hands. But my only other option is cable modem, which I've had in the past, but our infrastructure is from the 70's/80's and the internet would go out EVERY SINGLE TIME there was a thunderstorm. The junction boxes in the alley would flood. They've never been fixed, just new company name stickers keep appearing every couple years .Cablevision, comcast, roadrunner, TWC, and now Spectrum. And I'm probably forgetting 3 or 4 in between.
 
Burticus said:
Verizon cut my copper POTS line when they installed FIOS. They didn't even ASK. My neighborhood is a 70's suburb, so lots of old people. So I do wonder, if anyone in my neighborhood didn't go to cable or FIOS, do they still have copper POTS? I doubt it. Verizon left all the gutted skeletons of the phone boxes in the alley to RUST. One is right outside my fence. Didn't remove them, just unhooked everything and left it. What an eyesore. That was 10+ years ago. Verizon sold all their FIOS (Texas) to Frontier about 2 years ago. Those idiots can't find their ass with both hands. But my only other option is cable modem, which I've had in the past, but our infrastructure is from the 70's/80's and the internet would go out EVERY SINGLE TIME there was a thunderstorm. The junction boxes in the alley would flood. They've never been fixed, just new company name stickers keep appearing every couple years .Cablevision, comcast, roadrunner, TWC, and now Spectrum. And I'm probably forgetting 3 or 4 in between.
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give them a map for christmas.

:D
 
why do you think new startups and pure internet plays are having such a huge advantage over the carriers.....rue the day when all needs to play by the same rules.
 
cell phones can be bought (new) with a $10/month service ... I think they sell them at Sears, etc. I use Cricket, got a Samsung Prime Smartphone for $70 and pay $30/month for text/talk/internet so it's more affordable than a landline (which, two years ago cost me $38/month for the minimum service with no long distance). For anyone with cable there's Ooma, $100 for the box (on sale) then $5/month unlimited calling but if your cable goes out for any reason you can't call anyone and if there's an emergency you might be in trouble
 
I don't go for this: "these idiots chose to live in remote areas, their fault" stuff. Some of these people are putting food on our plates. As long as these last mile carriers benefit from government sanctioned local monopolies and subsidies, they'll have to in tern serve and deliver their service.
 
Seventyfive said:
I can see both sides. On one hand nobody is going to be willing to run fiber out to rural areas if they are only allowed to charge suburban connection rates for internet. However, if someone could run the fiber and charge $200/mo for internet, they might be willing to do that. While it might sound ridiculous to charge that much, I'm not sure why someone is entitled to high speed internet when they chose to live in a deep rural area and, it's more likely than not, that a house out in a rural area cost half the price and came with twice as much land as a house in the city which does have an existing infrastructure. So everything ends up being a trade. You might pay significantly less for your house but expect to pay more for your connectivity.
Click to expand...


I live rural. My company pays something like $180/mo for my 3Mbps radio connection now. I would kill for $200 fiber.

I don’t think I’m entitled to fast internet. I just wish it were at least an available option.

I guess there is cellular - we get a LTE signal that can usually beat 10Mbps. At $10/GB it gets pretty damned expensive when Win10 decides it wants to update a few machines (yeah that LAN update thing never seems to actually work), and still is no where near what fiber could offer.

I like internet, a lot. But I also like living where I do, so that’s a trade off I make willingly. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t push for it to get better.
 
westrock2000 said:
So you are both saying they would not provide service of anykind to pre-existing customers?
Click to expand...
Two possibilities:

1. They also have a wireless service that's far more expensive that they can offer you instead.

2. The costs with expanding the infrastructure will not be made up by the hard-to-reach customers in the short term, therefore, it can only be seen as a loss to shareholders. So yes, they would drop those customers and not provide any service to them. They could make up the difference by raising rates elsewhere. A corporation is not going to chase down every last customer, they're going to maximize profits. Getting the maximum number of customers and providing good service would likely pay off in the long term, but that's not how these organizations operate. Nobody wants to report a quarterly loss.

I could be wrong, but you sound like you're disbelieving this concept. As someone who is friends with several people who live out in the country, I can say ISPs refusing to provide service when they say they will or when their house is literally hundred feet from someone who DOES get service is VERY common. ISPs have no problems whatsoever dropping you if you're in a regional monopoly.
 
My parents live in Kansas and have some weird community wifi thing with these big dishes they aim at each other. Otherwise it was Verizon 4G with low data caps.

But the issue here is population density. All the other countries around the world that have "zomg America sucks Internet" also have "zomg America isn't so bad" population density. Internet isn't a charity, it's a money maker like anything else. I'm more upset with actual roads being turned into profit centers than the Internet.
 
It's actually somewhat in my wheelhouse regarding that promoted comment in the Ars comment section.
The fire marshal usually just says, "tough shit" - and the permittee will need to bring their system up to latest standards at their expense.
I get people want to be mad about this, but there's also a responsibility from the property owner to be fully aware of these things.

If they know there will be future building improvements/renovations, then permitting can/will trigger fire access review. The owner can't just wash their hands of that responsibility and turn a blind-eye at key permitting issues that will certainly be issues in the future. What happened to planning ahead?
 
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