AT&T asks FCC to phase out landline regulations
By Donald Melanson 
posted December 31st 2009 3:25AM
posted December 31st 2009 3:25AM
A day without landline phones? Some may say that's inevitable, but it looks like AT&T is now starting to try to speed things up a bit, with it recently responding to an FCC request for comments with a 32-page filing that details its position on the matter. That more or less boils down to two major requests: that the FCC eliminate the regulatory requirements that it support a landline network, and that it provide a firm deadline for phasing it out. To back up that request, AT&T has provided the FCC with a whole host of statistics that paint a bleak picture for landlines, including the fact that less than 20% of Americans rely exclusively on switched-access lines for voice service (though plenty more still use them as their primary voice service), that at least 18 million homes now use a VoIP service, and that those two numbers are fast growing in opposite directions. Needless to say, such a change would have a broad range of regulatory implications, and AT&T isn't providing answers for everything -- like exactly how it expects that last mile of users to transition away from landlines, or how to deal with issues of public safety or those with disabilities.
Why is there a desire to kill off landlines so quickly. A lot of people still use them for one thing :reliability.
i wonder how much higher that 18 million VoIP users number would have been if AT&T hadn't shutdown it's CallVantage service last month.
I think most of you guys are missing the point here. They don't want to eliminate phone service in the home, they want to transfer it onto their Internet infrastructure to eliminate all that old hardware and costly upgrade costs that occur with landlines. You will still have "landlines" unlike the topic states, cause that same wire is what your interwebs is being pumped over. But it's horribly ineffecient cause it has to route through the phone infastructure and then the internet infastructure. By eliminating the phone side they are freeing up lots of potential problems and costly maintenence and would generally improve overall service.
You would just have VoIP phones inside instead of standard phones.
@7egend
Do VOIP phones work during a power outage? I live in Florida and the last time a big hurricane rolled through power was (and internet obviously) was down for a month for some people. A phone that can't work during a power cut is a death sentence in some parts of the country.
@yomachaser
The same thing that takes down power lines can also take down phone lines. Don't think that just because old phones use the line power that they are immune to power outages. That power comes from somewhere.
A mobile phone would be your best bet in a disaster situation, depending on how bad the disaster was.
@yomachaser
It's not like the Weather Channel didn't warn you it was a big ass hurricane. If it were me, I wouldn't be worried about my power being off, cause I would be inland in a motel(with power and phone service).
who needs a landline with all the exciting mobile technology. skype and shit like that. people are going to start having multiple cellphones. who wants to pay high ass tellyphone bills when you could have a iPhone, droid, or whatevers.
@po kuntry boi cellphones are several times more expensive... I pay 20 bucks a month for my landline and almost 90 for my cell... and that's on a very minimal plan. Also, landline phones I can get for around 30-40 bucks while cellphones are 100+ and if you want a smartphone they are usually around 400... So I don't how you think that a cellphone is cheaper to own....
@Bensawsome
I stand corrected on price point. but still. why invest any money in a landline?
@po kuntry boi I do see that logic. When I get on my own I'm just gonna have a cellphone depending if I can get service in my home or not.
I don't feel it's ATT's or any company's responsibility to provide communication or safety measures for the citizens of a Nation. It is the responsibility of the Nation to find a method for providing for the safety and utter needs of the citizenry. If the Nation can convince a company to do so, fine, but it's not right to force a company to, especially even to maintain a system which is in disuse or is costly and cumbersome. If the Nation was paying the cost, fine, enforce the requirement, but I don't believe the Nation is paying in this case, at all.
No, it's not contradictory for the Nation to require companies to abide by other laws such as worker safety / pollution control / etc. Operational laws re safe operation are beneficial; operational laws that are convenience are not necessarily beneficial. It is not ATT's problem to determine how the last mile of users transitions to some other mode of communication, it's the affected individual's responsibility. A company does what is profitable, and if it's not profitable to service the last mile, then why should they?
At least that's my position given that we live in a Nation with the Capitalist mode of production.
I hope the FCC says "Coming from you AT&T, hell no...your cell phone service blows, at least landlines work all the time".
I have used both comcast VOIP and FIOS VOIP and in my experience FIOS' system is pretty good have never had a quirk with it and is a seamless transition from a landline. Comcast however, has the absolute worst service imaginable, our line would CONSTANTLY go out, people would constantly call our cellphones claiming thy couldnt get through on the house phone (gave a busy tone when we were not on the phone), calls would be dropped constantly if they were even able to be placed, I would say on average we successfully completed at best 35% of the calls that came in or out. We had Comcast come out god knows how many time sna change our modem, look at our system, etc.
I cannot speak for AT&T but given my experience with their cell network I cannot imagine their VOIP is much better and until VOIP becomes 100% reliable on all service providers I think this is a big mistake.
God damnit, the FTC better start cracking down on AT&T because this is probably just another excuse to evade some network costs since they have to come out to my house to fix my landline/DSL and the last time they came out they put OVERGROUND CABLES in my backyard trailing all the way to the nearest phone post... WTF? so I called them again and they put them UNDERGROUND... to make this really clear, they put OVERGROUND cables UNDERGROUND.
So to make a long story short, they had to come back out and do the job AGAIN and now my router is acting all weird and it seems like it goes into a "sleep" mode and I constaly have to disconnect from it and then reconnect for it to work again... PITA!!!
I can't even watch a single episode of 30 Rock on my PS3 without having to close Netflix and reopen it.
@Philip Han I meant, to say FCC
You want the requirement to support a landline network dropped, AT&T? OK, then you're now required to support a reliable wireless network.
Oh, you'll stick to the landline regulations? That's what I thought.
@Bensawsome $90 for a minimal plan? Once you can get unlimited data and texting on a landline through your carrier, then you can call that minimal.
Before you go trying to remove land lines AT&T. Try to fix your service coverage out here first please. Some goes for sprint, T-Mobile, and maybe Verizon.
What's the true reliability of VOIP? The current existing phone network is six sigma reliable. We can't afford to have phones randomly going offline because some piece(s) of VOIP stop working properly. All it will take is some 911 calls that couldn't be made and the lawsuits will start flying.
Will landline over VOIP still work when the power is out like a typical landline if yes go ahead if no than no to phasing out until they can figure out a way inwhich it can
In the US congress mandated that cell towers should have emergency power, so they could also do that for VoIP theoretically, and cablemodems all come in optional versions with backup-batteries already for that purpose, so yeah they could set that up by mandating backup power from the VoIP suppliers.
But since most people also have cellphones they could make the option to have batteries in it optional for subscribers so only those that don't have cells get them, to save cost.
It would need legislation though since AT&T for one is weasly and would not volunteer to spend money on it.
I don't foresee it happening unless the government somehow subsidizes it.
I'm in public safety, and for us it would mean a complete overhaul of our 911 communications center. That translates into mucho dinero that already struggling local governments don't have. Every PSAP (public safety answering point) across the nation would be forced into upgrading their hardware, while losing income that they collect from land lines.
I can see it now, vouchers issued to the PSAPs similar to the DTV transition for free equipment.....
In addition, I can't even begin to fathom the amount of E Waste this would generate.
@FrozenAsset
Why would anything have to change at 911 centers? I'm pretty sure it's already possible to call 911 via cell phone or VoIP.
@cdheer
Cellular technology forced PSAPs to buy the hardware to take the wireless calls. It began a transition away from older switchboard based phone systems to newer computer assisted phone systems. (which was great) Phase II compliance required them to then purchase either lat/long or GPS mapping software and the hardware to run it, in order to be capable of plotting the coordinates of the wireless call on a map. (very helpful) Most governments also developed a GIS department tasked with merging older cartography with newer databases and maintaining that database. Much of the costs (at least for the rural regions of our state) was offset through grants, funded by the federal and state governments with the maintenance subsidized for a few years. Areas with larger populations were able to cover the costs themselves, as they, inherently had larger budgets.
VoIP has it's own issues and being a relatively new technology, it is often hard to pinpoint what has gone wrong, when it does go wrong. Personally, based on from what I've experienced, I absolutely would NOT rely on it for making emergency calls. (We had a provider in our state that just couldn't figure out how to get 911 calls forwarded to the appropriate PSAP. It went on for months, with literally hundreds of ghost 911 calls and a few actual emergency calls being forwarded to us from a jurisdiction over 80 miles away. It took them about four months to solve the problem.) How is someone going to call 911 from a VoIP phone that relies on electricity if the power is out? Not everyone has their router, and/or gateway connected to a UPS. POTS is a 48v DC system with battery backup built in. (yes I know cordless phone systems don't work when the power is out either) Some VoIP providers don't even offer 911 service, Skype for example. http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-Why-the-FCC-is-targeting-VoIP-911-calls---page-2/2100-7352_3-5712788-2.html
Next Gen 911 is on the horizon. The goal is: "To enable the general public to make a 9-1-1 “call” (any real-time communication – voice, text, or video) from any wired, wireless, or IP-based device, and allow the emergency services community to take advantage of advanced call delivery and other functions through new internetworking technologies based on open standards." With this goal in mind, new equipment must be purchased, new standards, policies and procedures developed, and there will be an increase training costs and staffing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_9-1-1
My question is who is responsible for paying for all the new equipment?
Look, I'm all for broadband for the masses and I would LOVE to have “100 mbps broadband service”, but the granny down the street has probably had the same telephone number for 20+ years, and is probably part of the same crowd that thought her TV broke on June 12th. When the shit hits the fan, or disaster strikes, nothing can beat the simplicity of a regular phone and three buttons. Almost every structure in this country has a POTS jack, and law in many states requires any phone that has network access to be able to dial 911. All cellular phones can be used to dial 911 as well, regardless of subscription.
IMHO, if AT&T is committed to this, they should build the new infrastructure first while maintaining the old. They should then phase out the non-emergency portion of the old while turning it into a dumbed down version capable of emergency calls only. They'll also need to come up with some kind of way for whatever technology they implement to work in the event of a catastrophe, mass power outage, and ensure it is capable of emergency calls whether someone is a subscriber or not. They need to build a RELIABLE network capable of handling a huge increase in usage. The cellular SMS and MMS network in our area was overloaded just from New Years Eve, text messages were sporadic, if they did work they sometimes were resent over and over. If a huge catastrophe had occurred, and people were trying to get help through SMS alone, it would have been a nightmare. All this new technology should enhance the classic emergency 911 system, not replace it.
AT&T and other communications companies bilked every nickel out of an industry without reinvesting it into future technology. Now they want the FCC to let them off the hook, (no pun intended), scrap the old tech and help fund the new. Smell like the beginning of a bailout request?
A lot of you guys aren't grasping the concept. What will happen is the final mile, or copper loop will still be there. But once it hits the CO it will go over the internet/voip
Imagine your whole neighborhood is an asterisk network. Most companies have been doing this for some time now, its much cheaper than maintaining the old equipment.
You provision phone #'s as circuits
Dear AT&T:
We are in receipt of your request for something definitive in terms of eliminating landline regulation (read: your ability to get out of the landline business). Unfortunately, we feel hampered in answering your questions due to the absolutely for crap stability of your damned 3G network. Gosh, is it too much to ask to be able to actually have a stable and consistent signal (‘bars’ as you like to refer to it) in one’s own sticking home before suggesting the elimination of landline???? But maybe that’s just us??
Signed,
Your friends at the FTC
P.S. Initial research on which wireless carriers are benefiting from the elimination of landlines shows consumers moving AWAY from over-priced AT&T landline service to more reliable wireless carriers. Sorry about that.
Disclosure: AT&T wireless customer at $100 a month who (thanks to all the damned iPhones toys now poluting the 3G network) can't make a wireless call from his own home!!!! My AT&T landline is the only service I can rely on!!!!
Im not so sure this is a good idea
I read a news article a while ago about how it takes police too long to track a cell phone signal when an emergency call comes in because of the different cell phone towers a cell phone may use at one instant.
Landlines remain best when calling for emergencies if it is available.
The FCC should use this to leverage AT&T to roll out its broadband service. There are far too many places that need to use landlines because the only alternative is cellular. And in many cases, cellular cannot be taken seriously as an alternative. Make AT&T build a new boat before letting them off their sinking one. It's not like AT&T pays the fees for its customers.
@Garst
I should add that ANYWHERE that doesn't have alternative to switch to, then the phone company should have to maintain its presence. And by that I mean everywhere should have at least two options for service, and if by ending POTS it would be reduced back to one (I'm counting multiple VOIP options over a single carrier as only one option), then the phone company can't back out.