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Verizon Workers Can Now Be Fired If They Fix Copper Phone Lines (arstechnica.com)
Verizon has told its field technicians in Pennsylvania that they can be fired if they try to fix broken copper phone lines. Instead, employees must try to replace copper lines with a device that connects to Verizon Wireless's cell phone network, ArsTechnica reports. From the article:This directive came in a memo from Verizon to workers on September 20. "Failure to follow this directive may result in disciplinary action up to and including dismissal," the memo said. It isn't clear whether this policy has been applied to Verizon workers outside of Pennsylvania. The memo and other documents were made public by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union, which asked the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to put a stop to the forced copper-to-wireless conversions. The wireless home phone service, VoiceLink, is not a proper replacement for copper phone lines because it doesn't work with security alarms, fax machines, medical devices such as pacemakers that require telephone monitoring, and other services, the union said.
Although this seems to formalize a policy, the reality is that the various telephone companies have been cutting budgets for maintenance of copper phone lines, switching stations, and networks for many years. Ask anybody who has a business need for POTS lines about how hard it is to get any problems with them corrected--it's basically impossible. If you fight with them long enough and ward off enough attempts to be switched to a VoiP service to replace the broken lines, they'll trigger a "truck roll" and then tell you "it's all good" when it's clearly not "all good."
For example, every one of our remote sites we have a POTS line for the times when (not if, when) the main internet access is offline, taking the VPN to access that facility from HQ offline as well. I have a POTS line at each that I can dial-up to and remotely administer things. Guess how much fun it is to discover a noisy line with a modem? (Hint: Not fun.) Guess how even much more fun it is to discover you have a noisy line at a site in the middle of the only time of year you ever need to use that POTS line, during the Internet outage at that site? (Hint: Super-not-fun.)
Who did what now?
Basically, not only is Verizon abandoning the copper cable plant that they built and were expected to maintain because they accepted government money to build it and maintain it in the first place, but they are also involuntarily switching customers from a Public Utility Commission regulated utility to an unregulated one that lacks features of the land line service. I'm absolutely sure that the obvious illegality of this has been appropriately muted by well applied lobbying and campaign dollars to the appropriate local and state politicians right?
This is troublesome. In Philadelphia, we have a major problem in many neighborhoods with metal theft. People rip open copper cables they can reach from the ground and steal them. I've had to have long calls with Verizon technicians in the past to get them to repair these when it happens. It's often been an issue they won't run the cable anywhere it wasn't run previously, so I can't get them to run it such that it is less likely to get stolen.
Now I see them surprising site managers with setting this stuff up. We need the POTS lines for fire alarm systems; we experimented with wireless internet services in the past but found them badly wanting. I'm nervous the lines going down in bad weather would set off alarms. Also, I have never proved it, but I think sometimes people running equipment with a jamming effect drive around in the neighborhoods. Most of our small offices I have setup to be 100% wired because of random monthly periods where all wireless stops working for a few minutes.
The native New Hampshire people want you to fucking quit polluting their state with stupid.
A voip line from a cable company isn't a land line. A land line is a hunk of copper that doesn't go dead when the power goes out. I am 40 years old, and I have NEVER had a landline outage.
The cordless phones and phones like that need power from the outlet in order to work. That's why one should keep an extremely cheap, no-frills phone on hand in case there's an emergency so that there is something that will work with the landline if nothing else does.
Because corporations are more sophisticated now. They realize they can take government subsidies for rolling out internet infrastructure and, when they don't actually deliver, there are no consequences.
By all means, make Trump the first into our Emperor by refusing to do what is necessary
Pretty much your choice is Do for Hillary, or do TO America