For some reason lately a reoccurring topic of conversation has been when and if the end of POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) will arrive? In talking with people who work in industry the feeling I got was that the end was a long ways away, mostly because land lines are everywhere, in every home, and with technological improvements ISP’s are planning to continue to increase the internet speeds available for serving the internet over DSL.
Part of my interest in this is close to home, I have family that work in the telecomm industry. Other interests arrived from a podcast of one of my favorite NPR programs, On Point, discussing the end of landlines. I also recently came across this article about AT&T asking the FCC to set a date to end land line service. I’m sure there is some game theoretical argument about why the FCC should shut down POTS rather than waiting for the market to take care of it, but I fail to see why the government should need to intervene in this case. I understand their intervention in the recent digital television conversion this year, but why the FCC should shut down POTS is beyond my understanding. It seems to me there is a great opportunity for someone somewhere to take advantage of this small but significant amount of bandwidth going to every home that will eventually go unused. Entrepreneurs of the world take note!
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Do you think that femtocells will lengthen the life of wireline connections? It seems that some carriers are trying to push into femtocells but I am not sure what they are using to connect those to their back-haul networks (wireline versus LTE/WiMax).
Good question Jas, I was just talking with someone at a major Telecomm company that has plans for femtocells in the home. I think this is definitely an example of a technology trying to use landlines in a 21st century application, to extend the reach of cell phones. While it may extend the use of landline connections, it is still a “bandaid” of extending cell phone coverage to the home, and once most homes are covered by wireless towers I don’t see how there is an extended market for femtocells. Femtocells target those who don’t have good cell phone coverage in their homes, primarily rural customers, however, rural customers are a rather unprofitable group and are somewhat of a niche in the market. If landlines get to the point where they are solely used by rural customers they will most likely be a high-cost to maintain and a low profit margin, thus not a great business strategy. Of course this is all “arm chair philosophy” of market predictions.
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