Telcos aren’t subject to law in the United States. At least not the big telcos.
In my neighborhood they took down the copper infrastructure and threw it in the drainage ditch. I am completely not kidding, let me see if I can find some Google street view… OK, look at this in a another browser tab. At the foot of the telephone pole on the left side, just past the end of the bridge among the cat-tail and phragmites, is the junction box that feeds copper land lines to myself and my neighbors. It’s that black box laying in the drainage, with the loop of cable dangling down to it. Every time it rains the box fills with water, and in the winter it freezes. Once I figured out that all our phone lines failed every time it rained heavily, I traced the wire to this box. The local telco purposely dismounted it and threw it in the ditch when they put in the fiber lines, and then told us that if we wanted reliable phone service we’d have to pay for a fiber link to the Internet (which would cause our land lines to get converted to fiber at the same time, for “free”.).
This is completely illegal. But you can report it all day long and nothing will happen. So all my neighbors and I got FIOS, and the copper’s just lying there. But Verizon’s going to sell it soon, as if it were still useable, to some sucker.
Telcos are above the law in the USA. As demonstrated repeatedly by their ongoing blatant illegal behavior.
