Humor Templates 1: Chattanooga Choo-Choo
We Will Disappear (Part 3): What will they make of us?

Promises Broken: Copperpocalypse Redux

(length warning)

I have already warned you about the disastrous consequence of eliminating copper-based landline telephony (or POTS as aficionados refer to it―Plain Old Telephone Service). I won’t repeat those cogent and valid arguments here.

Let me blog-roll in a good discussion of the issue from Baker on Tech: Phones can’t go to POT(s) anymore!

This is another case of a broken promise. We, the people, gave the railroads 11 million acres in California alone, in exchange for the promise of passenger service in perpetuity. With the help of the supine federal Interstate Commerce Commission, we lost the passenger service and the railroads kept the land, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They didn’t keep their end of the promise. I want the land/money back.

AT&T has asked the California Public Utilities Commission to roll over and play dead, allowing AT&T to pull every inch of copper in the state, stop repairing existing lines, and refuse to install any new ones. The pretense phase of the hearing―excuse me―the comment phase―is a mere bump in the road on the way to allowing AT&T to abandon every Californian in a rural area, all those who live in areas with crap Internet service (usually the poor), and those who have no reliable cellphone reception (like me: hilly terrain).

The state will thus join such stalwarts of consumer protection as Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota in its craven capitulation to the corporation that co-owns it (along with the state’s other utilities).

Alas, those affected will either go uninformed about the “comment period” or uninformed about the consequences.

Why yes, this does infuriate me.

Find a professional examination of the issue here.

Here’s where the broken promise comes in. We gave AT&T and its successors a century of monopoly profits in exchange for providing universal service. We should ask for some of that money back. AT&T has cocked its snoot at the idea of universal service; who knows how many Californians will now be communication-free, and in danger for their lives in case of disasters and power outages. Landlines work in disasters. Cellphones don’t.

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