[EvanAnderson]

The telco wiring in my area (Western Ohio) is a mess. I see pedestals with the cans broken open and splices exposed all over. The ILEC in my area (Frontier) is bankrupt, but the non-bankrupt ILECs in surrounding areas are doing no better with basic maintenance.

I get angry when I see it, thinking about the history of free easements, tax abatement, subsidy, and other favorable treatment that the telcos received, historically, and how they can leave this perfectly serviceable infrastructure to rot.

[simfree]

Copper facilities across the USA are past their design life. The cables themselves might be usable (if water intrusion has not happened, which is a big if), but the splice cases, splices and hardware on either end of the cable is often not doing well.

Frontier bought assets from Verizon knowing full well they were going to ride this infrastructure until it was worthless while investing as little as possible. It is no surprise the copper plant has rotted on the poles, they treated their copper and fiber plants like trash in nearly every part of their territory.

[Aloha]

Frontier did actually surprisingly invest lots of money into their copper plant, but the copper plant had been all but ignored from the the point Bell Atlantic bought GTE.

[jollyllama]

Telco wiring is decaying here in Western PA; signal quality and reliability gets worse every year. Customer service is nonexistent, "why won't you switch to VOIP/4G?"