"Peter" wrote in message
...
On 11/6/2012 1:12 PM, wrote:
On Saturday, November 3, 2012 12:14:34 AM UTC-4,
wrote:
They call this progress.

Phone companies are not charities. They are losing money on copper land
line service, so they either go out of business and leave you with NO
phone service at all, or they switch to something that they can market,
namely FIOS. Then they can upsell you for broadband Internet service.

Copper land line service is no good if the generators powering the
switching equipment run out of fuel, or are flooded, or get knocked over
by an earthquake too...

If Verizon was making so much money with FIOS, they would be pushing it
into the majority of the country where it remains unavailable. The reason
VZ stopped building out FIOS service is because it has not been profitable
for them. However, as far as overall profits are concerned, have you
checked the annual reports of the major TELCOs? Almost all of the them
are making money hand over fist.

I'm getting into politics now but I consider phone service to be a
national security asset, which should not be an "unregulated" private
enterprise. I believe it should be heavily regulated, if not downright
managed by the government, just as I believe should be the post office.
the railroads, the airlines, and the energy utilities. It seems to me
that when those assets were heavily regulated or even government run, back
in the 1940s - 1980s, it didn't stop this nation from growing the largest
and financially strongest middle class in world history. Is it only a
coincidence that the market instability and closing of opportunities for
upward mobility in our society has coincided with progressive deregulation
of those same assets?

The test is going on right now. Conventional telephone service is highly
regulated; cell phone service much less so.

I'm wondering what would happen if regulations were to be removed from
conventional service. I'll guess that subscrber prices would rise rapidly
and traditional companies would exit asap. However, clever new companies
might well figure out how to keep the copper around if there were fewer
regulations.

Tomsic