Slashdot Mirror
VoIP Gets A Big Backer And Another Lawsuit
Ungrounded Lightning writes "Time Warner Cable has announced plans to roll out a VoIP telephone service. I see two implications. First: ISPs providing VoIP phone service have a competitive advantage over third-party VoIP/PSTN providers (such as Vonage), who must ride on top of a separate broadband subscription for the packet transport. This could lead to consolidation of this industry segment in the hands of ISPs. Second: Cable ISPs have an advantage over Telco DSL operations - where a VoIP offering would cannibalize their own POTS and short-range long-distance revenue. This implies rollout on cable providers first, followed by harder times for telcos, long-distance companies, and third parties."
chipperdog writes "In this article it is mentioned that the small rural phone companies in North Dakota are filing a complaint against a local VoIP provider, CallSmart. Interesting to see how this one works out, given what happened in Minnesota a few months ago."
I agree that Time Warner (and other, especially cable based ISPs) will have a huge competative advantage over third-party providers. But, in my area TWC is going to be offering VOIP in early next year, but they want to charge 39.95/mo for service that I can get for 25 bucks from vonage and they won't even be offering voice mail initially!
I think government and telcos need to realized that VOIP can and shouldn't be regulated anymore than any internet-based service. Governments need to find other revenue streams than regulatory fees....just my $.02
My office is looking to go to VoIP since we are in the planning stages of a move. The estimated cost savings is around $6000 per month for less than 150 people. The drawback is we would be ditching our entire phone system (and phones) and purchasing new equipment (we are talking about $60K at least). No decision has been made yet.
The other added benefit is that I would be responsible for phone traffic, also, in that it would be routed through the normal network. More job security...heh.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
But isn't "short-range long-distance revenue" an oxymoron?
Second: Cable ISPs have an advantage over Telco DSL operations - where a VoIP offering would cannibalize their own POTS and short-range long-distance revenue.
So when your cable service is interrupted, you can't call 'em to tell 'em you lost your TV signal! Think of the money they'll save on customer no-service!
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
Is it just me, or is the American business model to stick with a rigid plan, and when that plan becomes obsolete, whine, bitch and complain until the politicians you bought last election will come up with laws that protect your horribly backwards business model and crush any and all innovation in the country.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Is there any technical problem providing a service using Wireless in Local Loop(basically a cordless phone with the base unit at the telco)? They could provide phone service and wireless internet service. Are there any bandwidth restrictions in the US? It seems like a simple concept and i've seen WLL phones in India.
Whenever there is a storm, my cable goes out before the power ever does. Cable also tends to go out at random times. Why would I want to change to VOIP when I'm not insured that cable will always be available -- especially since a POTS system is much, much, much more reliable.
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
I'm not convinced that cable really has an advantage over the phone company. The cable company doesn't get 7*24 at all...
If it rains, we have an outage.
If the weather's hot, we have an outage.
If our cat farts within ten feet of the modem, we have an outage.
Yes, I like my cable modem for the download speed, but I won't give them my phone service anytime soon. Calling tech support is often an exercise in futility.
BTW - I have no land line, my wife and I use wireless only. It's not as reliable as a land line, but it's actually cheaper and works pretty damn well.
Alan.
So you're going to wait until the bandwagon is already rolling then, rather than actually drive it?
Doesn't really make much business sense...
Hey relax fella, you need a rest, guy.
From the CallSmart site: "Make sure your caller ID is unblocked. We use your caller ID to authenticate your account when you call." Has anyone else not heard of spoofing caller id?
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
Well, it seems to me that this at the very least provides some valuable competition to the phone monopolies. Unfortunately, capitalism being what it is, it seems fairly likely to me that either VoIP or phone (probably VoIP) will eventually destroy the other, and unless we get more competition in the ISP market we'll just end up with another monopoly.
I could be wrong, but I think that one of capitalism's biggest problems is industries that require a large infrastructure. I know that socialist approaches to most things tend to be less efficient (due to the lack of competition), but in a case like this I think it's better, since to get REAL competition we need multiple infrastructures reaching every single house, the cost of which of course would still get passed on to the consumer.
Troll. He also works middle-management for Honda and as systems manager at Apple.
#define DRM chmod 000
I think Cheech would like VoIP. I mean tihnk about it who doesn't cannibus tehir own pots or place cannibus in POTS or something.
When I finish smoking tihs doob I'll come back to this post dude.
MoFscker
Gentoo Sucks
If the CallSmart system has to pay these fess, any other tone prompted computer callin PBX should have to qualify as well...that's essentially all CallSmart is.
As a US citizen I am both pissed off, and embarrased this is how my country is helping us "advance" telco technology and telco business models.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
If a baby bell gets together with local broadcast stations to distribute free over-air digital tuners, cable operators will lose their core business. They reached max penetration several years ago and have been casting about for revenue sources. One thing they tried was an alliance with broadcasters for central services. It was damaged by nonlinear insertion and cheap storage availability.
Take the number of stations within sixty miles of you and double it. That's the approximate number of sources of free programming. The advertising revenue will come back into the community too. You can subscribe to specialized stuff on broadband. Wrestling, Celebrity sports, E!, all the shit you so desperately need.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
I understand why phone companies see a threat in VoIP providers, but they shouldn't. Maybe they'll experiment some looses during the time the hype is high, but later on things should be roughly back to normal (or even better, thanks to better marketing and competition strategies).
That's because a lot of customers using VoIP for international phone calls wouldn't make those calls using conventional phone services anyway. I know I wouldn't. If VoIP was not available, and I need to keep in touch often with people overseas, I'd prefer to use cheaper alternatives such as e-mail or IM (even internet conference technology).
But of course, that's my two cents... feedback is gladly welcomed.
rofl. pots is more reliable? i think you just have crappy cable.
i have comcast that stays up pretty much all the time. its been down like twice in 31/2 years. plus i get better than dial-up or dsl speeds (3.5x1, yay). and i actually pull those speeds.
i also work for a major DSL ISP/POTs provider (yeah, i dont have it, that should say something) and trust me POTs is NOT more reliable than cable. its down all the time and is usually effected much more so by weather than wonderful cable.
at any rate i no longer have a home phone anyway (cell phone and cable net, w00t) so thats just my 2 cents.
Got an email last week, asking for beta testers. Half off the first 3 months (making it $20) and a "free install" is not *too* bad a deal.
Thinks like this have happend before. Right now, we have things like Direct TV. Cable TV isn't dead. I know that it's a little different but both types of the same service will have their followers.
In a small business you typically need lots of phone lines. VoIP offers you several for a fraction of the cost. It costs about $100 per line and with 12 lines that's $1,200 per month. VoIP offers significantly cheaper prices.
I'm not sure if the price difference is really warranted because the technology behind your old-style phones is fairly mature. It seems like they're gouging you out of pure greed because of the monopolistic control phone companies have.
Or local Verizon in my area is about $35 for no-frills nothing service.
Compare that with my cellular verizon service which is about the same price except with voicemail, caller ID, "free" longdistance because they must remain competitive with other cellular carriers.
VoIP is a frightening technology and I would prefer if it was avoided. But when you're a struggling small business and are looking at reversing your cash flow hundreds of dollars per month you really don't have any choice at all.
to use a spoof - otherwise it gets rejected. So how do you harvest them? That would involve some less than legal activities. Kudos for trying though.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Taxes that apply to current voice tariffed services do not apply to "data" services the same way.
Since all the carriers are actually carrying most, if not all of their "voice" traffic by the same methods, on the same kind of equipment as "data", there is money to be made carrying voice but calling it data.
Very little infrastructure remains circuit switched and is now packet switched like data. Much of this was driven by the requirements for pumping a bunch of traffic over fiber; WDM, DWDM etc.
Now the efforts are clearly to pave the way for providers to pocket the difference or most of it; this difference being the amounts charged to the customer which are turned over to the government as taxes.
If you pay $100 per month for "voice" services and $30 of that is taxes, and you switch to VOIP for $85 without taxes, you save $15 at the same time the provider makes an additional $15.
And this doesn't even address the investment tax credits and "cost of doing business" deductions the providers enjoy for building up the ability to offer new services.
So what we have is a bunch of people angling for position in the inevitable VOIP fray.
Some are clearly innovators.
Some want to be first just to stake a claim for later work.
Some have deep pockets but nothing else to offer. So they are about to expend massive legal fees and efforts to keep others out of the game.
If you can't innovate; Litigate.
The end result will ultimately be that the average customer spends about the same as they do right now. How the fees are assessed will look different, but the bottom line will be pretty much the same.
The providers will then benefit or fail based upon how successful their legal tactics were in creating, sustaining or closing tax loopholes in order to benefit their bottom line.
There is no altruism in the move to VOIP.
Customers who are already used to sending them money every month.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Agreed. Even during a power outage, I can use my POTS phone since they're pumping some power through the lines.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
We just got Cisco IP phones at my work. I notice that when I talk on them I can't hear my own voice in the headset. With normal phones I can always hear myself back. Especially when I blow into the receiver. Maybe with normal phones there's an echo from the electronics looping around... but I like it! It makes me feel like my voice is going into the network.
With the IP phones I lose my train of thought because I feel like I'm talking to myself rather than into a phone. It weirds me out. Do all IP phones take away the echo, or is it just the kind we have?
my blog
As exited as I am to see Internet services such as VoIP become mainstream, part of me still thinks that POTS will still be here for a while.
A couple of things to consider:
- You need broadband and not everybody has it, can get or will ever want it
- Cable and DSL (especially cable according ot my own experience) are definitely not as stable as POTS. They are next to useless when power is out unless you AND you proveider have UPS
- Emergency services are still an issue with VoIP. I'm expecting the first headline about someone dying because 911 wasn't available on VoIP anytime now.
- There is still no end to end QoS on VoIP. Home gateways are still too dumb to prioritize VoIP trafficover your Pr0n traffic.
It is a little known fact that cable companies were ruled as not common carriers. That means that customers have very little protection from lack of service, privacy issues... Once we allow them to provide phone service without those protections we will erode those rights even further. $20/month for a phone line is a good deal. Do you think that will last if the phone companies are driven under?
It has been happening since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Businesses will attempt to seize market domination and then use their political influence to maintain their monopolistic positions. This will never change, the only we can do is make sure that we have laws in place to protect against it.
The end of the timetable for broadcasters to convert to digital has come. Virtually everybody is on the air now. The reach is better although the tower has to be high. Stations with owners who have brains have been putting in new or extending them for several years. The bandwidth the government has GIVEN the industry is enough for one HD or two standard definition (D1 or whatever) streams of data. Thus double the number of choices. They have a huge issue to deal with. They are at the end of a financial situation like the one faced by the newspapers in the 80's. The possibility exists for the local broadcsters to make the cable operators take their turn at teh bottom of the heap. Support from a telco could make a critical difference in a number one (NY, LA, Chicago, Miami) through five market.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
"If our cat farts within ten feet of the modem, we have an outage."
The Klumps have a cat!
They'll be providing some of the back-end service for this (as opposed to them being in the foreground). Time Warner wants this under their name. I've been involved with this for a bit because a number of the large servers I sysadmin (which are local telco boxes) have been involved in adaptations for this project. Should be interesting.
The lazy bum can't hold a job.
We actually use VoIP at my office: www.microoffice.us/slashdot. It works reasonably well and allows us to provide an extremely cost-effective office suite package (office space, phone, high-speed Internet, mail, meeting spaces, etc...) to our customers. Our customers are primarily solo entrepreneurs (e.g., consultants and freelancers) and very small businesses who are price-conscous.
You really have to be careful about the data network though. We have near-dedicated bandwidth from our data provider, which is why quality is good. Forget about trying to serve business class users with VoIP over cable modem or DSL -- the quality goes to hell when someone tries to download a large file. The QoS really has to take place upstream of you (at the point of the bottleneck). Otherwise it doesn't achieve much.
I'm curious to see what alliances will be formed: local governments and the phone company on the same side for once, against cable providers and possibly the FCC. It could be a real dog fight.
[this
people had the same attitude about IBM?
;-) harmless jest, OK?
Everybody has to ride their (telco) depreciating capital assets to get from here to there. VOIP uses the same infrastructure unless new infrastructure has *magically* appeared.
The Cable infrastructure is not maintained at the same level of the phone company. That's why people complain a lot.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
I ditched my landline 6 months ago and haven't looked back. I get tons of free features I didnt get with my landline ( like caller id, etc ), no solicitations at all (isn't this even illegal?), and I can take my phone with my where ever I go (or leave it at home if I don't want to be disturbed).
And to boot, its all about 10 bucks cheaper / month than the landline was ( 300 anytime minutes + unlimited evening and weekend + unlimited long distance - who uses more than 300 minutes during the weekdays? You're probably at work and using the company phone).
Seriously I don't know why people bother with landlines. The solicitations alone were enough to drive me away.
http://www.bigbruin.com/html/dlinkdvg1120.htm
The tester had a home cable connection where he saw nearly 6000k download rate and almost 1000k upload until he plugged in the gateway.
Simply plugging it in ate up 700k of download speed.
But the real killer came when he actually USED the phone:
Download=75K
Upload=39k
Basically, the use of VOIP ate up 99% of the bandwidth of a very fast connection.
For those with the more typical 1000k-1500k cable connection, the results are not promising.
I have always disliked VOIP for that reason. I used for three years from 1999. I found that it hindered the small noises you get from people that signal things like emotion. That would be due to filtering and smaple rate limit I suppose. ??
It is possible that being able to hear yourself is linked to speech patterns. I understand that stuttering may be related to this in some strange way.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
If there are problems with service these guys will get dumped for bad service and thier customers will get thier normal phone service again. I doubt that thier are enough people that will switch to run ma bell out of town anytime soon.
Also if your worried as a business for service get 2 diffrent access providers. I bet that will get you security in your phone system. Especially where I live phone lines are on poles and tend to get hit by trees in storms. Data lines however are underground and not nearly as susceptible to this kind of damage.
Government should not have to worry as long as thier are many players in the market.
Got hosting
Before someone starts including TC on a Linux router with a pretty interface/enclosure. It's already pretty damn simple with the Arbitrator which (thankfully) the source is open to some extent. I'm sure someone else has come up with something (that is if you don't like cisco/3com or other hardware based systems.)
I don't see how this apparently diverse market of Free/cheap QoS is going to somehow limit VoIP? End to end QOS is necessary, so ISPS will provide it, Why? Because your ISP will be your provider, and if I'm not mistaken, they can run the QOS on the connection they provide you.
Why isn't any /. user concerned with redun....
Aw, fark it. when your IP line goes out, 9/10 says your POTS system will still be up. You jerks (not geeks, not nerds) don't get it. VOIP is not redundant. POTS is, Mechanical vs digital etc.
A router problem in NY will take out half of your VOIP service. Do you want reliable or cheap.
In the business marketplace, VOIP makes sense for just about everyone. Any serious business is likely to be using a mix of frame for Voice and Fiber for data at the moment, VOIP allows this to all be consolidated into fiber pipes. This works well for the vendor because fiber is cheap to install and provision compread with DS1/DS3.
:)
At the consumer end of the spectrum, copper works fine for voice calls, and is required for DSL. So there is no clear advantage for VOIP over DSL. But with cable, the TV line that has already been expanded to carry data can now carry voice. Big win for cable network owners.
I don't really care though, I've been a cell user for years. Would be nice if Nokia could work on the stability of the 3650 though
Hey, let's use our garbage grade DSL or cable modem for voice service! The quality is abysmal but who cares! It's only $49.95 a month.
Go to your telco and actually pay for at least a PRI people.
I do think that posts have been getting deleted from Slashdot lately. Just yesterday, one of my Amazon links got deleted. Either that or I forgot which article I trolled. Seriously, how many slashdot users have never posted something AC or logged in that got modded down?
Businesses will attempt to seize market domination and then use their political influence to maintain their monopolistic positions. This will never change, the only we can do is make sure that we have laws in place to protect against it.
In many cases, the same thing that you are looking at to rectify the situation is the very problem that's creating it - more laws. There is an econmic theory called "rent seeking" that businesses will get laws passed to maintain or increase profits. Less regulation frequently means that companies have to succeed by actually providing a good product at a good price rather than using some form of regulation against their competitors.
As far as maintaining monopolistic positions, sometimes those positions come into being throught government action in the first place. Think AT&T before deregulation, the airline and trucking industry before deregulation, your local cable company, water company, electric company, ect.
I have blog like everyone else
I don't have much experience with cable modems, but what I've seen is that latencies can be highly variable. This is really bad for VoIP.
I have two high-speed circuits and I am a Vonage subscriber. My main router box is configured to use the DSL route for voice; the wireless link gave me too much drop-out.
Is my experience with Cable circuits atypical, or have others experienced the same thing. And is anybody using a VoIP service over cable who can report?
It will be interesting to see how cable companies handle 911 and other emergency services (hospitals, government agencies etc.).
This is really why (aside from reasonable rates for customers) that the Telcos are regulated - and fined heavily if they screw it up.
Dialtone uptimes will be hard to manage for current cable networks - given the current traffic patterns as well as the poor scalability vis-a-vis DSL.
Finally, don't worry about the Telcos; most if not all of them are already leveraging these new technologies in various creative ways to make copper wire a value added proposition into the forseable future. Don't overlook SDSL rollouts over the horizon - and who knows what is on the drawing boards. Given that copper wire touches more homes than cable - who do you think is really in a better position to take advantage of broadband communications of all types in the long term? Who do you think critical government agencies and emergency services are going to trust with their external communications gateways?
I will leave those answers as an exercise for the user...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Emergency services are still an issue with VoIP. I'm expecting the first headline about someone dying because 911 wasn't available on VoIP anytime now
To heck with 911 availability. As mentioned by many, power outages aren't friendly to cable. In fact, they're not friendly to the internet at all.
Telephone lines have a voltage to them, which means that unless the phone line is severed, even having no power doesn't mean you can't call out.
The scenario I see is that somebody is *fixing* a bad wire, whatever. He makes himself a path to ground, blows a circuit, and takes out the power. With the power out, you can't call 911 or anything.
For the same reasons, they recommend that cordless phone users have at least one standard phone in the house, you can still call in an emergency.
For myself, I don't understand the whole VOIP concept. Couldn't you do something similar with a permament domain name/IP with voice software? I've been actually thinking of playing with VGETTY (voicemodem stuff) in order to patch my server in as an answering machine etc.... could probably modify this to patch into a live stream somehow? Maybe I could use this so that if somebody is "calling" me from online and I'm not home, it will relay through POTS and call my cell.
It would be nice for international calls... maybe with a Java applet available for that don't want to download an executable. I remember years ago getting very clear voice on a 33.6 modem to Australia... minimal lag and I think I was using video at the time too. Why do we need VOIP carrier for this?
I live in the Omaha area, and here Cox provides VoIP service. Here is a FAQ that is interesting to read how customers should see this service.
This is also a good reference from CNet.
D'yall know that Canada's Telus has been migrating to VoIP for all its long-distance traffic since July 2002? And that it has launched business service to Ontario and Quebec as of November?
VoIP is already here... it's just that the USA lags leading telco providers by about three years!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Not knowing what you were talking about I did a quick search on Minnesota and you're right. This is the most exciting event in the history of the World compared to what has happened in Minnesota in the past few months.
>i think you just have crappy cable.
I don't know about the original poster, but "you must have crappy cable" is kind of a no-brainer. I don't know many people whose cable service is remotely as reliable as their POTS service...especially now that POTS is a competitive market while cable still isn't.
Cable is crappy. Period. I wouldn't have ditched POTS for VOIP if I hadn't been able to get wireless broadband. No way does anyone sane with anything like the experiences I've had allow their sole link to the outside world to depend on the reliability of their cable connection.
I haven't tried VOIP or anything like that but POTS is more reliable than cable in my area. My "low-speed cable" goes down once in a while. Maybe it might be my area but I have certainly noticed it. Having said that, I have no idea how DSL is. I have not had DSL for long periods of time.
:( ). Telephone on the other hand is only used occasionally (a few calls once in a while). So maybe I am just noticing the cable problem more because I use it more. The ideal case would be to compare DSL to cable (but as I said, I haven't had DSL for long enough to make any worthwhile comment).
Also, one other thing... I use the internet a lot. I am pretty much on it many hours (especially since I'm unemployed
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Who do you call when your telephone service goes out?
They'll notice that they're suddenly not getting calls from a given area. If it's just you, you use your neighbors phone. And if you don't have a neighbor, well, you don't have cable either.
paintball
The submitter assumes that the phone companies want their POTS and long-distance revenue. The problem with that kind of revenue is getting it (maintaining the networks) is expensive. The question is, will they get as much PROFIT by switching to VoIP, which I would argue they would, so there's no real advantage for cable there.
As for reliability, I Can't remember the last time my cable TV was out, although my cable modem had its issues until they installed a booster - the frequency your cable modem signal operates at is distance and interference finnicky. (Yes, that's a technical description.)
paintball
When I was with TW in upstate NY, they were already offering VoIP phone service and the customers loved it ... those that could actually get it. They limited the offering to (if I remember correctly) 5,000 customers and you had to live in a _very_ particular area (sufficient emergency backup power was the key issue.) The consensus was that we were offering the service back then (5 years ago?) so that when the technology evolved, TW would already have experience with it and (supposedly) be in a better place to take advantage of it. They even went so far as to take the very successful GM of the Rochester operation and move her to HQ to head up the project.
Bark less. Wag more.
RTFWP
http://www.twcdigitalphone.com/raleigh/faq.htm
A cable company competes on two fronts: entertainment and the higher-margin data services. The big win for TW is not that this allows them to compete more effectively with DSL providers; it's that you can't (yet? ever?) do this over a Satellite connection. That allows them maintain price on the entertainment offerings and keeps customers loyal.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
Ultimately, the government will realize that trying to tax VoIP to VoIP calls is a hopeless lost cause. Where it will most likely end up throwing around its weight is at the edge, where VoIP calls interact with the PSTN (ie, VoIP to "local" call, cell phone, etc). My personal predictions...
;-)
* Some fixed monthly FCC-imposed tarriff imposed for VoIP access to the PSTN (like the current network access surcharge). No fee, no access.
* Higher taxes on call terminations to the PSTN. Way higher.
* Possible tax on phone number itself.
* Lower taxes on PSTN service in general.
The FCC can't do a thing about VoIP calls that never touch the PSTN at all (as a practical OR legal matter), but I suspect it's going to get increasingly aggressive about its dealings with anyone whose VoIP network touches the PSTN in any way.
On the other hand, I can see RBOCs themselves getting into VoIP for local service.
Suppose, for instance, you had local phone service with DSL. Except you hardly ever used the local phone line directly... By default, your calls to the "main" number, as well as the rest of the virtual IP-based quasi-centrex system you pay BellSouth $50 a month for (with no hard limit on the number of simultaneous outgoing or incoming calls, up to a half-dozen phone numbers, and as many quasi extensions as you want to define for the auto attendant) go to the VoIP router you've got the rest of your home phone system plugged into (or the SIP phones strewn about the house). But when, for whatever reason, BellSouth realizes that it can't reach your VoIP router (say, a power outage), it automatically routes all your incoming calls to the physical phone line (which is connected to an old fashioned phone somewhere in the house). Likewise, if the router discovers that it can't reach BellSouth over the DSL line, it automatically tries to fail over ot the POTS line.
The end result: the best of all worlds (except maybe cost)... PSTN reliability, with VoIP freedom and flexibility. And grandma still knows how to call her sister on the phone
Was true in 2001. Not true now. I just tried it.
Posting as my real account, from my real IP, into a BANNED THREAD!!1!! Oooh, so scary. The big bad editors are gonna take my mod points away because I posted in this thread.
Get a grip. The editors don't care about you, or any of your troll brethern. They care about three things--high readership, keeping the site funded and alive, and readability of discussions.
Considering anyone using anti-slash's database-o-crap or crapflooding this junk is ruining point #3 (and by extension the other two), y'all deserve what you get.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
If you've had Road runner you know that nobody is going to change to this quickly, who wants to lose their phone at least once a day for a few hours because the inept net engineers can't keep a fucking LAN operating.
There are two kinds of people. One sees something he doesn't like and tries to fix it. He works hard and patiently, and keeps his moral high ground even when the object of his attentions is falling by the wayside.
The other kind sees something he doesn't like and says "Waaa, this sucks. Let's destroy it!". And tries. But he can't, usually, because he's just a stupid troll who's easily ignored.
Posting logged-in in a "banned thread". Oooh, scary. I'm'a get the bitchslap....wait, no I'm not. If the editors cared about your antics as much as you think they do, they'd ban every IP associated with this crap. Since they don't, I can only assume they're as bemused about stupid trolls as most of the rest of us are.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
For example, you might:
www.ultimatemedium.com
If the telcos can't find away to compete with the cable companies then the telco's go out of business. So What that is a market economy. There is nothing wrong with the telco going out of business, when they do the cost of VOIP will drop becase more users will be interested in the service. Don't give me some crap about poor people not being able to afford basic phone service, becase 1. NOBODY IS ENTITLED TO A TELEPHONE and 2. YOU CAN GET BASIC CELLULAR SERVICE NOW FOR THE SAME COST AS A LOCAL PHONE, even if you have fewer minutes
I've had DSL (through copper) for 3 years with only 1 2-hour connection outage, and 2 email server problems. My cable tv was down every other week until I got satellite. Not only that, they force you to view ads on a cable guide which you are paying for!
No thank you. If I pay, I don't want the ads taking up that screen real estate where there should be a programming guide.
Absolutely no way I am buying any product from cable companies, ever again, unless satellite goes away.
It is too expensive, they rip you off (by forcing ads, which you are paying them to avoid, down your throat) and I feel the value simply isn't there.
Not only that, cable is shared media. The more subscribers they get, the slower it goes.
I'll take switched DSL any day of the week, even though none of the providers has an SLA that guarantees anything.
l8,
AC
9-1-1.
I have a wife and a baby daughter at home. Until such time as position locating 911 service is available via cell, we're keeping our landline. In case something happens at home, I want them to be able to dial 911 and have help on the way IMMEDIATELY.
Sean
I used to have DSL through Qwest, and now have a cable modem with Cox. I'll take cable any day. I also had DSL through Covad and Flashcom back when they were in business.
DSL with Covad and/or Flashcom was superbly reliable. Not as fast as cable, but I never, ever, had any problems with it.
When I moved and Covad couldn't service me, I went with Qwest DSL. Big mistake. The connection was always reliable, but the problem was the ISP was not. Who was the ISP? MSN of all companies. Never again will I ever send those bastards any of my money. And since Qwest is partnered with MSN, you don't have much choice for your ISP unless you want to pay a big surcharge, in which case you might as well just go with cable. MSN was constantly giving me problems: their nameservers were constantly down, forcing me to find other open nameservers to steal service from (I think I used the University of Hawaii's). Their other services were plagued with problems including both unreliable service and poor implementation (the newsserver was missing all kinds of groups). And the worst part was the whiny tech support dweebs.
Now with Cox, my cost is cheaper than Qwest/MSN, and while I have occassional service problems, they're only a couple minutes in duration when they happen, not whole days like MSN. Combined with the far superior speed, the more complete services (news, etc.), and the lack of intentional locking into MS-only software, Cox is a far better choice.
This is in Phoenix, BTW. Your area and the companies in your area may be very different.
Ok...I probably should have been more thorough talking about my situation. We currently have $200K of digital PBX equipment tied to a T1 that is our phone system. The system cannot handle VoIP. Our phones are older digital phones that cannot handle VoIP directly (switching systems that translate from VoIP to this model exist but the system becomes unreasonably complex and service contracts are involved). So we have a good, working system that does what we want. The idea of going VoIP is that we can route our own long distance (we have satellite offices around the country) and save beaucoup bucks. I know we can use VoIP bridges and other traffic techniques, but the powers that be want to be able to dial an extension in Austin and get someone in Indy. Best method demands going VoIP all the way. Infrastructure changes are NEVER about the initial cost, they are about the value added to the business. Even if this cost millions to do, but in ten years we would be 50% more efficient becuase of the business process change, we would do it. The decision rests on if it makes sense from a process and infrastructure perspective.
Currently it is looking like we will NOT be going VoIP and I have been told to keep an eye on Wireless Mesh networking to use as a transport for our needs in five to ten years. Yes, we plan that far ahead. Our 25 year goal with telecom is to have complete control over every inch of our infrastructure. We have even discussed buying our own satellites ($5 Mil for a transponder on an existing bird).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Read our manifesto. Our goal is to get slashdot to fess up. Until that happens we will never cease in our jihad operations.
Don't forget the stupid people who reply to trolls.
A comment on the presumed advantage held by ISPs providing VoIP phone service over third-party VoIP/PSTN providers (such as Vonage)may not be as great as it may seem. This view is based on the sunk cost yet to be recovered for network facilities left over from the DOT com explosion. Network bandwidth is fairly cheap and the acceptance of VoIP using trunking could be an apporpriate use of excess bandwidth. I agree that the Cable ISPs could realize an advantage over Telco DSL operations - but not because of they are required to cannibalize POTS and short-range long-distance revenue. I believe that it's more likely that the "last-mile" monopoly may be finally broken in favor of the Cable service providers (as opposed to ISP) and the traditional TELCO infrastructure isn't able to compete with the features provided by the 'value added" ISPs. The resulting decrease in use of LEC services will increase the cost of an already outdated facility infrastructure in rural as well as urban areas.
Except that your complaints are largely completely false rantings, and thus there's nothing to fess up to.
Personally, I think the editors should ban any ip posting this Jihad crap until you "fess up" to being a complete tool.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
Does anyone know whether DSL has the same wonderful local exchange battery backup as POTS ? My understanding is that every local exchange has battery backup for something like 24-48 hours. Because DSL uses those lines they MIGHT be more reliable than my cable ISP , which in my little city (Mount Vernon, NY) is very unreliable (Time Warner Cable).