The Dismantling of POTS: Bold Move Or Grave Error? 582
New submitter TheRealHocusLocus writes "The FCC is drafting rules to formalize the process of transition of 'last-mile' subscriber circuits to digital IP-based data streams. The move is lauded by AT&T Chairman Tom Wheeler who claims that significant resources are spent to maintain 'legacy' POTS service, though some 100 million still use it. POTS, or 'Plain Old Telephone Service,' is the analog standard that allows the use of simple unpowered phone devices on the wire, with the phone company supplying ring and talk voltage. I cannot fault progress, in fact I'm part of the problem: I gave up my dial tone a couple years ago because I needed cell and could not afford to keep both. But what concerns me is, are we poised to dismantle systems that are capable of standing alone to keep communities and regions 'in-touch' with each other, in favor of systems that rely on centralized (and distant) points of failure? Despite its analog limitations POTS switches have enforced the use of hard-coded local exchanges and equipment that will faithfully complete local calls even if its network connections are down. But do these IP phones deliver the same promise? For that matter, is any single local cell tower isolated from its parent network of use to anyone at all? I have had a difficult time finding answers to this question, and would love savvy Slashdot folks to weigh in: In a disaster that isolates the community from outside or partitions the country's connectivity — aside from local Plain Old Telephone Service, how many IP and cell phones would continue to function?"
I hate phones ANYWAY. (Score:5, Funny)
SH*T or get off the POTS.
Re:I LOVE phones, so Cap'n Crunchably delicious (Score:3)
Many thanks to the ACs who addressed my question on the autonomy of isolated cell towers, to wit:
AC: A cell tower requires more infrastructure to actually complete a call than what is on the tower itself. The brains are located more centrally, like in the nearest CO. If a CO is taken out, it's bad for the area... and the local cell towers. If a CO is NOT taken down, it has all the infrastructure required in order to complete calls for its local area, which is what the OP stated -- even if that CO is segregated from every other one. COs are also more hardened than a tower can be and have more batteries and likely has a local generator. In the northeast blackout (2003), keeping cell towers powered required moving generators around to each tower in order to keep them running for a few more hours.
AC: I would add that the systems running voice, data, and SMS are crazy complicated and can fail in many, many more ways than POTS. I managed the auth systems and data core for a cell service, and it seemed like a damn miracle the thing worked at all.
So we have a cell Central Office layer that is regional and connectivity to it would be necessary for individual towers to complete calls. Let me extend the Q to ask: is there some standard practice that confines geographic placement of COs to a certain radius? How many of these (as opposed to mere towers) would we find on a map, if such a map was available? I presume that if a CO was isolated no one could roa
Re:I LOVE phones (Score:3)
It's probably best to think in some other terms than radius.
For one example, Tennessee has rather continuous types of bedrock in the middle and western parts of the state, leading right up to the New Madrid faultline in Missouri. If that lets go again, as it did historically, the west and middle parts of the state may see a widespread major earthquake, severe enough to do building damage hundreds of miles from the epicenter, even in Nashville and possibly even Crossville.
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So we have a cell Central Office layer that is regional and connectivity to it would be necessary for individual towers to complete calls. Let me extend the Q to ask: is there some standard practice that confines geographic placement of COs to a certain radius? How many of these (as opposed to mere towers) would we find on a map, if such a map was available? I presume that if a CO was isolated no one could roam-in because the necessary central inter-carrier auth could not be completed, but what of existing subscribers? Would a CO facility, even if it was restarted from power down, retain enough subscriber data to bring its 'native' users in the local area to the point where that can complete calls to each other?
Sorry about the Wheeler (FCC Chairman) booboo in the summary. Brain fart.
If you want a map of all the COs -- they are here : http://www.dslreports.com/coinfo [dslreports.com] They are not placed by geographic radius, but by number of subscribers. Back in the day, a central office might serve an exchange or two (an exchange is the three digits after the area code in a phone number, for example 517-355, where 355 was the exchange). Of course some COs were larger and served multiple exchanges, some getting as large as a dozen and some were smaller and only handled a single exchange. Each excha
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To add, because it's been years...
The CSR's tool for basic troubleshooting (not the billing system) will say exactly what HLR and site the IMSI is registered on. So a HLR will be something like some ID number like NYCBRKLN-004, the NYCBRKLN is the HLR or "CO" in terms of POTS. the -004 part is the cell site.
It's important to state that a HLR will only have local subscribers. The roaming HLR will have all the visiting IMSI's, even if these are two miles apart. So a NYCBRKLN may serve all of Brooklyn or it mi
Re:I hate phones ANYWAY. (Score:5, Insightful)
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AC: It's not 1876 any longer. These days, we have so many alternatives that voice-only communication should be the very, very last resort in all situations. For business transactions of any sort, websites or email are better. For keeping in touch with friends and family, it's obvious that email, social media and family gatherings are better. For quickly getting in touch with somebody, send an SMS.
But can your SMS do this?
I wish... [youtube.com]
I wish the kitchen faucet wouldn't drip all day!
I wish that refrigerator door would close and stay closed!
I wish I had a stove whose pilot light was always lit.
And furthermore...
A kitchen phone at hand when friends call up to chat a bit!
[ring] Hello Sue this is Mary how are you, bye?
(They say your kitchen dazzles every eye!)
A brand new sink, a built-in oven,
a new refrigerator and a phone! A kitchen phone!
A bright red phone!
Gotta go g'bye g'bye g'byeeee.....
See ya later!
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POTS works when the power goes out. It uses power supplied from the central office. I don't have to resort to extraordinary measures to keep it working when the lights go off. When the remnants of Hurricane Ike hit us in Cincinnati, my lights were off for days. But my POTS line kept working. We were without service for a while a day or two after the storm hit, when the batteries in the LEC's remote terminal ran down. But Cincinnati Bell parked a generator outside it and the service came back up.
The entire
Re: Communication isn't stupid. Telephones are. (Score:3, Insightful)
Texting is less rich than voice is less rich than video is less rich than in-person communications. A good way to measure is: How likely are you to misinterpret a joke and become offended?
Re: Communication isn't stupid. Telephones are. (Score:5, Insightful)
And don't forget; The NSA can't track and tap the phones of us with POTS like they can you folks with cell phones. Therefore they must force all of us to have cell phones so we can be tracked and listened to. Warrants are only needed with POTS.
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Textual methods of communication offer much, much less room for confusion.
I found this part of your comment interesting and certainly at odds with what most people believe.
Maybe you could explain how I might deal with the following scenarios in a text message?
- Applying inflection to certain words or parts of a sentence.
- Making it obvious that a question is rhetorical.
- Using sarcasm in a sentence (and making it obvious).
- Use of an obviously humourous comment, which when written may seem like a comment devoid of humour.
I completely agree that there are some advantages to textua
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It is a terrible idea (Score:2, Insightful)
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They have been dismantling it by attrition and entropy for decades now. This just puts an official stake in its heart. Analog also seems to scare large companies these days...
Do i agree this should be done? No, but its reality.
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Hurricane Sandy destroyed the POTS network in much of the area that it hit. In fact it hasn't yet been fully rebuilt.
Re:It is a terrible idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. However, I could agree to dismantling of POTS if they FIRST also lessen regulations on a swath of HAM for use by the public, and also legalize packet radio over CB, Family band, and other public use frequencies. We have the technology to radio for help in times of emergency -- Indeed HAM operators are sometimes on the scene in disasters before paramedics arrive. They already play a role in Earthquakes and other times when infrastructure is threatened. Lower the barrier for the common man to have greater ability to communicate first then I'll reconsider my stance on our keeping wired POTS going.
We have the technology for radios to negotiate to noise free channels automatically -- hell, my cheap wifi router does this. The cellular system exists, but we need a similar mesh network for the common people. The EM spectrum belongs to We the People, give us back some damn air waves instead of charging us for all of them. It's the information age, yet outdated packet radio laws remain repressive to progress. Problem is that the government can't just throw a kill switch on public powered wireless devices -- Like they can on the Internet (and probably telephone too).
It would be foolish to ignore that the government has an Internet Kill Switch, vast spying infrastructures, and a pro-censorship anti-discourse agenda whereby government agents actually plan to expose porn habits to silence dissent, while considering migrating any communication medium to IP based services. Furthermore -- The price of bits does not reflect the cost to distribute them. Cellular plans make a mockery of POTS long distance fees, and though it's never been cheeper to move bits the prices aren't going down nearly as fast as in foreign markets with actual competition. We need less regulation of the public sector and more regulation of the private sector's price fixed oligopoly before I'd ever advocate for tossing POTS out. Additionally: Unwarranted metadata collection is too powerful a tool already [kieranhealy.org] -- If Snoden can infiltrate PRISM, so can spies from enemy states.
Beware: When those in power advocate change, the changes suggested never give those they have power over more freedom.
Not POTS at all (Score:3, Informative)
Other than that the 'POTS' system stays as it currently is. :)
I know, reading and comprehension is so fucking hard isn't it?
Other than: the price controls that apply to POTS will no longer apply, the uptime requirements that apply to POTS will no longer apply, the universal service requirements that apply to POTS will no longer apply, etc.
That's what the telcos said in Massachusetts http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Working-Hard-to-Gut-Massachusetts-Consumer-Protections-126180 [dslreports.com], and in New York http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/NY-PSC-Takes-Closer-Look-at-Verizons-Killing-of-Copper-124315 [dslreports.com] and everywhere else when they'v
Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:5, Interesting)
2. The same applies to your house. What good is a fixed, "simple" phone if your house isn't there any more?
3. One of the biggest issues when a disaster strikes is locating people. POTS doesn't do anything to help with this.
POTS was great but it's had it's time and we need to stop supporting it and move on newer technologies.
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:5, Insightful)
Good points.
On the other hand, cell phones are useless a few hours after a electrical blackout (as no one will be able to charge their phones), while thousand of POTS users (ha! I can't avoid smiling while typing it!) can be served using a big enough diesel generator.
Hell broke havoc in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo em 2009 [wikipedia.org]. Cell phones were useless because *everybody* (and the neighbor's kitten) was trying to call someone by cellphone to call for help or simply tranquilize their relatives. The ones tha managed to do that were the ones with analog phone lines (as the analog phone operators can redirect their power supplies in order to keep the phone lines working).
At that time, I already had switched my analog phone line to a VOIP one. My relatives lives far away, and I managed to call them 4 or 5 hours later, thanks to a very kind supermarket manager that borrowed me a power plug from the place (they have a diesel generator) to charge my pretty, advanced but useless smartbrick, I mean, smartphone.
There's no single, easy and cheap answers to complex problems.
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
Cell phones can be *immediately* useless in an electrical blackout, because cell towers are grid dependent and often do not have battery backup. Some do, and the phone companies have mobile tower units they can send out to supplement towers that are out, but still, the cell network doesn't "just work" in a blackout the way POTS does.
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on the cause of the blackout.
Here, our last days long blackout took out anything that needed wires. This is because it was an ice storm that took down wiring as well as trees which took out more wiring. POTS was not fully restored until after power was. This is because the power company had to replace poles before the Telco could string new wires.
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation you described in Rio and Sao Paulo is not unique to cell phones. POTs systems have a limit on how many calls they can support as well, the dreaded "all circuits are busy message" here in the states. The reason POTs lines are less susceptible to that now is that fewer people are using them so it doesn't happen as often. A common solution to this is to tell people just to text instead of making calls, that helps reduce the load on the cellular infrastructure.
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A common solution to this is to tell people just to text instead of making calls, that helps reduce the load on the cellular infrastructure.
Texting instead of talking will also reduce battery drain, so in an emergency, any phone with decent battery should last at least a few days.
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Text "HELP" to 911 with a thug breaking in on you home. Or while having a heart attack! ;-)
Be my guest. Try it. =P
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Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
As I said, there's no single, easy and cheap solution for complex problems. :-)
Anyway, you missed the point. Sandy was a grain of dust compared to the 2009's Brazil blackout. Go to wikipedia and give a peek on the red painted map - the area is equivalent to 1/3 of the continual USA!
No one managed to borrow a plug from nowhere, as nobody (except the one with diesel generators) had power to lend in a 100 miles radius!
The problem you described ("all circuits are busy") can be overcome to restricting the service to communitarian and emergency services phones. How do you propose this can be done using cell phones?
Take in consideration that I'm not advocating the "end of cell phones". I just arguing that cell phones, ALONE, will not be reliable in emergency situations. The really bad ones.
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:4, Informative)
That data is skewed due to only counting incidents where the blackout itself was the headline. Sandy would be an example where wind and rain took out the power but the other damage was the headliner.
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
The NYC solution is fine for dense urban areas, the Texas solution is fine for sparse rural areas. But the US consists of much more than huge metropolis's and spare rural areas. Neither solution works too well for suburban areas (where there often won't be a block with power for a considerable distance) or semi-rural and low density areas (where can often have apartment complexes where you can't have a generator). (I live in area which faces both problems.) With the except of sparse rural areas, the POTS has proven itself to be a fairly robust system. Any potential successor has a high bar to match, and relying on the kindness of random strangers or for 'everyone' to have a generator fails to meet that bar.
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This is what happened with typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan. The local telcos were able to provide cellphone coverage through a mobile cell site. I'm sure all the electric poles are down and pretty much the last mile will be disconnected even though the exchange might still be working. Though electricity will be restored months from now, cellphone will be much convenient at the moment compared to restoring pots service which could take a very long time.
I guess pots will work when there are major blackouts and not
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is that 25 years ago, it took a direct hit by a category 5 hurricane to make a visible dent in the phone network. There was no need to rebuild the phone network, because most of it never quit working in the first place. After Hurricane Andrew, people came home to neighborhoods so completely destroyed, they had to count streets and driveways to find the wreckage of their house... and more often than not, if they plugged a legacy-style phone into a phone jack, it worked. You can use Google to find stories from the Miami Herald about people who came home to a pile of rubble... and a very loud "off-hook" sound coming from a phone buried underneath.
Compare that to now, where a goddamn slow & sloppy tropical storm (like Isaac) can take out U-verse and Comcast for at least half the day (Which is exactly what TS Isaac did, in northern Dade and southern Broward counties) just because a few distant neighborhoods (where their regional network operation centers are located) lost commercial power for a day, and they didn't have enough backup power to keep them running. It's DISGRACEFUL.
As for #2, your house might not be "there" (in the sense of being habitable) any more, but if the storm is still in progress, working phone service is still a good thing to have.
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This is basically a strawman argument. Nobody is discussing getting rid of cell phone service and and replacing it with POTS. The question with respect to disasters is whether POTS adds anything * vs. plowing the resources that would be used to maintain POTS into something else*.
That last bit is important. It's obvious that having both POTS and cell coverage provides you with some level of redundancy that you don't get if you only have one or the other. POTS also provides enough power to run a basic analo
Re:Cell phones are better in a disaster (Score:4, Interesting)
> One more thing...and this is a FCC policy thing...We could create an "emergency" mode where a quad-band cell phone will talk to any network in range
Most high-end Android phones ALREADY have all the hardware they need to do that. Google "MSM8960", and be happy knowing that it's inside most of the high-end Android phones sold in the US over the past 2 years or so. The only reason why an AT&T Galaxy S3 (for example) can't roam on Sprint or Verizon is Qualcomm's fucked up licensing model, and American cellular carrier business policy. Ditto, for Sprint and Verizon phones roaming on AT&T and T-Mobile, but in THEIR case, it's even MORE fucked up... most of THEIR phones CAN roam on GSM, but they get Qualcomm to hardcode the radio modem firmware to blacklist AT&T and T-Mobile so it'll refuse to use them, but still allow GSM roaming outside the US.
LTE is still problematic (mostly by carrier intent), but as far as network cross-compatibility within the US goes, 800-vs-1900MHz and CDMA-vs-GSM hasn't been a hardware-limited constraint on high-end Android phones and recent iPhones (since at least the 4 or 4S) in YEARS.
"Bold Move Or Grave Error?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably both.
It's hard to keep analog transmission lines when you can transmit thousands of times the same information using a digital channel that costs the same (or even less).
But communication is not *just* about cheapness, it's about reliability. Analog lines are far more resilient than digital lines, and a wise one should take this in consideration on the long term.
A cheap telephone line that I can't use when I really need is a useless telephone line.
by the way, are you americans happy with your broadband internet connection? What do you think it will happen with your telephone services when it will be serviced using the same technology by the same players your Internet connection is served now?
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I know, it's AC, so nobody will see this; however, ...
We can all see the excellent strides AT&T have made in providing IPv6 to their residential customers. And the excellent strides providing fiber to the home.
In case you don't deal with AT&T, both of these statements are highly laden with scarcasam. To point, AT&T have been pretending to give a dam about IPv6 for nearly a decade now, and were beaten in putting fiber to the home by their competitors Verizon, and even now by Google.
Sure, they r
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Well, I read it. :-)
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What?
You don't keep a secondary, old fashion, phone attached to the wall on a easily accessible location on your house in order to call for help in emergencies?
Dumb, classical phones are like spare tires or fire extinguishers on your car: they're useless almost all the time, but once you need them, you thanks God you have them.
"Can you hear me now?" (Score:5, Insightful)
The call quality on both cell phones and IP phones is worse than those on traditional phone lines. IP phones echo and stutter. Cell phones give no aural feedback in the earpiece of the person speaking, which is why everyone is always yelling over their cell phone, and cut out when no one is speaking, which sounds like a dropped call. I think anyone who enjoyed two, three, or more decades in the last century, making phone calls over POTS lines, would agree that we have taken a step back in call quality. Every phone call is like an overseas call from the 1970's. Pulling up the POTS lines would be a mistake.
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Indeed so, I often have trouble understanding people on cell phones.
But it's not as though landlines are great sounding - G.711 isn't exactly high fidelity. Of course, to use anything better we'd need to have digital all the way to the home - but then we've got that for internet access.
Here in the UK, the major phone compant (BT) had a big plan to roll out a new network (21CN) to integrate all data & voice services on a new IP based network. After much fanfare they quietly dropped the voice part, which
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Absolutely! Talking on a cell phone is often like talking on a walkie-talkie, --over-- The pauses and delay are extremely annoying --over--
So, if the phone companies will save "vast" amounts of money by doing away with POTS, they why aren't they upgrading their lines already on their dime? Are they waiting for the tax payer to foot the bill? And by "lines", I mean replacing the last mile of copper with fiber, not cell phones.
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It leads me to suspect that healthy markets in the U.S. are nearly as common as pink unicorns.
Self-contradiction... (Score:3, Insightful)
We'd be replacing one highly centralized system with a different one. Hardly a problem in itself.
Re:Self-contradiction... (Score:5, Insightful)
[Parent's emphasis retained]
If the current POTS were highly centralized - you'd have a point. But it isn't, it's widely distributed. The ring-and-talk voltage for my analog POTS phone comes from a phone center just a few miles away. Folks at the south end of the county have their own center, as do the folks at the north end of the county, etc... etc... (If an accident or disaster severs our links to the outside world, our local system continues to operate just fine.) Will this be true of an IP based network?
And that's the real key as to whether or not an IP based system is sufficient replacement for the POTS - will it provide equivalent support (I.E. will it continue to work even if I lose power to my house as the current system does), and will it fail (at the system level) as gracefully? While I doubt the POTS is entirely bulletproof, short of damage that physically destroys the system (which are rare event indeed, even on the national scale) it's robust as hell. After all, they've had over a century to refine the design.
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If you're worried about independent functionality and reliability you should regulate those aspects *directly* rather than requiring a particular solution. There isn't anything inherent about either of the technologies that guarantee the features you want, nor that prevents those features from being provided.
Wire is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that the wire used to deliver POTS service also delivers DSL. No wire, no DSL.
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Answer: None (Score:3)
Making it so does put the emphasis on the user to provide some of the infrastructure that the telcos usually provide, thus saving them money, i.e costing you money, so that the revenues can be driven even higher. The real issue though is supporting emergency phone calls reliably when lives are on the line and whether the backbone technology for the telcos is suitable for the last mile to Joe Caller.
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Until fiber optic cable cable to the home is as common as copper it won't be a suitable replacement for POTS.
I *almost* agree. Saying we should keep POTS until it can be replaced with fiber, however, is like saying everyone should stick with driving Yugos until it becomes feasible for everyone to buy a Ferrari. Wireless technologies are a good interim solution until fiber can be deployed ubiquitously, especially in very low density areas.
Re:Answer: None (Score:5, Insightful)
Until fiber optic cable cable to the home is as common as copper it won't be a suitable replacement for POTS.
I *almost* agree. Saying we should keep POTS until it can be replaced with fiber, however, is like saying everyone should stick with driving Yugos until it becomes feasible for everyone to buy a Ferrari. Wireless technologies are a good interim solution until fiber can be deployed ubiquitously, especially in very low density areas.
And I *almost* agree with this. I have this one caveat: that a wireless interim solution actually be implemented before POTS is killed. If the data transmission corporations want to kill POTS they should be eager to cooperate in setting up an adequate replacement in terms of coverage, accessibility and reliability.
Same number (Score:2)
Well (Score:2)
As long as we keep the semaphore towers. Also, I heard there's a Mountie in Canada that is apparently still on the POTS and it's causing all kinds of problems. He can't use the phone if he's wearing his uniform or something like that.
POTS... (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't as plain or old as you make it out to be. I'm about 2 miles from my CO but my phone line terminates in a climate controlled cabinet about 1,000ft from my house. That's the end of the line for my pair where the line is powered, digitized and bridged to fiber for the haul back to the CO.
Even without that the addition of DSL about 2 decades ago added a lot of complexity to the system with DSLAMs and other digital equipment. Much of that digital stuff was spliced in between the switch and CPE on the CO or line side, but it was still there.
The COs I've been in also don't use the card coded switches you seem to be talking to; they use gigantic digital affairs that are all basically computers and handle not only the line pair for voice, but DST, T and D trunks, interoffice signaling and such.
The reason this stuff is all so resilient is the power supply. Nothing in the CO runs on wall voltage; it's all -48vDC and runs from a battery bank the size of a small house. The batteries are constantly charged from mains at the rate of their depletion by the equipment. In case of power failure where they batteries are being drawn down a generator auto-starts and switches from mains to local power to re-charge the batteries. Note that in this setup the load equipment is never switched from one power source to another (a major single-point of failure).
That said... Im not against reforming or eliminate the last vestiges of POTS.Less that 1/3 of the population HAS it and I'd bet even less than that actually use it. By that I mean that I think less than 1/10th of the US population has a telephone in their house that will work solely from CO power on the line pair without a wall wart.
Get an Amateur Radio license (Score:5, Informative)
This should be amusing (Score:2, Insightful)
If they get rid of the POTS, they pretty much get rid of phone service. Internet comes in by an rf link. We're pretty much the last house in the canyon we live in to get rf link int
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Let the 'free market' take care of pots demand? Without government subsidies, the copper wouldn't have been strung out to your middle-of-nowhere canyon house in the first place, and certainly wouldn't be maintained over the long term. Your terrible cell service is an example of the 'free market' handling it. I'm not arguing with your conclusion, just questioning whether it really gets what you're after.
time to retire (Score:2)
The technology is ready to retire. The impediment is regulatory -- without FCC oversight, delivery of last-mile infrastructure becomes thoroughly anticompetitive, a process which has repeated itself over and over again this past half century. POTS and twisted pair has been the last vestige of deregulation in the sector, to the detriment of the public and MUCH to the detriment of inventors and small business.
depends on the company. (Score:4, Insightful)
there are two lines of thought.
sensible and socially responsible:
why disable an existing and working system that has advantages over the new system? at the very least, make outgoing calls free for emergency purposes.
shortsighted asshole capitalist:
it costs money to maintain, so just unplug it as soon as contractually possible. when they somehow manage to call your support staff, tell them that they will need to upgrade to your cable internet + VOIP service and transfer them to sales. if they are rural and thus too far out to actually make a profit from installing new cabling, tell them they cant get it and politely hang up. be sure to use your hired company that keeps track of online forums and rating sites to blast anyone that is upset.
which do you think your telecom is going to fall under?
RIP POTS (Score:3)
Technologies come and go. I didn't see folks up in arms when the roaming knife sharpeners and milk delivery men went out of business. Those going away destroyed jobs. Moving from POTS to digital IP-based communications is a good thing. The digital service can be restored a lot faster, and there are excellent cell phone tower replacements. [wikipedia.org]
The only thing really lost is local 911 services. Those things were a disaster waiting to happen, anyway, as the cost of the analog infrastructure was killing localities as they tried to grow. Something better needs to be implemented and sooner is always better than later.
The one advantage POTS has is that it does take a court order for them to tap the line. But, I am guessing that laws will be changing soon and some of our privacy and security concerns will get addressed. Again, sooner is always better than later.
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As others here have pointed out, even "excellent" cell phone towers require people to talk like they're using walkie-talkies.
I got rid of land lines long ago, but I haven't had a real quality conversation on the phone since. The full-duplex aural feedback just isn't there.
inaccuracies (Score:3)
POWER (Score:3)
POTS supplies its own power. So now insead one one connection worki g you need two connections. VoIP data and some ki d of power, and they have to both be working at the same time.
BTW the cheapest VoIP provider if you are just trying to hold onto a number is callcentric at $3.95/mo incl 911 and pay per minute.
ummm (Score:2)
"But what concerns me is, are we poised to dismantle systems that are capable of standing alone to keep communities and regions 'in-touch' with each other"
I dont know where you live or what magic technology you use, but Telephones have never been stand alone, except in a small number of direct wired locations such as internal coms or maybe some major military back ups. You pick up a phone to dial or connect, and Point B needs to handle your connection to Point c.
IP telephony sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who builds and installs large phone systems for a living, I cringe whenever a customer tells me "Yeah we've got a T1, coming in over Time Warner."
A traditional copper PRI from Verizon is the ideal service I like most of my customers to have, I never get anywhere near the same level complaints of call quality issues or service outages for a traditional PRI that I get for any PRI coming in over the internet. Well, except after hurricane Sandy, after that storm we had a number of customers switch over to an IP based PRI or a pure SIP solution. It made sense since it took Verizon months to fix their wiring, but a lot of these customers that switched wanted to immediately switch back as soon as Verizon was available again since the quality was so god awful.
I have no problem with Verizon using fiber and IP based telephony in the back end since I they're not going to be able to maintain their legacy equipment forever. But, don't send everything down the same pipe and just install a $200 Adtran on-site and expect it to be anywhere near as reliable. Especially since a lot of the support engineers for these carriers have no idea how to do anything with an IAD. I've had support engineers tell me I need to send a SIP redirect to forward calls out with the proper caller ID, well sure I'd love to except I'm being handed a PRI and the SIP side of things is all them.
Anyway, for customers that have rock solid internet and a separate dedicated pipe for a SIP trunk, I have no problem going native SIP all the way to our equipment. My problem is when someone out in the boonies thinks they'll save a ton of money switching to VoIP service from their cable provider. Instead it just means dozens of billable hours trying to explain to this customer that while their internet service is excellent for checking Facebook, good voice quality requires a solid internet connection with little to no packet loss and very low latency and nothing we can do to their PBX will change that. Although as one coworker pointed out, as the number of people who grew up using cell phones all their life increases, the less complaints we will receive. People who are used to POTS lines are going to be used to picking up a phone and having excellent call quality, people who grew up with cell phones are much more accustomed to jitter, echo, and poor call quality so I'm sure they'll be fine in a pure IP telephony world.
AT&T has a valid point. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have this impression of the reliability and stability of the POTS network partially because it is ubiquitous and invisible. Yet, as someone who has spent most of my adult life working in and around copper twisted pair, I can tell you POTS isn't as "reliable" as you think.
You have the impression that POTS is reliable because there's a small army of men and women maintaining it. AT&T is claiming that it is costing them a fortune to maintain the copper twisted pair infrastructure to the standards dictated by the FCC for a rapidly dwindling number of customers. People are leaving copper-pair services by the thousands every day: some are going wireless, some are going to pure-play VoIP providers, and even the "cable company" (or the telephone company's own fiber).
Copper wire only lasts 20-30 years hanging from the side of a pole, on average, before it will likely need to be replaced. Especially in urban areas, where cable replacement isn't cheap, most of the landline phone companies are staring down the barrel of 50-60 year old copper infrastructure that may have as many as 75% of the pairs condemned.
Let me put it this way. No IT department for a business in a 100-year-old building facing a phone rewire job would replace all that 50-year-old 25-pair with.. more Category 2. The minimum they'd pull is Cat5e or "6", and even more likely they'd pull a significant amount of fiber, if not to the desk at least to a departmental wiring closet. That's the same decision the phone companies want to make.
From a strictly technical/engineering perspective, it's 100% the right choice. Copper loop is functionally obsolete in almost every way.
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That's part of it. It's alse reliable and robust because it's designed to be so - there's redundant power supplies, alternate paths, widely distributed switching and control networks, etc... etc... Current commercial IP networks aren't designed or built to nearly the same level of reliability or robustness. Or, to put it another way... I've lost
You're thinking about the wrong issue. (Score:2)
If you think your current POTS line is circuit-switched, or will work if your local exchange is disconnected from the network, think again.
A bigger concern is that while POTS isn't as robust as, say, cellular or VoIP against some sorts of damage it *will* work during a prolonged power outage (as long as the generator at the local exchange stays fuelled). VoIP won't, at all, unless there's power at the subscribers home. Cellular even if you can keep your cellphone battery topped off somehow, I wouldn't bet
Ownersip of the copper POTS infrastructure (Score:2)
along with the wirecenters/etc should be transferred to local cities and townships, to use for emergency communications. (Eg 911).
Every line should automatically have a number, every line should able to dial 911. Cost of maintenance should be covered by a SMALL tax, similar in amount to the "e911" charge already in use, per home.
In fact, this is what should have been done with payphones, too. But its too late for that I guess.
On premises equipment... (Score:2)
A POTS home requires a phone that needs no on-premises equipment requiring a source of power. Also, POTS is required by law to provide 911 service even if the homeowner isn't paying for any phone service.
Even though I have VOIP (comcast), I have a corded (no batteries needed) POTS phone in case there is an emergency, I can disconnect my VOIP line from the house, and plug in the 20yr old $10 'walmart special' into the wall and call 911.
Sure, a cell is a backup for VOIP, but they both require power to work.
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As someone who uses POTS/VOIP and Cell (Score:4, Informative)
In case of incident (Natural / man made). Here in Seattle (area), several years ago we had a large wind storm that took out most of the power in the entire region. Many areas didn't have power for over a week. Cell phone - towers died after about three days. That's right: The TOWERS failed. Also, you couldn't get gasoline; no power at the pumps (Read local generators - at homes - started giving out).
In some areas of Seattle, people have their choice of which ISP they like (DSL, Cable, fiber optic, wireless) which is all fine and good for a VOIP carrier. Ask any of the phone companies what will happen when the power goes out? You can't call... 911, the power company, anyone for any emergency service, much less a call such as "I'm alive and okay", or "need food, shelter" (in case of some emergency).
I have family in north eastern WA. Where they are at, there is not viable alternative to dial-up. No VOIP, and spotty cell phone availability.
Cell phones... great sound unless you are in a dead area (there are a lot more of these than the phone company's are willing to admit); or as noted the power is out for an extended time.
Just because it (POTS) isn't as profitable as cell - or as well regulated, doesn't men it should be dismantled.
POTS is highly regulated. (Score:3)
deregulation (Score:4, Insightful)
I work for a phone company. This move is about deregulation, nothing more. Phone companies biggest competitors are cable companies, that's obvious. But what's not so obvious is the huge regulatory hurdles phone companies have to overcome while cable companies are almost completely unregulated. The FCC is almost entirely in AT&Ts pocket.... hell, most of the people working for the FCC probably used to work for AT&T. This will pass just like everything else AT&T wants, they basically write their own regulation now.
What will happen? What are AT&T's goals?
Phone service is more profitable in areas of high population density. For years AT&T has been abandoning rural exchanges, selling them, and focusing on big cities. They are exponentially more profitable than rural areas. The problem however is these exchanges usually cover areas that are both highly profitable and areas that actually lose money. So the phone company, by law, has to shift the burden across the entire exchange. So the city peoples prices go up, so the rural people can have phone service. The cable companies however just refuse to serve rural people. This is exactly what AT&T wants. Imagine the footprint of your local cable company, that is the exact same footprint AT&T wants for their phone service. Outside that? Get a cellphone.
The article seems to want to argue the primary reason to hold onto POTs is its relighability. During a disaster it stays working... well no, it doesn't. Basically it works like this, there is a primary switch and it can reach out a certain distance before call quality goes down. So then they have remotes that basically act as repeaters. Both the switch and the remotes have rooms full of car batteries. I'm not kidding they really are car batteries. They are all hooked up to a giant charger and if the power goes out the batteries continue to power the switch or remote for, at most, 36hrs. Often far less. If there is a power outage in the area, the batteries provide power long enough for the techs to drive a generator to the site. If there's a major power outage (think hurricane) the techs end up driving in circles from remote to remote with the 2 or 3 generators they have on had charging up each remote as much as they can before moving on to the next. At most this can last a few days. There are only so many techs, and so many generators. The techs get tired, the generators take hours to charge the remote up so they never get it above 25% before they have to move on to the next failing remote. etc... etc...
POTs networks have very high alarm rates (I worked in the NOC for a while) Equipment is constantly failing. Mice, car accidents, etc... POTs networks are not redundant, have no fail-safes. If any part of the wiring leading back to the CO gets damaged, you lose your service. Once we switch people to IP service, all those problems go away. The network auto-corrects. We can have a degraded cable (bad pairs) and the equipment works around it. Rather than having to send a tech out every time a single pair is damaged, you now only have to send them when a certain percentage of the pairs in a binder are failing.
So IP service IS better. But AT&T doesn't want to switch people to IP service because it's better... they want to be able to force people to take it weather they want it or not. They want to then treat the service as a data service (completely unregulated) and not be subjected to annoying PSC complaints about their services. The real solution here would be to make data just as regulated as phone service and then let AT&T provide whichever they want... but that's not going to happen.
History.... learn from it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, why do we think that POTS would continue if we were partitioned or that data lines were taken down?
Because POTS will work in some of the worst environmental conditions possible. It survived the nuclear bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has been through hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even meteor strikes and kept working. Yes, some parts of the system failed, but for those parts that were still connected as long as a local power source (often just a battery bank) supplied power the system kept working.
It was on the back of the POTS system that the internet was born, and has always been a backup to every computer network system... even if it wasn't perfect at least *something* would get through in terms of data.
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Really, why do we think that POTS would continue if we were partitioned or that data lines were taken down?
Because POTS will work in some of the worst environmental conditions possible. It survived the nuclear bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Did you just make that up? "The telephone system was approximately 80% damaged, and no service was restored until 15 August." http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp9.shtml [atomicarchive.com]
You can make the same points on resiliency for the Internet. The question is, is it worth continuing to maintain POTS, and if not, should we extend the resiliency of the Internet within smaller regions.
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POTS didn't survive Sandy all that well.
You know what did? Cell phones.
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The Northeast US is notoriously cheap and short-sighted (and I say that having spent most of my life in this region). If power/phone/etc. were installed underground instead of strung up on toothpicks, surrounded by trees that are never trimmed, the infrastructure would be far more reliable.
Re:History.... learn from it! (Score:4, Interesting)
San Diego has allowed utilities to add extra fees to everyones' electric (SDG&E) bills to cover undergrounding for decades. Seeing as nothing was actually getting buried this got to be a sore point back in the 90's, neatly solved by the city formally allowing SDG&E to keep the money without burying anything. A new effort started ~10 years ago. The first neighborhood in the program had open trenches and dug up streets for two years while the various utilities and the city dickered over who would pay for what, and ended up with electric/cable being put underground while phone lines were left on the poles. Really the only people who are getting all of their cables put underground are the rich ones who have ocean views: those neighborhoods vote for assessments and then each homeowner coughs up $6-12K to pay for it. The rest of us are paying an extra $3.50 per month and can expect our poles to disappear sometime between next week and the scheduled end of the current undergrounding program: 2067.
Be careful what you wish for.
What's happening, Dude? (Score:3)
There's a lot of stuff happening underground, right?
Re:Yes, sewer & water issues more than overhea (Score:5, Funny)
I bet sewer lines would be better maintained if they were strung over people's heads.
Re:History.... learn from it! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've lived in Central, Upstate and Western NY. The phone system is usually more reliable than the power grid. To the point where we usually get at least two or three blackouts every winter (and more during the summer), but I can't remember the last time the phone line went down. And with POTS, you don't need to worry about no power for VoIP, or not being able to recharge your cell phone (the network often becomes overloaded during blackouts anyway). With generators becoming cheaper, it's less of an issue but we're not yet to the point in which cell phones or VoIP are more reliable than POTS.
Re: History.... learn from it! (Score:4, Interesting)
VoIP is great as long as there is reliable internet connectivity to wherever your service provider decides to locate their servers. For a system that is comparable to and as resilient as POTS, service providers would need to place a VoIP gateway at each of their central offices. While that is certainly doable, the question is whether service providers will do that of their own accord without someone like the FCC mandating it to ensure that there can be reliable communications should a flood, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, lightning storm, or other form of natural or man made disaster.
Re:My First FRiST P0sT!1!! -- with pride. (Score:5, Insightful)
AC: Really, why do we think that POTS would continue if we were partitioned or that data lines were taken down?
Good question, although I Sens an odd bit of d3r1s1ve m0ckery from yous.
Because it was built that way. Your local bell telephone exchange was designed to stand alone and not just provide electricity to operate telephones. From that single building It completes calls between its own subscribers and those in other directly-connected exchanges, even if long haul circuits are down.
But in the digital subscriber age we are starting to see roll-outs of nationwide services that only appear to be local. They demonstrate sudden, surprising, even shocking failure. Router restarts, failures to push software updates, failure to connect to centralized RADIUS servers, failure to complete DSL login and even failure of DNS lookup within the telco's own Internet can cause confusion and backlogs that disrupt IP phone service.
I grant that no mob with torches has ever marched up to the Phone Company and demanded that they pull the plug to prove that the service they provide is resilient to inter-network failure.
In fact, these vulnerabilities extend to the use of local; electrical power. I have known a few people who buy in to these IP-phones supplied by the local cable company who are shocked to discover that it stops functioning soon after their electricity goes out. And it's not just a house thing, a MERE few hours into an ice storm many pole-mounted cable company amplifiers that rely on city power depleted their (may I say, 'dipshit'?) battery packs and whole neighborhoods lost their phones regardless of whether they had emergency power.
Meanwhile the POTS providers who had sunk a larger investment into provisioning their remote buildings, carried enough batteries to keep going for a couple of days.
What we have here is a general attention to infrastructure and disaster preparedness in the interest of rolling out things that work almost as well, most of the time.
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Re:Cell phoe reliability (Score:5, Insightful)
So are POTS. Especially for long distance.
The big argument against dropping POTS is that cellular is simply not available everywhere you need a phone. In basements. In rural areas. Yes, you can bypass those limitations but I'm not seeing any legislation that forces the Really Big Corporations to do that.
Guarantee that everyone who needs a phone line can get reception, work on your redundancy and backup, nail the corporate weasels down tight and no problemo.
Otherwise, leave the damned wires alone.
Re:Cell phoe reliability (Score:4, Informative)
Not about VoIP either (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about dropping POTS in favor of wireless. It is about using VOIP instead of POTS, wiring still required.
This isn't about dropping POTS in favor of wireless. It is about using any technology that isn't specifically named in federal law as subject to pricing, quality and access regulatory controls.
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Well then, why don't we just impose the same kind of pricing, quality and access regulations on coax and fiber? It sounds like a good plan to me...
Re:Cell phone reliability (Score:5, Interesting)
Over what wiring, DSL? Those copper phone lines are going to be scrapped and DSL will be gone too. No, Fiber will not replace them because it isn't profitable enough. Verizon considers FIOS to be a mistake. This is all about AT&T and Verizon completely abandoning wireline and replacing it with wireless. Unlike wireline POTS, wireless is completely regulated and comes with zero quality of service guarantees. There are zero requirements that a cell phone site stay up during a power outage. The government tried to require that each cell site have 8 hours worth of backup power available, but the wireless industry fought it and won. There are zero guarantees about the signal strength being adequate in the entirety of the wireline markets being abandoned. When it is all said and done there are going to be many homes with zero telecommunications at all. Don't count on the FCC to provide consumer protections either. The FCC chairman is a former cable company lobbyist. Might as well ask a former CEO of BP to oversee offshore oil drilling safety and disaster mitigation.
Wireless is also more lucrative because they can charge many times more for data. Why provide 100s of gigabytes on a wireline when at the same price you can offer single digits worth of gigabytes and charge up the wazoo with overages. This reform is more about the Verizon and AT&T raping and pillaging of the consumer via overpriced wireless data in areas without cable internet and allowing cable companies to become the monopoly for all wireline based communications than it is about promoting technical innovation. Replacing wireline with wireless is much like the power company deciding that providing wired electricity is too expensive and selling batteries to their customers is a suitable replacement.
Emergency? (Score:3)
In an emergency, no one really cares about long distance. You need to call the local sheriff's office, the ambulance, or the fire station. Those are primary, above all else. Secondarily, you need to be able to call local people - relatives or not - who can assist each other immediately. No matter WHO lives six hundred miles away, calling him/her will have no bearing on your emergency situation, because he/she cannot help you in an emergency.
Calling your mother-in-law to inform her that your spouse has b
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There are precious few CB radios on the air any more. I haven't fired my own up in years. Today's new generation of truck drivers don't seem to use them, REACT and other emergency groups no longer seem to monitor them, police and sheriff's offices don't monitor them. My remaining radio is actually a converted 10 meter rig, a Ranger. I mostly monitored other frequencies, because I was tired of the welfare radio cretins who have nothing better to do that troll and bait the airwaves with racist and other s
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The main problem with availability of service is not the signal range - it's power.
As in power to RUN the communication machine.
With mobile phones or other solutions requiring external power supply to run, in case of an actual emergency you have a serial power outage issue.
Both the network AND the communication device have to have working power supply - so you get twice the chance of failure compared to POTS which supplies the power to the communication device through the network.
Plus, it is a separate sour
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...perhaps a bit tinfoil hat wearing
More like a giant tinfoil sombrero with little dangly tinfoil balls around the rim, all while you dance to an imaginary mariachi band.
Guess we should all go back to shortwave radio - unfortunately it has become a lost art now a days.
After the apocalypse, the few remaining practitioners will be able to trade communications services for sexual favors and repopulate the globe with little geek babies.
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But, you open up many more possibilities when you also have the analog infrastructure, which is ALREADY IN PLACE!
Not quite. Where I live, new houses will get only digital lines. Besides, a lot of people drop house phones anyway. When everybody in the household has a mobile phone, the POTS phone is simply not used, so why pay to keep it?
I have not had analog phone line for more than 10 years.
Re:Wrong Identification in Summary (Score:5, Informative)
No, not At&T chairman, nor even a former At&T chairman. Instead is the former President and CEO of the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) and former President and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA). Head of both the cable and cell phone industry lobbying groups! What's not to love?
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My POTS is much more reliable than the electric power - can't remember the last time, if ever, that it was down.
Would you notice? I notice the one-a-year or less that there's an interruption in my electrical supply, as some digital clocks need resetting. It doesn't matter if I'm in/awake or not, and a 1-second interruption is enough.
If I used the POTS phone for all calls while I'm at home, I'm only going to notice it's not working if I try and make a call, which is a small fraction of the week.
Example (since I have a BT line): http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12209/~/do-faults-ever-occur-on-th [custhelp.com]
Re:Not that useful anyways (Score:5, Informative)
Last year when a major snowstorm that knocked out power for over a week (12 days to be exact), cell service was out after a day, but landlines stayed on the entire time.
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Yep. Same experience here. No power for 7 days (we live in luxury compared to your 12 ... sorry). The landline was on the entire time.
We also experience frequent power outages (non-storm related) here in the lovely northeast US, and the typical routine is this:
1. Find flashlight.
2. Find the electric bill with the customer service number on it.
3. Go to the POTS/landline phone in the house.
4. Report power outage.
5. Marvel at how every other damned thing in the house doesn't work, but the "old" landline sur
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Spoken like someone without much imagination.
When the power goes out, the odds of needing to make a 911 call go way up.
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In Baltimore city in parts it was still alive in 2013. Wires from the house all the way to the CO 5 blocks away, all unswitched until it gets into that building. Phone service still locally active even without power. My parents gave up their landline this year and have had problems with VOIP ever since.