Goodbye Landlines, Hello Digital Calling: FCC Tells AT&T
By Todd Shields Jan 30, 2014 10:28 AM CT
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will let telephone companies led by AT&T Inc. conduct trials of digital services, in a step toward loosening rules written for copper-wire networks in the fast-fiber age.“We today invite service providers to propose voluntary experiments” to deliver service in areas exclusively using Internet-style technology, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said as the agency voted 5-0 to clear the way for carriers to conduct regional experiments replacing their traditional phone lines.AT&T, the largest U.S. phone company, in 2012 asked the commission to approve the trial runs. Some requirements to provide connections to smaller companies should be eliminated after switching to a new system, leaving minimal federal regulation, AT&T said in an FCC filing. It said the transition “raises a number of novel and likely contentious issues.”Last year Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) bowed to consumer complaints on New York’s Fire Island over its replacement of storm-damaged copper phone lines with wireless service, and decided to rebuild with fiber-optic circuits instead.Verizon, the second-largest U.S. phone company, had sought to establish that it could replace its copper phone lines with wireless service in places where it’s more expensive to install the fiber-optic lines.Technology transitions are happening, Wheeler said in a December blog post.“These experiments are therefore designed to identify in advance issues that must be resolved -– and their solutions -– so that consumers can continue to rely on the networks that connect them,” Wheeler said in the post.
By Todd Shields Jan 30, 2014 10:28 AM CT
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will let telephone companies led by AT&T Inc. conduct trials of digital services, in a step toward loosening rules written for copper-wire networks in the fast-fiber age.“We today invite service providers to propose voluntary experiments” to deliver service in areas exclusively using Internet-style technology, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said as the agency voted 5-0 to clear the way for carriers to conduct regional experiments replacing their traditional phone lines.AT&T, the largest U.S. phone company, in 2012 asked the commission to approve the trial runs. Some requirements to provide connections to smaller companies should be eliminated after switching to a new system, leaving minimal federal regulation, AT&T said in an FCC filing. It said the transition “raises a number of novel and likely contentious issues.”Last year Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) bowed to consumer complaints on New York’s Fire Island over its replacement of storm-damaged copper phone lines with wireless service, and decided to rebuild with fiber-optic circuits instead.Verizon, the second-largest U.S. phone company, had sought to establish that it could replace its copper phone lines with wireless service in places where it’s more expensive to install the fiber-optic lines.Technology transitions are happening, Wheeler said in a December blog post.“These experiments are therefore designed to identify in advance issues that must be resolved -– and their solutions -– so that consumers can continue to rely on the networks that connect them,” Wheeler said in the post.
