“Investors prefer firms that can devote their resources to the best new technology, not ones that have to spend wastefully on a technology for which demand has largely died.”
— AT&T, seeking state permission to abandon its costly “carrier of last resort” obligation to provide landline service across much of California. Residents like Jennie Dusheck in the Santa Cruz Mountains who rely on it as backup during frequent power and cell phone outages, say that would be “very scary.”