said by voipdabbler :

Communication infrastructure is a critical national security asset that cannot be left in the hands of private industry without stringent federal oversight. There needs to be policy decisions made at the very top of government about whether it's in our national interest to allow POTS systems to die. Cellular penetration in this country is by no means universal--in fact, it's pretty poor. I have VOIP, but given the instability of the Internet, which is easily subject to remote attack by foreign powers, I'm a little uncomfortable in putting all our eggs in that roughly jarred pot.

Moving away from POTS will have a huge cost--there are vast areas of the US that only have POTS--no broadband for VOIP and no cellular (the last data I could find regarding active cellular service in the 428 designated Rural Service Areas for cellular coverage is a decade old--the FCC isn't too thrilled to publish a lot of data on rural markets--at that time only 150 of the 428 areas had any type of cellular service, despite the fact that licenses had been issued to carriers). Verizon's recent push to dump rural markets serviced by Alltel (and Verizon put forward most of the markets on their divestiture list, not the feds) will ensure that even fewer of the 428 RSAs have any cellular service. (In this economic climate, divestiture is akin to shut down since those rural cellular carriers that still exist face almost insurmountable barriers to getting financing to purchase any of the Alltel assets.)

I can hear urban dwellers snipping that policy makers should ignore rural areas without infrastructure for cellular or broadband. I would remind policy makers and others that historically, although urban populations can swell, they can quickly decrease as people migrate in a disaster. (The bubonic plague had a long term impact on European cities, which had grown considerably before the plague's outbreak. Once the plague did break out, urban populations shrank drastically and quickly, not just due to death but to migration, too.) Focusing all of your national infrastructure only around urban regions will come back to haunt you if populations need to migrate, especially in an emergency situation.

said by voipdabbler :

LOL, do you really think that humans cannot be subject to a pandemic again? If so, you need to wake up. We humans do not control the natural world, despite what many of us think. Just look at weather as well as natural geological activities (like plate movements, i.e. earthquakes) that "devastate" human habitats. I would also remind you antibiotics only work on bacteria not viruses (and we're seeing a growing number of resistant bacterial strains due to overuse of antibiotics). My point, which you seem to miss, is that not having a national communicaton infrastructure that has significant geographical penetration is stupid national security policy. My guess is you'd be one of the first to complain if in a natural or man-made disaster you were ever evacuated to a rural area with no POTS, cellular or broadband coverage. Policy makers have to look at feasible scenarios, including worse-case scenarios like major disasters and war.

said by MrMaster :

Do you live in a secluded cabin somewhere thinking that the world is going to end?