Sounds like a lousy idea to me. Sure, the big communications providers can save money by having one infrastructure for telecommunications and Internet service, but I sincerely doubt that this will benefit the customer. If my phone service were as reliable as my internet service, I would be in trouble. POTS was great. Self-powered so you still have phone service if the power went out. Not on the same network as everything else in the world, so a teenager in Trashcanistan can't hack my phone conversations.
While my cynical take was that this is to save money for service providers, making life easy for the NSA, including our buddy who works there, might be a good reason. The one thing that I refuse to believe is that it will benefit the consumer.