I see now that your proposal is: since our communications are being
> decoupled from the copper wire anyway (or at the very least the low
> band part of it), we should not remove (on this point, see another
> posting about Verizon's FiOS offering and copper) or allow it to
> decay, but use it as dedicated conduit for "utility" services like
> 911, alarms etc. Anything which is first location dependent and then
> customer dependent as opposed to the other way around.
That's a fair enough summary.
It's quite interesting so let's disregard any marginal issues. Perhaps
> someone with a better understanding of the maintenance costs for the
> copper loop can hazard a guess if these offerings could possibly make
> enough money so as to sustain themselves (i.e. pay for the service
> including loop maintenance and extension to new housing) without tax
> subsidies. It seems to me that this is the central issue if one was to
> decide such a policy shift.
Also a fair statement -- and the reason I tried to think of multiple services (like home security systems, services for the elderly, remote meter reading) for which people or companies will (and currently do) pay repeated monthly charges.
Note that minimal basic telephone service can currently be obtained for something in the range of $10/month, give or take (although I don't know how much subsidy is in that number). Suppose the telco didn't have to provide the telephone service, handle the switching of calls, do the billing, all that stuff -- just provide and maintain a bare wire. Wouldn't take much in the way of services to support that monthly cost.
If we want to solve the location problem, why not do it in the
> broadband world?
Because it just seems to be intrinsically rather hard and complicated to do it on the broadband packet-based system -- whereas the hardwired approach seems (to me anyway) in many ways simpler, easier, more reliable, and more effective.