Getting serious about eliminating landline

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Try as they might, telcos can't shake their reputations as landline voice service providers.

Even embracing new identities as video service providers has not helped. Wall Street continues to focus on the dwindling portion of their business that is landline voice, while one group of consumers continues to cut the cord and another much smaller group of consumers pleads not to have their cords cut. The latter group is coming into the spotlight again, as AT&T and other providers have been working at the state level in places such as Wisconsin and Illinois to have their regulatory requirements to offer landline voice lessened or eliminated. AT&T also asked the Federal Communications Commission last year to make the sun set faster on landline.

Various reports have suggested than only 20% or fewer of U.S. residential customers rely exclusively on landline telephony, a percentage that is no doubt shrinking even as we speak. Telcos might cite that figure to support their arguments for eliminating landline regulatory requirements, but regulators at neither the state nor federal level appear ready to do that—so loudly does that small constituency of under-privileged consumers speak. Not all those consumers are underprivileged, of course. Some are cranky luddites, and others are just plain scared of having to rely on voice over IP or cellular quality.


Getting serious about eliminating landline