Is AT&T's plan to end landline phone service crazy, or just
crazy enough?   POTS, the loving acronym for "plain old
telephone service," is the single oldest continuously operating
network in existence. It predates even the earliest vestiges of
the internet by three-quarters of a century. It's so ubiquitous
and so reliable that the notion of eliminating it is quite
literally banned by law — it's written into Section 214 of Title
47, the portion of the US Code established largely by the
Communications Act of 1934:   Weaning the government off our
most ubiquitous network won't be easy  And as modern technology
laps POTS over and over again, those regulations increase the
burden on legacy carriers like AT&T and Verizon Communications
(not to be confused with its part-owned subsidiary Verizon
Wireless) to maintain an ancient network whose utility decreases
daily. That's not to say that POTS isn't still vitally
important: the most rural parts of the United States are often
served by no other type of service — servi