“While broadband usage — and the importance of broadband to Americans’ lives — is growing every day, the business model for legacy phone services is in a death spiral,” AT&T wrote in its proposal. AT&T noted that more than 25 percent of households have given up traditional phone service (known as POTS for “plain old telephone service”) in favor of wireless or VOIP. “The high costs associated with the maintenance and operation of the legacy network are diverting valuable resources that could be used to expand broadband access and to improve the quality of broadband service,” AT&T said.
The proposal did not provide details about how the proposed transition would occur, instead urging the FCC to request input from stakeholders on a wide range of topics, including what type of phone would be used and how it would connect. And because critical factors such as network reliability and backup power were not detailed in the proposal, the alarm industry is unclear on whether millions of alarm systems that currently rely on traditional phone service would continue to function if AT&T’s proposal were to be adopted.