I first recall hearing that the telecom carriers were setting timelines for decommissioning their copper infrastructure and no longer providing time-division multiplexing (TDM) services like plain old telephone service (POTS) lines, T1s, and primary rate interface (PRI) circuits in 2014. Back then, I didn’t pay too much attention to the roadmaps published by AT&T, and Verizon, because I knew they were too aggressive and that the carriers wouldn’t have full control of these timelines. They can set targets, but the phasing out of copper infrastructure has been more of an organic process driven by the carrier’s intentions, the pace of development of alternate services, customers’ willingness to transition off copper, and, of course, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules.
