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VoIP And Cell Phones Eroding Traditional Telecoms
Lullabye_Muse writes "Yahoo! reports that telecoms in Europe and U.S. are losing in response to people switching their home phones for cellphones and dial up to cable modems. More info on specific VoIP discussed in latter part of article. The trend seems to becoming widespread, I guess 10 years and all the old wires are gonna start to be taken down."
Never will copper be phased out by wireless, the old telcos may lose dominance, but until the reliability is there (powerouts, national emergencies, etc), most simply won't switch over to a fully landline free solution.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
I still keep my land-line operational, though... I'm beginning to wonder why. Well, it's not really a bad idea considering that your landline is the most reliable. It'll work during bad weather, and it'll work during a power outage, or when your ISP is being neglegent and your connection is down.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Rewiring all buildings to optical fibers or ethernet is just too damn costly, especially since ADSL (or its future cousins) is cheap and works.
Well I can get a cell phone for as much as my monthly landline service. Why would I bother with a fixed line?
Add in the fee to get connected, if you move a lot you can save hundreds by having a cell phone.
Currently the long distance plan I have, it doesn't yet make sense to switch to a cell phone.
Because, if there's any industry that's bent over backwards to inspire customer loyalty, it's the telecoms. ...
Yet another example of innovation sweeping the market out from under an industry that's too busy screwing its consumers to notice.
Most copper installed since the 50's is still being used. In NYC, some of the original lead-jacketed, paper-insulated copper phone cabling is still in service. LEC's (Local Exchange Carriers) should take this opportunity to replace their ancient, widespread infrastructure. Imagine how telco's could dominate the boadband market if they could bring fiber to all their customers.
Contrary to most people think, the major Internet backbones are not anywhere near capacity. Telcos have NO shortage of bandwidth. Their problem is their inability to push the bandwidth people demand over analog copper lines. Fiber solves bandwidth problems and distance problems.
-DJ
Of course there comes a time when the monopoly no longer makes and it will fade out. Most customers will benefit but soome (eg. less profitable customers in outlying areas) will lose out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The trend seems to becoming widespread, I guess 10 years and all the old wires are gonna start to be taken down
What about DSL?
Not everyone will have FITL (fiber-to-the-curb), so the existing copper lines will still have a use.
Chip H.
First, the U.S. telecoms are not "losing." I work for one and it is making more money than ever. Sure land line usage has decreased for the first time ever, but revenue is up as more homes embrace broadband. And don't forget who owns the wireless companies.
Second, the "old wires" are not "gonna start to be taken down." There is a billion dollar infrastructure buried under the U.S. that's going nowhere. And a century of tweaking has made it rock solid. A new generation growing up on wireless phones won't appreciate the five nines of reliability that the PSTN provides, but most of the population is nowhere near ready to give up the phone line that stays up during power failures.
That said, the future is certainly IP based. The phone company knows that and will be well positioned to be the dominant provider. The RBOCs and the cable companies are the only players likely to survive in the broadband and IP-based future.
When I wanted to get my home net connection, I had a choice between 5mb/1mb cable dsl or 3mb/0.5mb adsl - except that I would have had to also pay for a land line with adsl, so the faster cable connection is actually cheaper. It's a no-brainer (and my IP never changes with cable - an extra bonus for my home server).
The main advantage you now see from the breakup is competition, however feeble, and lower pricing.
Oh, and customer service has always sucked. It's not a new phenomenon.
Now you think 'poor poor big company' because they're forced to service those remote areas and now they aren't getting the growth they have anticipated? WRONG...
These companies are not forced to stick to old technologies. They have decided to stick to technologies for as long as they can, but the telco company could be offering much better solutions to everyone but they were 'comfortable' with the situation. They wanted to milk the old technology for all it had. Instead of spending all the resources trying to install new technologies in everyone's homes, they were trying to squish the new technology. Remember all those attempts at lobbying for internet taxes and things? Those were attempts to make internet more expensive than typical communications so they wouldn't have to change their ways. Their thoughts were, "Why install new technology when we haven't made our projected return on your current technology?". The answer is obviously, "To save your company from being obsoleted by the companies installing the new technologies."
"Unfortunatly, I doubt we'll ever see benevolent monopolies (or even corporations) ever again."
If i had the points i had last night, i'd mod you through the roof. This is the most insightful and true statement i've seen today.
i hate to be a defeatist, but fucking christ, who isn't trying to fuck you these days? It's not enough to have a chalet on some remote lake anymore is it? It's not enough to have 7+ figures in the bank is it?
i just grow more and more disheartened that there are no truly benevolent companies in monopolistic positions these days. i won't glorify the "good ol' days" and sure as hell, there were sharks in those days, but i can't help but feel that i'm getting fucked, about to get fucked, or have the research to realize that, yeah, i am getting fucked by some company.
Shit, maybe i'm just out of touch, but i'd hoped that by the age of 26 i'd not be so goddamn cynical and have to watch my back at every fucking turn....like maybe, just maybe, some corps just might give a fuck that i live to next year and buy the next edition. Know what i mean?
Fuck, i already sound like my grandfather and at least he got be 50 before he was an ass about everything.
There's much more than a wire between your phone and the one you're calling. Your voice gets digitized at a switch fairly near your home, after which it's split into chunks so you can send multiple "lines" down the same fiber optic cable. Along the way, these packets of data go through other switching equipment that sends your voice to wherever it's going, possibly over many different links for load balancing and redundancy in case a backhoe operator digs somewhere s/he shouldn't.
Now, it seems to me the only differences between the phone network and VOIP is a) the A/D conversion happens much closer to your phone, and b) the network is the Internet.
I don't mean to say that VOIP is reliable; I'm just pointing out that the phone company has the same points of failure as VOIP. The cable/DSL company might need access to your premises more often to swap out the modem, but reliability beyond that is up to the company.
Of course, there's probably fewer DDoS attacks on the phone company networks, but that's another story...
And which real tech-savy person didn't anticipate this?
Cell phone are the intermediate future, and VoIP (in the real sense, not in the sense that they're still connected at all to the copper wires, but just connected to the real internet) or just plain Data over IP ('cos what else is Voice?) is the future.
Especially with wireless becoming cheaper and cheaper; what's gonna evolve is a free system of comms (wifi mesh, whatever) run by hobbyists, where the only role the telecoms are going to play is maintaining the fibreoptics between continents, large companies and cities which aren't easily connected by wireless (in all it's forms).
What's really surprising is that the telco's didn't see this coming: I have a friend who worked for the largest (formerly only) telco in the netherlands, and hwen I told him about this, his response was..."but....but...that's illegal!?". He really didn't understand the power of public airwaves...and he was in strategic planning too!
The only danger of course is that the telco's will lobby gov'ment to restrict private access to public bands....
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
You could save even more money by watching TV and movies at your neighbor's house while they're away!
Might have some good dvds lying around too!
And if you clean-up they might not even notice!
(or ya could be really cool and teach him how to setup passwords and pay for your own frickin' service)
** payphones if it's close enough.**
when the mobiles get more popular expect the payphones to gradually disappear from the scene only to remain in places like airports.
that's what happened over here anyways..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The old telecom companies are embracing this technology for several reasons:
The consumer wants to head this direction (anyone remember the age of passenger rail in the US?).
It is truly cheaper to provide this service, it's more efficient and may mean increased profitability.
They do know how to provide telephony and know that their customers will trust their offering.
They have not totally besmirched their name yet.
It has never cost telephone companies anything more to send a telephone call across the country or next door. The higher prices they were allowed (by governments) to charge for "long distance" were allowed to enable them to build their infrastructure. The higher prices we pay for cellular service reflects the need of cell phone companies to build out infrastructure so that they can serve their customers everywhere.
Now, telephone companies are finding that there is not just their infrastructure, but a whole new and cheaper infrastructure out there that was built without their investment. Some was paid for by the governments, some was paid for by private industry or other telephone companies. And they can use it -- free! Imagine the increases in profitability when you can sell a service that costs you little or nothing.
Here in the US, one of the reasons why VOIP from telecom companies is so cheap is because the playing field changed. They set up different companies for VOIP and cellular service and these companies don't have labor unions. So not only is the infrastructure cheaper, but labor is cheaper.
I note that BT immediately jumped on this bandwagon. They are, perhaps, the most hated company in the UK because they have held a monopoly for so long and refuse to bring pricing down to more sane levels in favor of keeping profits up. I kind of wonder at BT because they have generated a great deal of animosity in the public they "serve" in exchange for profits that are not visibly plowed into improved infrastructure.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.