textually.org: 'The telephone network is obsolete': Get ready for the all-IP telco

January 8, 2013

'The telephone network is obsolete': Get ready for the all-IP telco

AT&T wants to get rid of obsolete PSTN equipment, and those pesky FCC rules, reports arstechnica.

Two months ago, AT&T petitioned the FCC to plan for the retirement of traditional phone networks and transition to what AT&T sees as an inevitability: the all-IP telco.

AT&T had been discussing the transition internally, spurred on by the FCC's own suggestion that the Public Switched Telephone Network might be ripe for death somewhere around 2018.

... Although going all-IP signals the death of traditional telephone networks, Hank Hultquist, VP of AT&T's federal regulatory division, believes Internet Protocol-based networks will give voice calls a higher quality and greater importance. He looks forward to the integration of voice throughout the Web, something that is already happening with the likes of Skype on Facebook and Google Hangouts.