FCC planning telco funerals, or another excuse to fleece the public??

Was reading the latest FCC advisories for the funeral of the conventional telco network aka PSTN (thanks to Matt):
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2011/07/tac-to-fcc-set-a-date-certain-for-the-end-of-the-pstn.html

They are actually coming up with a plan to actively shut down the PSTN in the next 7 years, because they say VoIP is causing obsolescence and telcos are loosing money.

WHAT A BUNCH OF LIES - revenue/infrastructure has in no way decreased since the 1980s - when there was no such thing as monthly ISP fees or monthly cellular subscriptions and SMS - 1985-1995 was a windfall of revenue growth for communications providers - and these days with smart phone data plans - another windfall.

From a time when every household had 1 land line, to now being every human being having a cellular phone (sometimes 2) and households having broadband, and even personal broadband subscriptions for every person, they have driven revenues up %1000 minimum.

They talk like general nationwide copper connectivity was only achieved in the last decade - another exaggeration - the same locations that used copper for dialtone 20 years ago, are now using copper for data connectivity, and often times in residential settings at a higher cost.

VoIP networks are being implemented to *simulate* POTS (Plain old telephone service), not be an *incompatible* competition.

- When steam trains got replaced by diesel trains did the track owners deny steam operators from getting on the track 7 years later?? - obviously the train industry has nearly died because of poor steam management.

- copper lines are still a necessity since it provides the best performing broadband connection method at the lowest cost, and with fiber coming in at much higher monthly fees, they are more than paying for their network, and will continue to.

They talk about USF fees drying up because of VoIP - WHAT A JOKE and UTTER LIE!!!! I run a VoIP business, in 2006 the FCC mandated USF collections upon all VoIP providers as well, some users slide past this, but the greater majority are paying the fee.

The argument of maintenance costs - WEAK - obviously telco networks dont run themselves, but -get real- the telcos have implemented a high rate of automation, especially to automate failover, and besides that, class 5 equipment is built to have a much longer life span - its not like a PC and you have to get a new one every 3 years. Their biggest cost is more than likely billing disputes - not maintenance! Building the network to bring on new customers and new features is an obvious cost - and if they want to build more revenue, they will do this.

There has been talk of rebuilding the whole nations infrastructure to replace the PSTN - this is NOT a requirement - they should simply take the USF fees which keep going up, and use it to build up / enhance those so called back country telcos that have been subsidized all these years to bring them up to current standards to provide either voice or data and let customers choose - data services are typically at a premium to customers, obviously the costs are being taken care of so far.

They talk about PSTN dieing in the next 7 years - they should really just let it go naturally of its own accord, and get the small minority of deficient telcos prepared for the migration - sadly grannies with land lines will give them up when they die, which will not be in the next 7 years - the next 15-20 years might be more realistic - at which time a better technology will probably be available at a far lower expense.

So far there is no true acceptance of peer-to-peer free communication - even though we are completely capable of it, so far the world at large is being fleeced by marketing pigs saying that we need "Enterprise VoIP", and that we need to pay big money for it, just because it has "Enterprise" in front of it. Skype is a poor excuse of peer to peer communication.

Today I have a small customer of 12 users paying $1200/month for a so called Enterprise VoIP solution over T1 - a technology created almost 40 years ago (someone does have wool in their eyes) - and these people say they can change this in a mere 7 years?? People wont get their heads out of marketing's dark @$$ long enough to see what VoIP really is.

This all sounds more like another way to let the sharks bleed us while our government herds us in for slaughter - ie a premium to talk to the rest of the world that has not standardized on government VoIP, or taxes on our packets - or like the DTV conversion - many tried to scare people into spending money.