Simon Says wrote on Mar 31, 2014, 16:09:
Want to ged rid of POTS? No problem, fiber for everyone. Huh? What you saying? Not profitable enough compared to wireless? Everyone will get wireless with ridiculous data caps at 10 to 100 times the price on monthly bandwidth we have now and shoddy connection stability?
Fiber, POTS or GTFO!
Cynicism aside, the telcos aren't wrong. POTS usage is rapidly declining - we're already at the point where 30% of homes don't even have POTS - and the remaining customers aren't making heavy use of it as they once did. Which means the cost of infrastructure as a percentage of total revenue increases year after year, which definitely does impact profitability. POTS and its reliability is very expensive to deliver, which was fine when it was heavily utilized but is a problem when it no longer is.
Ultimately it's going to end up in a tailspin where rates have to go up to pay for the infrastructure, causing more people to leave, rise & repeat. Understandably, the telcos don't want to be operating these networks at a loss. And they especially don't want to be building out POTS (e.g. laying down new lines in Sandy-damaged communities), as the odds are they will never recover the costs of the infrastructure build out.
FiOS isn't much better, sadly. Verizon still hasn't made back their investment on that. FiOS is as similarly expensive as POTS (if not more so depending on how we're doing the accounting) and has the advantage of being a more capable transport, making it possible to sell more services over it. However the subscription rate for FiOS is too low, which is why Verizon stopped that build out. Not enough customers were willing to pay to switch to it.
At the moment most consumers are happy with CATV + cellular. CATV is already in the ground (and already hooked up in many cases), which means consumers don't have to pay for infrastructure and CableCos in turn aren't facing a huge build out to finance. And in between points of cable, consumers' buying habits show that they're satisfied with cellular for voice and light data usage. Meanwhile since Telcos can't justify building new infrastructure, they have to double-down on the one thing they do have, which is cellular.
Cellular is not a very good solution, and I complete agree the current situation sucks for people who do want bandwidth. But cellular does well enough by consumer standards that consumers will never use POTS in volume again, so POTS' days are numbered. Once the copper degrades, that's going to be it. And in the meantime no one is going to build out fiber until someone comes up with a service that can't be provided over CATV coax, as consumers seem unwilling to pay for the cost despite the current benefits.