America’s Connected Future, which was launched this week by USTelecom–The Broadband Association, aims to drive understanding of the superiority of fiber-based digital infrastructure and the efficacy of reducing requirements for supporting legacy copper technology.
Much of the country already has transitioned away from copper. The press release said that almost 80 percent of Americans live in wireless-only households. Fewer than 5% of residential customers still have landlines that rely on copper, USTelecom said, with less than 2% relying upon it exclusively.
The goal of the program is to create awareness of what USTelecom said are outdated Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) and similar rules that mandate billions of dollars to be spent maintaining this antiquated copper infrastructure.
The goal of the new USTelecom program is to show consumers, businesses, civic leaders, and policymakers why maintaining legacy copper for the small portion of end users is not an efficient approach. A key part of this is explaining why modern technology is better. The USTelecom press announcing America’s Connected Future outlined four ways in which modern technology is superior:
- The consumer benefits of transitioning to modern networks include stronger reliability, resilience, and faster recovery after storms and outages
- Enhanced public safety features, including more precise 911 location data, and better protections against robocalls and caller ID spoofing
- The strong consumer protections in place at every step of the transition, including a commitment that no customer will be left without voice service
- Updating outdated regulatory requirements can unlock billions in investment for the modern infrastructure that powers economic growth and innovation
“The future is calling. Americans have answered it,” USTelecom President and CEO Jonathan Spalter said in a press release about the copper recommendations.
“America’s Connected Future is delivering the clear, fact-based message about what this transition means for real people: reliable voice service, stronger 911 capabilities, better protection from outages and theft, and smarter investment in the networks our communities depend on. We’re making progress but we have more work to do so that the rules catch up with reality — and no one will be left behind in the process.”
The updates to copper infrastructure that USTelecom is proposing seems to be aligned with the priorities of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in October aimed at examining the best ways of transitioning away from copper.
