Guys, don't freak out. Local wired telephony is regulated at the state
level. It's a utility. Regardless of what I WANT to do with the network,
you all vote for the politicians that make the rules.
The Telco is regulated, beyond belief. It's not just the FCC, it's every
local and state government down sometimes to city and county level.
I can't just decide that my ROI is unfavorable with POTS. Although it
frankly is. I'm forced to provide it by regulation. And to add insult to
injury, I'm forced to sell unbundled, and bundled network elements to
competing providers at bargain basement rates.
That's right, I built it and I maintain it and I have to give it away at a
loss to CLECs. I have one large customer that always orders from me to get
the service delivered. Thirty days later they port the lines out to a CLEC.
They can do that, under FCC regulations.
I get NOTHING out of that in ROI. And, I have to maintain it all at cut
rate prices.
So it's easy to figure that if I don't want to die as a business, I'm going
to have to get cracking on this optical network. Those same FCC rules say I
don't have to share access like I have to do with POTS.
So if you were in my position what would you do.
Probably you'd sell off as much of the network where you had low to negative
returns as you could and concentrate on your core properties.
That isn't to say POTS is going away. It isn't. But get used to the idea
that it isn't going to be twisted pair for much longer.
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