Comment Verizon sucks anyway (Score 1) 142
Until a few years ago, when an ice storm pulled the entire bundle of POTS lines off the pole, we still had a copper pair attached to our house. It was nearly $80 month for a dialtone. When I called verizon (not the cell provider, but the entity formerly known as "New England Telephone") and told them they'd need a construction crew, they sent a tech to our house who said "I'll have to see about sending a construction crew." He said it in a tone that made me think that no crew would be forthcoming; there are only 4 houses past us on that line of poles. About a month later I called and cancelled, and was cheerfully given a refund for the time without service. The POTS bundle is still sitting on the ground next to the pole.
Since the DSL available to us was 768k at best, we already had *grumble* comcast *grumble* internet and a voip phone as well (we are *still* in a cell dead zone most of the time from the other verizon & t-mobile, but at&t mostly works) but the pots line gave some (very expensive) redundancy. Good riddance and fuck you very much Verizon, though it still makes me a little nervous that we have only one wire-line provider and that cell phones only sort of work on our property. If I go outside I can usually get a 4G connection, but that lasts for only about 30 minutes in an extended power outage (apparently they only have a small UPS on the cell tower's internet access?) which we have once a year or so. We're in a rural area, but c'mon, that's the best we can do? Comcast at least seems to keep their lines alive during an extended electric outage, and we have a generator, but still, this is the 21st century? Fuck flying cars and jetpacks, I want reliable telecommunications!
We have neighbors across town that still have twisted-pair phone lines, and verizon is clearly not maintaining them since there is often static and echo when talking to them from their landlines, and any attempts to get them to address the issues are rebuffed. I know for a fact that the switch in our CO was installed in 1991 (that's when we got touch-tone and 10-number dialing) and received upgrades for ADSL, way-back-when, but will probably never be replaced. It's sitting on top of the ancient giant mechanical switch that it replaced.
I would expect this to start happening even in the burbs soon, if it hasn't already, where the remnants of the incumbent copper provider(s) just let their infrastructure crumble and die, though at least there, they're replacing them with fiber. Our small town will probably never get fiber, unless we do it ourselves. I'd bet there are places in the USA right now that have no internet access at all except from a cell tower or satellite, even though they used to at least have dial-up. I wonder if the FCC will let them consider starlink a "functional alternative service"...