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VoIP And Cell Phones Eroding Traditional Telecoms

Posted by timothy on from the one-way-function dept.

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."

8 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. A land-line...? by SIGALRM · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "We saw what would happen with Voice over Internet Protocol. Rather than allow it to happen to us, we decided to embrace the technology," a BT spokesman said.
    Smart move. The discount carriers are going to ramp-up competition, and this can only be good for us, the good ol' consumer. One of these days, VoIP will come to mobile, and that will be another milestone; we'll see how the big carriers respond to that.

    I still keep my land-line operational, though... I'm beginning to wonder why.
    --
    Sigs cause cancer.
    1. Re:A land-line...? by jriskin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      900mhz is a pretty good spot for cordless. The higher frequencies tend to bounce around and get absorbed by walls and structures. People forget that bigger numbers aren't always better.

      Personally I miss the days of 3-5watt analog cell phones. Range was about 10x what the little 800mW ones we carry around today. The networks are also about 10x more crowded. The reason they went to digital in the first place was just to get more people in the same amount of spectrum...

    2. Re:A land-line...? by jdreed1024 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      So if you start losing VoIP service and your modem starts cycling... be quick to report it so they can change out your device.

      Hrm, my digital phone went out. Internet too. Weird. Oh well, I'll just pick up the phone and call the cable company so ..... oh, crap.

      Enh, no big deal, I'll just dial in to the modem pool at work.
      AT&F1
      ATDT6175551234
      NO DIALTONE
      Oh, right. Crap.

      Honestly, that's the single biggest reason for me to keep my landline. Redundancy. I want the ability to dial out if cable fails. Heck, with my laptop, I can even have connectivity in a power outage (yes, I've done this before). That and one of my friends got screwed by this when his digital phone service crapped out. He was complaining about it to me over IM and the fact that he couldn't even call to report it. Yes, yes, cell phones, but cell phone reception can be pretty crappy in large apartment buildings, and that doesn't help for connectivity, since cell modems are expensive.

      --
      There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
    3. Re:A land-line...? by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Rogers does not permit me to run my own servers
      Neither does mine, so
      1. I set apache to listen to port 8080 instead of port 80
      2. I use dyndns.org to give me between 1 and 5 free site names
      3. I set up apache to do named vhosting for each free site name
      4. I append the port# to any url, like this:
        http://myfakeservername.dyndns.org:8080
      Benefits:
      1. Faster downloading and uploading (2x the speed of Bell's fastest business adsl line) - I know, because I've got 2 Bell "extreme hispeed" business adsl lines at the office, and together they give me about the same speed I get at home with 1 cable line, at half the price.
      2. My IP never changes - whereas with the Bell adsl service, it changes (ir)regularly - some days it changes half a dozen times. I used to have the servers text my cell when the IP changes, but it was getting rediculous. So instead, I just dump important stuff on my home server.
      3. Freedom. I'm taking my dogs for a walk in a few minutes, and I'm bringing my phone. Can't do that with a land line.
      4. Staying in touch. I call my friends, family, and daughters when I'm waiting in line at the store, out, or whatever. And they can reach me any time also.
      My cell works out to about $10 more a month than a land line with the same features (and I use it a LOT more than I would ever use a land line - I've done up to 3000 minutes some months)

      My cable connection is the same price as Bell's fastest service, but the cable connection is 25% faster, and it's always 5mbs/1mbs or better - when I overshoot it, I see them throttling me back to 5mb/1mb - they have LOTS of spare capacity, whereas some days the two business ultra-hi Bell connections just crawl...

      Last month I had 160 gig of transfer on my home server, and it wasn't used THAT much. I was still able to surf, etc.

      Also, the latency is a lot less with cable - makes everything seem quicker. If we could get cable at the office, we'd dump the 2 bell lines in a minute.

    4. Re:A land-line...? by rs79 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not just you. I've lost count of how many we've tried and I swear the less you pay the better they work. Sony seems to be the worst; I did a 9 month gig at Sony and everybody there told me to avoid sony phones like the plague.

      $30 Unidens seem to work real well.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    5. Re:A land-line...? by uberdave · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Cable is giving me 1.5mb/s for $55/month, but I can't run servers. DSL would give me 3mb/s for $30/month (plus $50 one time fee for a static ip address) and I can run servers. It would be a no brainer. However, despite being in the middle of one of the largest cities in the country, I can't get DSL where I live.

      --
      "I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
  2. I *don't* have a landline phone anymore. by soft_guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just moved. When I was living in an area that was kind of far out of town, I did not have cell coverage at my house. Now, we just moved and we do. So, no landline phone! My wife and I just use our cell phones. Of course, we still have our old numbers which are in a different area code. That freaks people our when we order pizza.

    We used to have cable modem and used 802.11b for the past few years. Now, we have a neighbor who has a wireless network called "Linksys" with no WEP key set. So, we don't pay for internet anymore either. I suppose the day they put a wep key on it or shut it down, I will order either cable or DSL (we actually can get either where we live.)

    We still have to pay for our cell phones and for electricity, but we're saving like $200 a month without phone or broadband. (Math check: Our old cable company wouldn't sell us broadband without digitial cable and the total price was like $100 a month. Plus, phone bill including long distance since the cell phones wouldn't work from the house and all our relatives live in other states.)

    --
    Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
  3. Re:I know it's kind of pointless, but by tzanger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yup, and it works so-so.

    You must use a codec that does not do any kind of compression or acoustic fanagling or it just won't work. I have been sending faxes in and out of our office (up to two at a time in either direction) for the last 3 months now without issue, so long as it only goes one hop to our PRI downtown. Faxes through our VOIP provider are spotty at best but we also have a Canon IR3300 fax machine as our primary fax device... they're the pickiest bitches known to the faxing industry.