Slashdot Mirror
British Telecom Plans to Ditch POTS Network
Samurai Cat! writes "Yahoo news has a story up regarding British Telecom's plans to scrap their traditional circuit-switched telecom network in favor of an IP-based system." Their press release has more information.
posted like 3 days ago.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/09/190247 &mode=thread&tid=126&tid=137&tid=187&tid=2 15
Only 2 days ago!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/09/190247
First Pots.... er post
dupe
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
We've got ip-tel at work and it's a right bitch at times - almost like talking to someone over on a mobile. There's nothing worse than having the beginnings and endings of someone's speech cut off!
Even with QoS, ip-tel is over rated. "It should do that"... yeah, right!
Considering the "impending doom" we keep hearing about of the lack of available IPv4 numbers... one can only hope they intend to roll out their new network with IPv6. Heck, even a few class A's and NAT'ing each one to 254 usable addresses wouldn't help them...
...I have only two questions.
1. What are the odds of this actually being pulled off?
2. How much will this effect me, a regular dialup and telephone user of British Telecom?
The dupes of course...I mean I understand a dupe from a few weeks ago but 2 days? It's getting out of hand! Don't you agree?
Act against duping! stop posting comments on dupes! MOD THIS UP SO EVERYONE CAN SEE
Bring it on, BT! The power of a national telephone monopoly is insignificant compared to the power of the Slashdot effect!
Definitions of DUPE:
a person who is tricked or swindled
fool or hoax; "The immigrant was duped because he trusted everyone"; "You can't fool me!"
Abbrev. fr. duplication.
Short for duplicate. To reproduce a page or an image exactly as it originally appeared.
Thanks again, Slashdot!
when asked if the U.S. would like to do something similar, Bush replied, "Asia makes all the cool cell phone advancements, Europe wants to can POTS and truly enter the digital era, and we have Microsoft. Why would we want to change anything?"
self-mod: -2 for flamebait, +2 anti-M$, result mod=0
Proof? Click here. :-)
Yeesh.
Lara Croft creator speaks out
The heroine of the Tomb Raider games, Lara Croft, has become an iconic figure beyond just the world of video games.
Lara Croft has moved beyond just video games
But her creator, Toby Gard, fears that she might have not made it off the drawing board, if he had come up with the idea for her character now, rather than in the mid-90s.
He told BBC News Online that he did not believe that any games publisher would be willing to put millions into an unknown title, given the current trend to play it safe with sequels and movie spin-offs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3794621.stm
i'm finally within the first 100 comments! kewl
Apple Power Mac ads 'misleading'
A complaint against Apple's claim that its Power Mac G5 was the "world's fastest personal computer" has been upheld by the UK's advertising watchdog.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that the G5 was not the fastest computer "in all circumstances for all applications".
Two other complaints about the G5 ad were rejected.
The ruling comes as Apple rolled out a new range of G5 computers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3797261.stm
so, like what, i need a 2.4GHz whistle for that?
what it doesn't mention in the summary at least is that BT are also moving to fiber in their new developments, especially in areas like around london; while the move from POTS won't directly affect users, the move to fiber will make the intarweb a whole fuckload faster for those who are lucky enough to get it.
unfortunately they will not be moving already laid lines to fiber for any time in the forseeable future.
Dupe, dupe, dupe.
Dupe of URL.
Dupe, dupe, dupe of URL.
Dupe, dupe, dupe of URL.
Dupe, dupe, dupe of URL.
(Think Duke of Earl)
Be nice when modding me. I know it's lame.
What happens when it gets hacked? Its inevitable that some "haxor" is gonna try to DoS the whole thing or maby even make the "phone virus". Gotta take the good with the bad.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
British Telecom Plans to Ditch POS Network.
I love innovation.
What is your penile percentile?
They wanna ditch their POTS while I wanna ditch our POTUS! :-)
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Quick Robin... throw me the bat-dupe
If the new telephone network uses IP, then they may have to deal with duplicate packets. Hopefully BT's system will handle duplicate packets of voice data better than Slashdot handles duplicate submissions of stories...
While they're at it can they just give us all built-in broadband net access? free? if thats not worth paying taxes than fuck knows what is. Most people would use it, probably more than some other things tax goes to (ive never had a go with the parliamentary hooker!).
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They have gotta be taking the piss, 2 days!
Ever since the original break-up of ATT inovation in
our Telco industry has ground to a halt.
I'm glad at least some country is reaping the benefits of technology.
It's nice to see that the UK is finally kicking its POTS habit.
...do you think that's better than a girl in tiny see through panties from James?
I'd like to see my cell phone provider ditch its POS network..
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
"We're sorry, the number you are calling is currently experiencing a distributed denial of service attack. Please try your call again..."
. ht ml
Even worse if you were calling 911 or 999 or similar number...
on an aside if you want to know the emergency numbers for different countries check out:
http://www.911dispatch.com/web_graphic/graphic1
nice graphic shows emergency numbers from around the world.
I had suspected BT stood for British Telecom (last article), but I could not find the words "British Telecom" on the article (the first time this was posted, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3791319.stm) . I could not even find out what BT stood for on the company's page (www.bt.com).
Its probably just me tho =).
so people will start saying ping instead of hello...that would be cool
clotheOs Or be a
sigfault?
Look. Change is good and that means that something has to move over. Old technology is very important because folks like you and me can change any system from one state to another and still keep a job. I=MV Think to the positive: we'll be able to transfer data faster (maybe) than we used to. European phone systems have been out-dated for a while, granted, they have approached VOIP nicely, they (the Europeans) like the fact that those old circuits are still hard to get at as far as hackeing is concerned. The web is a dangerous thing that must be paid attention to. IMHO
Sincerely, Czephyr
An elderly lady phoned her telephone company to report that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called - and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her pet dog always moaned right before the phone rang. The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile elderly lady.
He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned loudly and the telephone began to ring.
Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found:
1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire via a steel chain and collar.
2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose.
3. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the phone number was called.
4. After a couple of such jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate on himself and the ground.
5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to ring.
Despite my UPSes, I still find it reassuring that I can pick up my telephone at any time and get a dial tone. If I'm away from home for 5 days, and the power has been out the whole time, I can still come home and pick up the phone, expecting it to work.
:) I can't complain about 768/768 that works fine 8 miles from the telco shed.
I live in a rural area where the power co-op often doesn't know about outages until someone reports them. I'm at the end of a line, and I've had outages that have only affected me.
It's also nice to know that in an emergency, someone can come into my house and make an emergency call. It's also nice to know that I could probably make a call from another farmhouse too.
Cell phone coverage is awful here. We have three competiting technologies with very few towers each. Hooray for lack of standards in rual America! Thankfully we do have 1 MBit "Reach" (Paradyne Hotwire MVL) SDSL!
Now, I don't mind if telcos upgrade their aging first-generation DS1 and DS3 gear for the longhaul trunks. But where I live that's already been done. Lots of fibre connecting the hick towns, gotta love RTC grants!
The links in question are completely internal within the PSTN, and the change will be invisible to ordinary home or business subscribers - the same provision for the last mile to subscribers (POTS, Centrex, CAS or ISDN T1/E1, whatever) will remain in service for the foreseeable future.
Those services are provided by the CO ("Central Office") switch, and it takes a while to depreciate a PSTN CO's DMS-1000 or similar switch (up to 17 years in Canada, I believe), and that switch is viewed by the beancounters as "the multi-million-dollar machine that prints money", so you can probably guess their opinion of forklift upgrades ;).
The change to a packet-switched PSTN network backbone will improve bandwidth usage on long-haul and other fat pipes between Central Offices (cities/states/countries), reducing the need for further infrastructure builds (saving more trees, for those so inclined), and should sooner, rather than later, help make the provision of "gee-whiz" new services more economical and available for end users.
since then. More to avoid so as to problem; a few
The interesting bit, which I'm shocked to see has gone unnoticed, is that the underlying network will actually be converted to MPLS, not IP.
Yes, this does mean IP will run on top, but the cool "new" technology is actually beneath the surface. As far as I know, this will be the first widescale roll-out of MPLS.
Maybe BT thought the truth would be too technical.
For a company the size of BT, I see the following scenario as being faily likely:
BT switch detects modem/fax carrier.
BT switch toggles from rather-compressed g.723 to uncompressed 64kbps g.711 . g.711 is is either aLaw or uLaw, depending on pond-sidedness, just like ISDN, and also just like things are switched "normally" today.
Modem communication happens normally; BT writes off increased bandwidth (vs. g.723 voice) by saying to themselves "Well, at least that one g.711 modem call didn't cost us any more line capacity than it did before, and we got to packet-switch it instead of channelize it. Cool."
Everyone's happy. And your modem doesn't even know the difference.
Kid-proof tablet..
VoIP makes sense when you have access to an IP network (Internet or Intranet). But when you want to packet switch telephony over a dedicate network, why the hell use IP instead of ATM?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
They seem to have basically renamed themselves to BT, and don't use British Telecom anymore. Sort of like how British Petroleum officially changed their name to bp (all-lowercase), and Silicon Graphics, Incorporated uses the name sgi as a primary name, not just an acronym.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I had my preferences set to ignore "stories" by this retard michael. How did that get reset?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"We have three competiting technologies with very few towers each. Hooray for lack of standards in rual America!"
That's a pathetic attempt at a troll, maybe you should take a nap, have a meal, and try again. You'll get it eventually.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A bit off the Topic
,i am sure people are aware that Over the last 2-3 months we have had a price war going on.Even though the rates have crawled to 20 a month and under,a closer reading of the smallprint revelas most of these are either restricted on speed or have monthly download limits and sometimes both.
Since we are discussing BT
what is the situation in worldwide,as in US,Canada,Japan,S Korea and Europe.What are the usual charges per month and how good is the service?
Wanted : A Signature.
Routing lots and lots of seperate IP channels, the number of ADSL customers in the UK is vast, and yet every single one has his or her data connection routed over BT's network to there ISP...
Naturally it would be more efficient to off-load that data onto the internet before routing it accross there networks, definately could be a plus for P2P applications if they started using hop-count as a way of discriminating against peers, but the removal of low latancy circuit switched technology might cause more problems for people playing quake3 or other FPS's which desire really low latancies.
Here are some counter-examples to your claim:
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I understand your point, but...
1. Cellphones, the US cellphone technology lags the rest of the world by 5-10 years.
2. Widely-available DSL?, only in Urban and some suburban areas. Other technologies exist with better range.
3. Collect calls without human-operator assistance.
Okay.
4. Modem speeds? When was the last time they changed 10 years ago?
Prior to the break of AT&T they had proposed a nationwide rollout of Fiber, think where we would be with that.
I wasn't arguing whether we're better off or worse off than before, or than the rest of the world.
I was simply pointing out that innovation has occured since the breakup.
As to your particular points:
Cellphones did not exist prior to the breakup, IIRC.
Neither did DSL (or, if it did, it was not available to individuals. I don't think that even the now-largely-obsolete ISDN was available to ordinary households).
Modem speeds at the time of the breakup (in the late '70s/early '80s, much more than 10 years ago) were either 1200 or 2400.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana