said by mgraves1:FWD was more of an experiment than a business.
That's fair. I'll just say he's probably finding more financial success as a pundit and policy guy than as a service provider.
The key exchange in the interview, in this respect, is,
... Even with the real estate windfall, that you call it, are the big telephone companies really going to make the big investment its going to take to phase out the old network and make everything IP?
Daniel Berninger: I dont want to speak for the telcos. I can give you an analysts perspective...
Berninger goes on to talk about increased revenues and reduced costs, but there's plenty of risk for an established monolith trying to compete with the younger, nimbler crowd. Mainly, as has been widely commented upon, AT&T and Verizon do not want to become just a set of tubes that carry others' more profitable services.
So they can set that date, but rest assured that unless the ILECs see greater profit over the new horizon, they will play every conceivable card to keep things where we are today.
I realize that AT&T is on record trying to get out of the regulated POTS business, but one problem is that nobody is stepping up to provide a similar level of service at a reasonable price. That sets the stage for easy finger-pointing, if anybody should suggest moving along in a way that would be less profitable.