NASUCA: Telephone Network Not Dead Yet

The one set of issues which demands a response is the assertion of AT&T regarding the public switched telephone network ("PSTN") that "[f]oremost on the Commission's agenda for enabling private investment to facilitate widespread deployment of broadband infrastructure should be the elimination of regulatory requirements that divert resources from broadband to the PSTN." Those regulations include carrier-of-last-resort ("COLR") regulations, unbundling requirements, and all federal support for the PSTN. Indeed, AT&T would do away with all state regulation of telephone service. The PSTN that AT&T claims is obsolete, is not disappearing. The key point that AT&T willfully ignores is that there are not two networks, one PSTN and one IP-enabled. They are both the same network.