It used to be that your phone was actually wired into a wall. There weren’t any wireless devices the size of your palm, or smaller, that could fit in your back pocket. Many folks have now dumped their old landlines for cellphones, but that’s far from universal — especially for miles and miles of rural Texas — where the old-fashioned landline is a lifeline; people without wireless service, or in the midst of a disaster, still use what we think of as the old dinosaur phone.
Thursday the Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on a plan which would determine whether phone companies have to notify their customers three months in advance disconnecting copper wire service from customers. For businesses, that would be six months. So is the FCC giving up on landlines? Or is this really about phone companies wanting to get out of a business that’s lost its profitability?
Jon Brodkin is a reporter with Ars Technica, a technology news site. He joins the Standard to answer our questions.
Listen to the audio above.
