[_jal]

> landlines as a reliable emergency line

Unfortunately, carriers are letting POTS rot.

It is arguably unreliable now in some places. My grandmother's land line (semi-rural Ohio) goes out every few months and it usually takes a week or so for them to fix it. When we talked to them at one point, they suggested she get a cell phone.

Just another example of how planning for quarterly reports causes massive value destruction.

[EvanAnderson]

Came here to say the same thing. Funnily enough I'm in semi-rural Ohio. I see POTS infrastructure all over the place being neglected. Boxes are open to the elements. Spliced cables are just laying out on the ground.

I can only imagine the ghosts of old-school telco linemen rolling in their graves over this.

I keep meaning to do a deep-dive into public utility regulation here to see if the incumbent telcos are required to maintain that infrastructure. I'd actually have fun going out and photographing/geotagging damaged infrastructure if a court would actually compel the telco to do something about it.

[Analemma_]

There are plenty of examples of companies shooting themselves in the foot by only looking at the short term, but this doesn’t seem like one of them. It’s not like investment in POTS is going to pay off in the long run: rural America is depopulating, most households are becoming cellphone only, etc. There’s no positive ROI for POTS out in the countryside no matter what time horizon you look at.

The actual fix here is that we have to take a hard look and really decide if this is something worth keeping around. If it is, it needs massive ongoing subsidies. The market alone won’t fix it, because the economics simply aren’t there.

[kevin_thibedeau]

This isn't just a rural problem. I live in a city that is home base to a major regional telco. They wouldn't deploy fiber and let their copper rot. I had 4Mb DSL some years back that went bad so I was moved to a new pair that could only manage 2Mb despite being relatively close to the CO. These companies DGAF.

[KerrAvon]

Telcos have been given free resources from the government for decades to maintain rural infrastructure. ROI never entered into in the first place.