How Much Longer for Copper?

Almost 20 years ago I wrote a piece commenting on the collapse of the old telecom industry, meaning copper. The reason was simple; wireless. Over these two decades for a moment I thought fiber had a chance but alas besides costs, the real barrier to entry was the franchise and greed of local town managers. Tried it but the cable companies always told the town they could get more from us than the cable guys. Deadly embrace, never worked. The towns we tried still 20 years later are stuck with cable companies. In my NH residence served by a biggy we are lucky to get 10 Mbps down and 500 Kbps up.

Now we see the collapse of Frontier. As Ars Technica notes:

Frontier has been losing customers and reducing its staff. Its residential-customer base dropped from 4.15 million to 3.81 million in the 12-month period ending September 30, 2019, including a loss of 90,000 customers in the most recent quarter. Also in that 12-month period, Frontier's business-customer base declined from 422,000 to 381,000. Meanwhile, Frontier had 19,132 employees as of September 30, 2019, down from 21,375 one year earlier.

 This is a classic example of the Greater Fool Theory. Namely the old RBOCs dumped their old copper on these guys and well no surprise. Now we can ask; what is the future of telecom? Yahoo vs HBO?