San Fran Residents Lose Battle Over AT&T U-Verse Cabinets → If the Future is Wireless?

Will these cabinets will be unsightly rust-buckets in 20 years?

Nope. They'll be unsightly graffiti ridden rust-buckets in 5 years.

Who said The Future was Wireless? Granted for certain applications Wireless is better, but The Future is FTTH. Only with Fiber can you expect Solid, Consistent HD Streaming, and all the other Voice and Data Demands!

Very true.. Wireless is horrible... and over priced for what it is.. FTTH is the best and will always be Copper cant compete against it!!

I'm basing that on the fact that the two largest providers of network connectivity seem to have abandonded FTTH , FTTC. AT&T believes in FTTN.

Based on their behavior, the future is wireless.

most likely by 20 years time someone will buy out at&t landline divsion and convert these boxes into ftth conduits or at&t will change plans and convert to ftth

Wireless is where it's all going. The last mile will be soon to follow.
When I say "wireless", I don't mean cellular wireless either. I mean fixed wireless.
OSP in the traditional sense will be old relics or rural landscape fodder.

Wireless will never have the Bandwidth, Security, Consistency, or Reliability of Wired Fiber. I retired from AT&T, and worked with some of the top Silicon Companies, Engineers, and Minds in The Business. When it came to connecting their Networks, Wireless was never in their plans for Professional Connectivity. Like I said, Wireless has it's applications, but it will never match Wired Fiber.

Having said that, I feel AT&T made a mistake going with Copper for their Last Mile U-Verse. Verizon has been the leader here, but has held back due to low demand from it's Users. The demand will pick up when Streaming HD Video, Data, and Voice becomes second nature and Verizon will be at the forfront.

I retired from AT&T too for all that it really matters. Wireline is dead. Wireless already has the bandwidth. Sorry. That's just the way it is.
Wireless will never be "as good" as a wired connection. Younger generations are willing to accept this. The telcos do not want to deal with maintaining an OSP.
Joe Consumer doesn't really give a rats ass about bandwidth numbers. As long as he can look at porn, facebook, youtube, netflix, and use his vonage at the same time, he doesn't care whether his connection is 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps.
Fiber will have it's place, FTTT (fiber to the tower), and FTTP for customers who demand secure and high capacity connections (commercial).
For the Jone's house on Sycamore Rd or the Dairy Queen on Main St., there will be a fixed wireless box screwed to the side of the house. It will deliver one product - bandwidth.
The drops will be cut down. The F2 will go away. It will be cut down and not replaced. It will become a liability, not an asset. In fact, based on the actions of ILECs, it's quite clear that they already consider wireline a thorn in their side. Get rid of most of the plant, and you can get rid of most of the people who maintain it. That means bigger profits. The shareholders are already on board.
The telco's had their chance to upgrade the OSP. Verizon 1/2 assed it with Fios. AT&T screwed the pooch with U-Verse.
While Ma Bell was busy worrying about "long distance" in 1994-2002, cable companies were deploying deep HFC systems and pushing hard on DOCSIS development.
That's why today my local ILEC can offer me 10/768 DSL for 60/mo. The cable company gives me 100/5 for the same price.
The next ten years will belong to the cable companies. Eventually, their outside plant will be a liability as well.

Wishful thinking.. don't care who you worked for. Besides, AT&T? .. that's the company you're putting your reputation behind? They do one thing very well, mass producing crap. AT&T has been calling for the wireless box screwed to the home for over 12 years now. Well?? *crickets*

If the drops get cut down, and the F2 as well, and it goes all wireless, AT&T will simply reduce service, raise prices, claim there is a crunch and the people will CONTINUE to not buy into the crap. In a perfect world you'd be correct, but dude.. if what you're saying is correct, then why are we moving away from unlimited data plans for our little smart phones and being charged up the ass for the data?

Yea.. dream on.. seriously. WORST comment I've ever seen here.

No I'm not "putting my reputation" behind AT&T. Apparently you skim read my post. I said "for all that it really matters", which was in reply to another poster acting as if tenure at AT&T gave magical powers.
No, quite the opposite. I think AT&T has done it all wrong, if you would take the time to actually read and comprehend.
You have to stop thinking of "wireless" as cellular. Wireless cellular or even any current wireless company.
We all know the current "big name" wireless providers are ass holes, and are all in collusion. Just look at what they charge for their services.
Somebody else can come along and do it better for less. And they probably will. The more ignorant the big names get with limits and pricing, the more ripe the market gets for new blood.

Keep the insults to yourself. Totally unnecessary.

I think that maybe in 10-20 years fixed wireless might start to catch on. but right now with different telcos building out fiber it would not make sense to spend all the money on fiber and the equipment with that to serve out VDSl,IPTV etc in my city centurylink has been running fiber quite a bit. most recently they are even running fiber to my area and i live in a semi rural area so I really think for a lot of companies fttn or ftth will be what is going to be used for the foreseeable future. Wireline is always going to be more reliable. a transmitter on a tower is a much easier to get broken or damaged than fiber underground.

I really didn't retire from AT&T, but from Pacific Bell a totally different Company. I was with them for 31 years, working my way up from a Frame Person to a Second Level Service Manager. Mostly in Operations, so I have an understanding in Telco's. I really enjoyed my work, especially after Divestiture in '84 when Ma Bell was split up. Then PacBell went into the Golden Years, and we ran heavy with The Big Boys in The Silicon Valley. So to me Wireless is Wireless, no matter how you cut it and it will never have the Bandwidth of Fiber. You did make some valid points, The Average Person doesn't know any better. So if it works most of the time and not expensive, why not Wireless!

Don't get me wrong, I do not want to see AT&T go away. Obviously I have a vested interest in them remaining a profitable and viable company.
But, with the advancements in technology and, and the changing customer demographic, I'm not sure how long they will last unless they change their evil ways quickly.
You know as well as I do that the Bell System used to be very proactive in almost every aspect (contrary to what most people think). R&D, safety, routine maintenance, continuing education, etc... That all went away and TA96 was the nail in the coffin. Everything became "reactive" as the whole industry started to spiral into a "race to the bottom", as I like to call it.
About 10 years after divestiture, all the RBOCs could think about was long distance. They cast everything else aside and focused on long distance as their "panacea". They should have been thinking about OSP upgrades and how to rule the bandwidth market.
Today the ILEC's all have long distance, which is a totally irrelevant product. The cable companies have DOCSIS 3.
U-Verse was the last project I worked on. I never actually got to see it come to fruition (I left before it went live). The whole time, I couldn't help but think what a horrible "stop-gap" solution U-Verse was to just doing it right and replacing all the plant with fiber. All the wasted man-hours conditioning U-Verse areas was sickening. Trying to milk 50 year old plant to provide enough bandwidth for HD streams.

Wireless is wireless? I disagree. IMO, one of the most interesting things that could be done RIGHT NOW with CURRENT technology is make the last mile wireless with incredibly small, fixed-wireless, highly directional RF devices. When I say last mile, I mean, 5,280 feet. OTS tech could easily deliver symmetrical 100Mbps at which point it jumps on FTTN. In rural areas you could probably go much more than a mile by using wider spectrum since there's less congestion. Since the telcos are working to fiber-connect the cell towers, you might even be able to use a portion of the spectrum for wireless back haul to the closest tower.

IMO the kind of copper we have buried in the ground for POTS isn't worth what it takes to maintain it. Either invest in FTTH or go wireless for the last mile. I predict that a lot of spectrum will become available in the coming years when we realize that a fast network is everywhere and there's little or no need for broadcast-style spectrum. We should use all of it to create "the network" and make sure there's lots of competition or federalize it and fund it with taxes and then allow competitors to deliver services on top of it. I probably prefer the latter since it's already half-ass funded with tax payer dollars in the form of corporate USF welfare and whatever other tax-breaks and incentives we provide firms to deliver what some even go so far as to misrepresent as a constitutional "right" right up there with free speech. Of course that's B.S. but that never stops the misinformed from screaming about how unfair their existence is.