There are plenty of examples of companies shooting themselves in the foot by only looking at the short term, but this doesn’t seem like one of them. It’s not like investment in POTS is going to pay off in the long run: rural America is depopulating, most households are becoming cellphone only, etc. There’s no positive ROI for POTS out in the countryside no matter what time horizon you look at.

The actual fix here is that we have to take a hard look and really decide if this is something worth keeping around. If it is, it needs massive ongoing subsidies. The market alone won’t fix it, because the economics simply aren’t there.