Evslin: No more landlines under Obama

VoIP guru Tom Evslin is predicting the death of copper landlines by the end of Barak Obama's first term. We aren't sure if he's a little too bearish on the subject.

Evslin recites the current trends that young people are all cell phone all the time, while the middle aged people are going with cable triple-play bundles and canceling their telco copper services. Meanwhile, Verizon has simply sold all of its legacy copper infrastructure in three northern New England states to FairPoint. Meanwhile, FairPoint, like Verizon and AT&T, continues to lose access lines. And to top it all off, Verizon is busy replacing copper with fiber, starting with its most lucrative markets.

Loss of copper is going to provoke a number of public policy problems; Evslin is predicting an implosion with medium-sized phone operators who have copper that sounds a lot like Detroit and car manufacturing (i.e. Declining revenue base, bankruptcy, implosion, doom). There's also the whole "What do we do with the Universal Service Fund?" issue to support broadband.

The solution to all this is cheap cell phone and broadband access, maybe through the same device. USF needs to go to subsidizing connectivity, not voice service.

For more:
- Seeking Alpha seeks controversy over the death of wireline. Article [1].