STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL
Re: Technology Transitions, GN Docket No. 13-5, Policies and Rules Governing Retirement of 
Copper Loops by Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, RM-11358, Special Access for Price Cap 
Local Exchange Carriers, WC Docket No. 05-25, AT&T Corporation Petition for Rulemaking to 
Reform Regulation of Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier Rates for Interstate Special Access 
Services, RM-10593.
Our networks are changing—and the numbers don’t lie.  In fact, they tell a story.  
At the turn of the millennium, there were nearly 200 million local phone lines in this country.  
Interconnected VoIP was not in the running, not in the market, and not counted anywhere in our data.  
The new technology was wireless service, which was making waves with 80 million subscriber lines.  
Fast forward to the here and now.  Today there are only 85 million traditional local phone lines.  
That is less than half the number we had a decade and a half earlier.  On top of that, we have nearly 50 
million interconnected VoIP lines—a category that didn’t even exist fifteen years ago.  Plus, wireless 
service has exploded and we now have more wireless lines than people in this country.  
This shift is dramatic.  Our networks are changing.  The choices consumers are making to call 
and connect are changing, too.  With all this change, however, we need to be mindful of the values that 
have always informed our communications policy. We care about public safety; we care about universal 
access; we care about competition; and we care about consumer protection.  
Furthermore, we need to find a way to give meaning to these values—while also inspiring the 
deployment of new network infrastructure.  Balancing these equities is no easy task.  But I think today’s 
decision does an admirable job—and for that reason, I support it.  On the one hand, it provides important 
safeguards to support competition as older network infrastructure is put to rest.  On the other hand, it 
provides clear rules of the road so that providers will have certainty when they seek to turn off older 
infrastructure in order to deploy services that will bring us further and faster into the future.  
Though we can’t know where the numbers will take us next, I think we know more change is 
coming.  So in time we may need to revisit these policies.  But I believe what we have before us now is 
good for consumers and consistent with the fundamental values that inform our law.