Fairpoint files for Chapter 11

[Alan Johnson]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 6:29 PM, Dan Miller <rambi.dev at gmail.com> wrote:

> It would be a win-win for Verizon. No cost of rolling out fiber for a
> year, receive thousands of dollars from a sell-buy of landlines in New
> England. And don't forget more customers.
>

Verizon sold their copper to get away from a toxic asset.  Even if it were
free, it would be more trouble than it is worth.  Fiber (Or Fibre for you
Vikings fans) only makes sense in sufficiently dense areas.  Verizon is
sitting on the areas they can make good profits rolling out fiber and
dumping the rest of the aging, under maintained copper as fast as they can
find suckers to buy it.  They know as well as anyone that wireless is
arbitrarily more profitable to provide all the residential services and most
of the business services they could ever want to offer.

1/5th of the people in the US don't even have landlines any more, and on the
flip side 1/5th only have land lines.  Personally, I've only got a Comcast
phone myself because it only added $5 to my bill when bundled with Internet
and it offers a little bit of piece of mind having a backup phone with
little kids in the house.

In another decade, landlines will be obsolete and voice will not be sold as
if it is anything other than just another data service.  Verizon's only
obstacle is in slowing this down enough and pretending like it is not true
long enough to find enough suckers to buy the copper plant without enough
density for a pure-bits fiber play.  Sprint cut the cord, so to speak, a
long time ago, and AT&T is close.  A few POTS company still don't get it,
but they'll learn one way or another eventually.

Cable companies have a similar problem.  They can't make a profit without
preimum services, you're not going to get people to pay for "premium" when
they can get it all on the Internet cheaper or free.  Wireless is the only
cost effective way to deliver pure-bits.  Premium services are soon to be
gone, but they are whipping that horse as hard as they can because they
don't have anything else.  Even Fiber has this same problem.  Unless you are
in major metros with enough density to be profitable in bits only, these
systems need premium service to survive as well.

In 5-10 years, when I can pay $50-100/mo for my entire family to have a
personal data device with a 10Mbps connection that doubles as a wifi access
point (all available now in some areas for a little more money), then there
is just no reason for me to pay for any other services.  I'm expecting this
to happen where I live, and I'm in Vermont.  An odd part of Vermont with
access to a Sprint tower, but Vermont nonetheless. =)
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