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<h3><b><br>
AT&T Says "The Telephone Network is
Obsolete"</b></h3><font size=2>Two months ago, AT&T petitioned
the Federal Communications Commission to plan for the retirement of
traditional phone networks. The petition is available at
<a href="http://www.att.com/Common/about_us/files/pdf/fcc_filing.pdf">
http://www.att.com/Common/about_us/files/pdf/fcc_filing.pdf</a>.
<br><br>
"This telephone network we've grown up with is now an obsolete
platform, or at least a rapidly obsolescing platform," Hank
Hultquist, VP of AT&T's federal regulatory division, said. "It
will not be sustainable for the indefinite future. Nobody's making this
network technology anymore. It's become more and more difficult to find
spare parts for it. And it's becoming more and more difficult to find
trained technicians and engineers to work on it."<br><br>
"Voice is the most efficient way to communicate," he said.
"We have had the same voice service for 80 years. The voice quality
you get when you make a call on the iPhone today is the same voice
quality Bell Laboratories thought you should have in 1933. Shift forward
80 years, we're still using the same frequency response, 300 to
3300Hz." <br><br>
You can read more in the <i>ars technica</i> web site at
<a href="http://goo.gl/Mlnqm">http://goo.gl/Mlnqm</a>.</font><font size=3>
<br><br>
Marianne Granoff<br>
Albuquerque, NM</font></body>
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