Time to speak up about poor rural phone service

[Commentary] In an age where even kiddies have cellphones and all the world seems “connected,” folks in rural areas are living in a slightly different world of dropped phone calls, calls that don’t ring, garbled sound and static. It’s a nasty side effect of the digital world that has propelled America away from the old world of copper wire and land lines into a new era of massive links of telephone, cellular, wireless and cable. Those links are not necessarily as reliable as the old systems and the pressure to keep costs down is pushing long distance providers and wireless companies to contract with third party “least-cost routing” services to trim expenses. Better oversight and stiffer enforcement by the Federal Communications Commission are needed to remedy the phone ills in rural America.