Exactly what he [link|http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010823.html|said] was:
Of course the local telephone companies hate this whole idea because they want to sell you that T-1 line for $500-600 per month. That's why they will tell you dry pairs don't exist when they usually do exist. And that's why phone companies are trying to get rid of dry pairs as quickly as they can.
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All this dry pair stuff means that anyone who already has dry pairs -- LOTS of dry pairs -- suddenly has an asset they never knew had value. Quick like a bunny, buy-up that stodgy old burglar alarm company that's been limping along in your town for 50 years. They have a dry pair (often more than one) going to every building. Switch the dry pairs to digital, make the alarm service digital, too, then use the old alarm panel and all that excess bandwidth to offer both wired and wireless Internet access to the whole town. With the lowest circuit cost and more circuits than a regular ISP could ever afford, you'll soon be a broadband tycoon.
It looks like alarm companies got permission to pull the copper before anyone had thought of building their own network from scratch, and the CLEC are trying desperately to make them go away.
Well ...
