[SBE] Verizon says it will do away with traditional phone, lines in 7 years

[Andy Funk]

Verizon has already done away with maintenance of their copper, POTS 
infrastructure -- at least where I am.

For over five years, my dad has had trouble with the phone line at his 
house every time it rains more than a sprinkle.  Verizon told him there 
were no good, spare pairs in the trunk cable to the neighborhood, they 
weren't installing replacement copper, and there was nothing he could do 
about it.  After moving in with my dad a couple of months ago, this 
became the situation for me, too.  Our options:  live with it, or switch 
to FIOS fiber to the home.

Well, the Cablevision HDTV here is so bandwidth compressed that I 
already was planning to switch us to FIOS for video, so we ended up 
going with FIOS for phone and internet as well.  The services are good, 
but I'm old-school -- I want my phone service power to be backed-up 
fully by the telco central office's batteries.  That's one reason I 
won't depend on my cell phone at home.  While FIOS has its own battery 
back-up system for the phone service, it's good for 8-12 hours, so I'll 
be installing a UPS ahead of the FIOS power connection.



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