AT&T Wants To Get Rid Of Analog Landlines

Tweet

Communications giant AT&T wants to get rid of landlines. The phone empire sent a 32-page filing to the American FCC, asking that regulations that make it support an analog landline phone network be phased out, allowing them to go entirely with VOIP-provided phone service. This could be troublesome for the 1 in 5 Americans who don’t use a cell phone or VOIP line, and still use the old fashioned landline.

AT&T’s report doesn’t mention anything about those Americans, or the other 33% of Americans who have access to broadband services but don’t bother with broadband internet or VOIP-powered phone service. AT&T is claiming that the cost of maintaining a landline network is hurting their business, and with the rise of cell phones and VOIP phone service, there is little customer need for them to continue providing landlines (oh, except for the 20% of Americans who don’t have a cell phone or VOIP access).

AT&T did provide some interesting stats though. From 2000 to 2008, the usage of their landline service has dropped 42%, and revenue from the landline service has dropped 27%. AT&T says that 18 million Americans use VOIP phone service, and that by the end of next year, 24 million will use VoIP powered phone service. AT&T doesn’t say that the most common VoIP providers at a local level in the US are cable companies, and that AT&T is missing out on some profits here.

So far, the FCC has been reluctant to mess with any sort of landline regulations, but AT&T is a political giant that spends millions on political lobbyists every year.