The company said in a statement to CBS13:
"Our application seeks approval from the CPUC to remove outdated regulations in California and to help the limited remaining landline consumers transition to modern, alternative services to replace their current outdated ones. All AT&T California customers will continue to receive their traditional landline services until an alternative service becomes available by AT&T or another provider."
I worked in the northern parts of California by Lake Tahoe a few years ago and let me tell you that is some rough country!! The terrain makes it hard to maintain copper cables, the birds pe-k into the cable, the rodents chew it up too! Our cabinets always had something living in them! Then there were the wildfires! Loved working up there was an adventure everyday but I can see how it is very expensive to pay for crews every year to be loaned out a few months to help out the locals!
AT&T is certainly not trying to abandon California, one of the biggest markets around. They are simply trying to ease the mandate of providing TDM phone service in rural areas where it is prohibitively expensive.
Bravo. Somebody who's paying attention.
This is all about provider of last resort obligations. Our competitors can ditch TDM, but the larger ILECs, originally built with the assistance of public-private partnerships are forced to provide TDM services as the provider of last resort.
Functionally, you have a lot of Government agencies that refuses to abandon the safety of passive central office battery power, and it's hard to blame them. The VA contracts include provisions for a certain number of POTS lines per location... the FAA powers remote NAV points in the middle of nowhere via central office battery, etc...
AT&T is certainly not trying to abandon California, one of the biggest markets around. They are simply trying to ease the mandate of providing TDM phone service in rural areas where it is prohibitively expensive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R8wBRSWDI4
Remember when Randall took over and stated “We are a wireless company”. However after the Tmob fiasco where the government stopped him from taking them out his ego got in the way. He needed to out Whitacre Whitacre. Decided to grow the company by becoming a huge media company which has driven us to the edge of bankruptcy. We weren’t going to be a d-mb pipe company. Funny thing is that on the wireline side that is now the plan.
They have been trying to discontinue regulated pots services for more than a decade. The issue is the govt, financial and emergency services doesn’t want to give up TDM services as their backups. It works very well most of the time but is now too expensive for the company to maintain since Randall purposely drove off most paying customers. It is a legacy product that is slowly dying but our intelligent leader thought old legacy passive income was bad so he ki-led it. Customers never gave it a thought and paid their monthly phone/internet bills until Randall came along.
Sadly, just a matter of time.
“ Time to dump CA. Just keep Wireless and Fiber.”
Verizon basically did this except they only kept the wireless. Basically sold everything else west of the Mississippi to Frontier. Good thing Frontier kept the fiber because there are very few customers left on copper (except in rural areas) since that transaction.
@cyp
or VOIP.
There is an article online for KY as well.
Time to dump CA. Just keep Wireless and Fiber.
“ to help the limited remaining landline consumers transition to modern, alternative services”
Company sure makes it sound like they view “wireline” as copper only.
“ All AT&T California customers will continue to receive their traditional landline services until an alternative service becomes available by AT&T or another provider."
You mean, a cell phone.