Maybe, just maybe, if AT&T is getting out of the long distance business, then isn't just a tad bit possible that the way the government is handling competition in the marketplace is just a tad bit wrong?
It reminds me of a really funny story which I heard once upon a time. I can't speak to the veracity of it, but it certainly seemed plausible.
Once upon a time, GTE and the Baby Bells were offering Caller ID everywhere, and life was good. Except in California, where the CPUC had made ludicrous demands like "you need to spend umpteen million dollars educating our moronic populace how to block their caller ID info" and stuff like that, which neither PacBell nor GTE wanted to do.
Now, so the story goes, a Very Senior Person at PacBell contacted the CPUC one day to say "You know, we're not seeing a lot of growth potential in California due to ludicrous demands by the CPUC, so on $THIS_DATE, we're leaving, and we're taking every piece of infrastructure we own with it including but not limited to poles, wires, switches, microwave stations, you name it, and we're going to relocate those to other places where markets are friendlier. You may want to try and find someone to service those areas effective on that date.
... and then GTE said something very similar within a couple days. Mysteriously, opposition to Caller ID in California vanished, and neither telco threw California back to the Stone Age.
Now, again, I can't speak to the veracity of the story, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least. At some point any industry leader, no matter how large, is going to say "you know what? this bullshit simply isn't worth it" and pick up their toys and go home, and that's exactly what AT&T is doing right now.
More power to them. I know a lot of people are going to talk about how evil AT&T is for throwing around their weight, but so what? Seriously. When bit players say "fuck this" and go home, nobody even notices. It's lucky to get three column-inches on page 19 of the Journal. When the big boys do it, though, that gets noticed.
Anyone who's worked in telecommunications, for a big company or a small company, will all agree that the system is completely screwed up. It's designed for maximum screwage. Big companies get screwed. Little companies get screwed. Residential customers get screwed. Business customers get screwed. The only ones making any money are the lawyers and the lobbyists... and, well, of course, the politicians who take the donations. :-)
On the other hand, maybe people just don't want long distance at home anymore? Everyone's got cell phones with free long distance built in. And even if you get crappy service, hopefully the person on the other end can call you back on their cell phone.
Seems like residential long distance is slowly (or maybe not that slowly) going away. Heck, even if you have LD at home, you might still be using your cell phone to make LD calls during the day that you might have traditionally waited until you got home to make.