IP transition is unlikely to make waves in R.I.

State and federal officials have given telecommunications companies the all-clear to improve or radically transform traditional telephone service.
Already the number of American households with wireless, fiber optic or some form of digital cable connection far exceeds those relying solely on the circuits, switches and copper wire of traditional telephone lines to communicate.
Industry experts agree that eventually beaming packets of data through Internet Protocol will spell the end of the copper-wire equipment relied on to transmit conversations for more than a century. The only question is how long the transition will take and what communications will look like when it’s done.
In a November blog post, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communication Commission, Tom Wheeler, called the ongoing telecommunications revolution away from traditional phones “a good thing” that could stimulate innovation.
“History has shown that new networks catalyze innovation, investment, ideas and ingenuity,” Wheeler wrote. “Their spillover effects can transform society – think of the creation of industrial organizations and the standardized time zones that followed in the wake of the railroad and telegraph.”
Wheeler said the FCC will begin “experiments” to test how the migration to Internet Protocol will impact different groups of Americans and the regulatory systems that now oversee telephone service.
Closer to home, the R.I. General Assembly passed a bill last summer codifying that the R.I. Public Utilities Commission and R.I. Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, which regulate telecommunications, will not have any oversight of wireless phone service. The state decision means that the growth of wireless into the area previously held by landlines will not change its status in the minds of regulators, at least for now.
It follows the broader trend of deregulation in telecommunications as new technology has helped spur competition and prevent the monopoly conditions that existed in early telephone systems.
The state still regulates the traditional landline phone systems, which must be open to every household, now operated by Verizon.
But even for that lifeline service the state, while it reserves the right to, no longer controls Verizon’s rates like it once did or does for potential monopolies like electricity, water, taxis and ferries.
“The current framework recognizes that as of some years ago we started having a highly competitive cable, fiber and data communications environment, and one could assume that we would maintain a competitive landscape,” said Thomas Kogut, associate administrator at the R.I. Division of Public Utilities and Carriers.
So where does that leave companies such as Verizon that still maintain old switches and miles of copper phone wire, along with more advanced technology?
“From Verizon’s perspective, the Internet Protocol transition, where it relates to the movement and direction of phone calls, is kind of inevitable,” said Thomas Maguire, senior vice president of national operations support for Verizon.
For years, Verizon has been laying fiber-optic cable in towns across the country, first for its FiOS service, which competes with cable television and Internet.
In Rhode Island, 29 of 39 municipalities in the state now have access to Verizon fiber-optic service.
Since 2011, Maguire said the company has been looking at places where fiber and copper wire are running next to each other and, when it seems practical for both the company and customer, switching their phone service to fiber (at no cost). Internet Protocol signals carried on fiber cables are able to transmit much more information more efficiently than old-fashioned circuit switch signals on copper wire, making possible things like video calls.
Maguire said nationally Verizon has migrated 500,000 phone customers to fiber since 2011 and the pace is accelerating, with the expectation that about 350,000 homes will be switched over the next year alone.
Eventually Maguire said everyone will be switched over and the copper system decommissioned, but by the time it happens few will even remember the old equipment existed.
Although Verizon is the “incumbent exchange” recognized by regulators, Cox Communications Inc.’s coaxial-cable lines in Rhode Island also include “circuit switched lines” that will be switched over to Internet Protocol.
While the switch from copper and circuit switches to fiber and Internet Protocol is mostly certain, the bigger question is whether wireless systems will replace even the more advanced landlines anyway.
As technology improves, equipment that beams signals from wireless networks straight into the house is becoming more competitive. But, maybe because he’s a self-described “wireline guy,” Maguire said he doesn’t see wireless causing wholesale cable-cutting anytime soon.
“The only thing that limits fiber’s capabilities are the electronics on either side of the fiber,” Maguire said. “At the end of the day the biggest pipe going into customers’ houses is going to win.” •

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