Chris Friesen wrote:
George wrote:

As a subscriber you buy a service. If you buy dial tone service I
don't see why it would matter if it were provisioned on copper or
fiber. Or in the case of DSL you are buying broadband data. Why would
it matter to you if it came via DSL on copper or over fiber?

Power outage.

Copper phone lines provide electrical power (driven by central
generators) so you can still use simple phones when the power goes out.

Fiber to the home means you're relying on battery-backup.

I lived on the East coast during the big blackout, had no power for a
few days. Some people were without power for multiple weeks....I'm
guessing their battery backup won't power the phones for that long.

Chris

You can address that but adding your own UPS. The phone company pretty
much has to do what they are doing and it is a good thing. If they don't
build out fiber and add services the cable companies will take their
core business away because they can offer VoIP over their existing cable
system.

Consider what sort of (non) competitive situation it would be if cable
companies were the only providers.