Carriers Want to Stop Selling Products Customers Do Not Want

In many markets and industries, suppliers can make their own decisions about what products to sell, based on what customers want to buy. Much of the telecommunications business is not that way. Often, service providers must ask for permission to discontinue selling legacy services that customers no longer wish to buy.

Former data protocols such as frame relay simply are not used anymore. AT&T, for example, has pointed out that it no longer has any customers for fractional T-1 services in many states.

So it is that CenturyLink wants to stop selling asynchronous transfer mode and frame relay services. Some of you will remember ATM. it was the expected next generation network until “legacy” IP displaced it in the market.

In the rather significantly regulated telecom business, providers cannot even stop selling products customers do not want, without asking permission.