----- Original Message -----
From: "Måns Nilsson" <mansaxel@besserwisser.org>
Maintaining copper plant is expensive. It will be retired as soon as buy-in on FTTH is high enough. Telia Sonera is doing it in Sweden, so the trend is global. (OTOH, in Sweden, young people moving out from their parents, if they can find somewhere to rent, usually only get a fixed connection for Internet access. Telephony is all mobile.)
Absolutely: maintaining analog copper last-mile is expensive. But let us not conflate being ok with telcos replacing analog copper last-mile with being ok with telcos replacing PCM with VoIP, especially in trunking applications, and *especially* using non-dedicated backbones, as these are the directions the RBOCs appear to be going in, and those are much less acceptable ideas than the former. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274