AT&T: landline phone service must die; only question is when

In the heyday of the AT&T monopoly era, the telco’s legendary CEO John deButts had an acronym for the company’s main product. He christened it POTS, aka Plain Old Telephone Service, delivered over Ma Bell’s copper wire public switched telephone network (PSTN). A half-century later, AT&T says it’s time for POTS to die, and it wants the Federal Communications Commission to schedule its funeral.

POTS and PSTN are “relics of a by gone era,” AT&T wrote to the FCC just before the holidays. “Due to technological advances, changes in consumer preference, and market forces, the question is when, not if, POTS service and the PSTN over which it is provided will become obsolete.” The company says it wants the agency to solicit public comments for “a firm deadline for the phaseout” of both, “and it should ask what that deadline should be.”