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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."
I still keep my land-line operational, though... I'm beginning to wonder why.
Sigs cause cancer.
Can't say I am sorry for the companies that were once monopolies to finaly die.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Wire will never bbe taken down, since they are the major source of broadband. Here in Mexico Telmex the only real tephone company has invested heavely on DSL and cable modems are virtually a thing of the past.
Let the telcoms die. I haven't had a land-line phome for 6 months, and I don't miss it.
Of course, cell-phone coverage could be bett--
CALL ENDED
Time: 2:10
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
There will always be a need for traditional teleco Until cell phone companies lower their prices to land line levels.. and the majrity of cell phone companies also operate land lines.. so they arn't losing money in all areas.
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
I'm about to move into college, and I for one don't plan on using the landline telephone. I know my cellphone gets good coverage all over the campus. Perhaps many other people are doing the same? As far as I know, the pricing is comparable, but the cell phone is much more portable. Maybe people moving into college are starting to realize this, and the same with first time house (and apartment) buyers.
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.
In the mean time Robert X Cringley thinks that they should turn the old lines into video streaming conduits for on-demand programming.
Seems like a good idea, but there is no way the telcos could sit down and think of doing that. They just aren't that innovative. Otherwise, they'd have been on VoIP awhile ago.
The wired connection does not really have a future for audio-only phone. With cell/VoIP lowering their costs, they become a viable complete replacement, with the added benefit of mobility.
The traditional phone companies will have to add more hi-speed connections, maybe integrated with other services to survive.
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.
Currently, I don't have a traditional wired phone at the house. There isn't much of a need since everyone at the house has a cell pone.
For me, my job requires a mobile phone and they pay the bill. I'm not even home often enough to worry about having a land line.
I would have gotten one anyway, just for the security, but the phone company wants $80~ (US) to simply turn the bastard on.
Now, if the telecom industry was to try to lure me back, it would simply be with affordability.
I'm not even going to start on all the things I hate about the telecom service, but whats with charging not to have long distance? Someone tell me the logic in this one.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I work for Canada's largest telecom, and this is something that we've been watching for the last few years. VOIP is being launched for business customers all over the country, and even consumer trials are being held at the moment. I'm not sure that landlines will completely disappear, but the impact to the old style telco is pretty evident. Ah, move with the times, I always say!
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
No, wait. It's not.
I'm not sorry for them - i don't know how it was in the rest of the world, but here (Argentina), telephone companies would take each chance they could to screw their customers for an extra penny.
Adapt and improve service, or die. Tough luck.
Does anyone know if one needs to pay for the phone service in order to keep DSL? I have DSL but feel like switching to cell phone for phone needs and I'd rather keep my DSL provider (worldcom)
Also in the news tonight, rain is still wet, leaves often grow on trees, and Guy Fawkes is still the only person to go into politics with honest intentions...
Sorry, just had to get that one out of the way... :)
The reliability of wireless is not sufficient for critical services like 911. You are not going to see copper disappear, but some of its utility will (in part) be replaced by wireless.
Kind of like saying that the internal combustion engine offers so much mobility and personal choice that in ten years we'll be pulling up all the railroad tracks. Sure, it replaced a lot of rail traffic but we still need rail for mass transit and really heavy hauling (e.g. coal).
I guess 10 years and all the old wires are gonna start to be taken down."
What the poster doesn't realize is that if these wires come down, so does the Net. The Net runs on the exact same lines as does telephone. A "T1" has been around a looooong time. A T1 carries 24 telephone lines.
I don't respond to AC's.
With the introduction of the relatively inexpensive CDMA service in India by Reliance, the number of households that have only cellphones is on the rise. This is true especially for young people setting up new homes. What makes this service even more attractive is that it makes nationwide calling very affordable when compared to the regular landline service.
-- Off to build a bridge between the twin peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
I've had Vonage now for about 3 weeks and have mixed feelings on it. I've already had a few outages, and while all the features are nice (Such as the network availability forwarding, where it forwards calls to my cell phone if the voice terminal isn't online), my cable inet service seemed a whole lot more reliable before I got it.
Then again, it may be just the way my network is setup - seems like once or twice the problem has been with my firewall (Smoothwall) just 'locking up' during a 10+ minute long call.
All in all, if I can iron out these minor problems, I think it will be a lot nicer then a traditional landline, and the price is right. I'm just not at the phase where I trust it whole-heartedly, so I'm glad I have my cell as backup
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
I know, redundant, redundant, but Christ. How in the hell is an article about "more cellphones, fewer land lines" news? Even a non-techie, Wal-Mart shopping, Nascar watching people would know that. Shit, I've seen migrant workers with cell phones.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
Speaking of VOIP, did anyone else catch the press release on Linksys' website yesterday?
Linksys and Vonage have apparently got together to better take a stab at getting VOIP in homes. They just relased two new products, the PAP2 and the RT31P2, both of which are to retail below $100 (before the inevitable rebates).
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.
but what about the overall quality of the video? If I understand what he's saying, then a lot of the image quality is degraded on elements that don't make up the visual priorty. Just knowing that, many people are going to be watching the video just looking to see how badly degraded the non-priority items are. And secondly, I'd have to wonder how distracting it is because your eyes might still perceive that you aren't seeing a complete image.
I like reading Cringely, but doesn't it seem like most of the cool tech he talks up never sees the light of day?
With the dozens of taxes and fees on an average phone bill, why wouldn't someone switch to a cell phone? They end up comparable in price at the end and the cell phone is far more versatile.
Cell phones are also generally nation-wide. For the cost of your plan, your have long distance, local, whatever. Doesn't quite work that way with land lines.
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.
I'm quite sure that internet access is the main reason we still have so many home phones after all.
Cable isn't that widespread in Europe, satelite links are quite expensive and they require a telephone line for upload. Access via power lines never really took off. There is nothing which beats 2 copper wires running to your house in terms of speed, reliability and price.
Wireless LANs bringing internet access to entire blocks reduces the amount of home phones, since only one POTS is needed to get it online, but (at least over here) we won't see telcos going down the drain before ISPs are offering (cheaper than telco) area-wide wireless access for their services.
I don't need a home phone at all, but my favorite monopolistic telco offers me DSL for a reasonable price. They also charge me for a mandatory phone connection using the same line, but it's still much cheaper than their closest competitor.I don't read replies by ACs.
I have wireless ISP access (~3 mbs, nothing great) and have been using Vonage for over a year. I now forget I have it which to me is the litmus test for a replacement technology.
What's not to like? No more evil phone company, added features and a BIG savings.
I just don't see how the old school bells are going to survive, and frankly I don't care.
They could compete if they wanted to, but they'd rather charge insane prices.
Now, this may be a painful period for telcos, but I don't think they'll die off entirely. Even if you are using VoIP, you're getting internet access from somewhere, and it's almost certainly not from your cell towers.
So, what's the alternative to telcos for internet access? Cable companies are an option, but they tend to be quite terrible in many (most?) areas, so it's most likely that telcos will remain as the company with the pair of wires you get everything from.
I look forward to a new utility comming along that acts as just an ISP, and provides better internet access than is currently available, but it's not going to happen for quite a while, so telcos are safe in the short-medium term.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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
We just switched over to VOIP with Time Warner, who also sends us cable TV and Road Runner. They get a big check from us every month. It seems to work about the same except that all those features on the phone (Caller ID etc.) now work. Oddly enough, my old local company sent me a letter yesterday offering about the same deal. Why didn't they send me the offer while I was still a customer?
It reminded me of something that happened a few years ago at work.
We used to subscribe to a Derwent patent publication that listed new patents in the pharmaceutical industry. It costs about $30K a year. I called and asked if they could give us a little break on the price. "No Way," they said. So we cancelled the subscription. A few weeks later, they call up and said that there was a mistake and they could give it to us for only $800/yr. I said "No Way." Pricing in this information busness is funny stuff.
*gasp* businesses adapting to new technology!
You can complain all you want about a cellphone being more expensive, The way I see it is, when I want to make a call to an out of state on my cellphone it's just a normal call, but on a landline i have to worry about per minute costs that are very high, and start being high immediately, rather than after a certain number of minutes. It's fairly easy to make a cellphone you'r only phone, just make sure your plan has enough minutes for how much you plan on using it. And if that's not enough for you, keep in mind that most companies dont use up minutes for calls to other people using the same service, not just free calls at off hours. I shut off my landline almost 2 years ago after i noticed that for the same price, my cellphone provided a lot more features, and a lot more convenience.
I still need da phone line for my DSL. Cable is way too unreliable in my area. The folks that run it use dodgy amplifiers apparently. Phone line infrastructure was terribly expensive to put up and maintain, and it has lots of other uses (DSL etc). They will never tear it down voluntarily.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
The problem here is that right now I get my internet access from... SBC, same as my phone company. In a better world the ISPs would have a financial incentive to back VoIP against the phone companies' objections, and there could be a huge corporate battle ending up in consumer benefit. Doesn't really work when the ISP and the phone company are one and the same.
I guess Comcast (or your local internet-via-cable company) could start bundling VoIP with their broadband access, competing with the DSL people who already offer those bundles. Makes sense to me, although I still wish the providers of the services were different groups....
can't think any more... brain hurts... color scheme too ugly...
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
...yes you must have a landline active to get DSL. At current, this is the rule, not the exception. In addition to having to pay for a landline, most DSL carriers require you to 1) sign a contract, and 2) buy the modem (either from them or bring your own). Msot even charge you to install it as well. And DSL prices are high as well.
For the most the cable guys will 1) install it free, 2) not require you to sign a contract, 3) not require you to get TV cable, and 4) provide the modem free for use (you give it back when you cancel). The is the RULE, not the exception (there are some areas that operate DSL-like, but they are rare).
After moving 3 weeks ago, I decided I was sick of paying $40+ a month for nothing but local service with Verizon, so I decided to sign up with Vonage.
I've had absolutely no problems with this service, voice quality is as good (if not better) than a landline, and the price is right ($14.95 for 500 minutes ANYWHERE in the US or Canada!).
They also offer so many additional features (toll free # for $5 a month??), how can the telcos compete?
I just signed my business up. I'm not going back.
has anyone here tried to establish a dialup connection over VOIP?
Like those people who run emulators within emulators within emulators, something like this would have a pretty high geek-chic factor.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"I don't think the landline will go away completely, but there's not much reason to use unshielded twisted pairs that have been installed outdoors decades ago when we now have better technologies available."
They're already paid for.
I'm in Canada, so other countries still have their infrastructure.
I'm sorry - wireless sucks, because as the subscriber numbers go up, so does the sharing quotient. I can see four other APs from my back yard, and downtown is even worse. You only have so much spectrum, which erodes as you add users. Once it's gone, it's gone. Reminds me of a flat ethernet (10bt) segment I saw once that had _2,000_ nodes on it, and the admins couldn't figure out why avg thruput was less than a 14.4kbs modem (at the time).
Don't go ripping the infrasturcture out quite yet. Wireless is ok for casual use, but I'll keep my physical connection any day. It works, it's fast, it's multi-purpose, and it's mine. I like the dedicated line, I hate cel voice quality, and I don't really like my bits going over the air competing with everyone elses.
Ok, rambling, I'm done. DOn't count it out. Infrastructure is just that for a reason.
NB: Drunk. I don't pretend this will make sense, but in my own litle world, I know what I mean.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
The only reason I believe that the old pots system is here to stay is that it just works. While I have never tried digital telephone through a cable company, I think it requires you have power. I could be wrong so if so, please correct me. With that being said, the pots system worked during an outage. That is incredibly important.
Another reason the land lines will not be going anywhere is that there are some places that wireless phones just do not work. An example of this is in Spring Valley, Ca, which is part of the San Diego County. I had a wireless phone that just would not work in that area. I had verizon at the time, so who knows, it might work now.
Also, remember during 9/11 how the cellphone networks were not prepared for the load? Well, I am fairly sure this would not be a problem for the old pots system. Like before, not positive but pretty sure.
I still have a land line because I use speakeasy DSL. Great ISP by the way.
Brendan
I'm actually surprised that voice modems haven't become popular and that answering machine capabilities haven't become standardised on computers the way faxing has. I've had modems that worked as answering machines before over the past decade, but the software was always a third-party application that wasn't integrated with the OS like faxing, and it never became one surprisingly. I presume the main reason for this is because people would tend to have a dedicated data line for the modem and have their voice lines separate. But I also think another reason is that people tend to use the voicemail of their mobile phones now more than answering machines.
With the popularity of broadband, dial-up modems on computers are simply becoming an option used more for faxes or for using a dial-up connection when the broadband connection is down. Macs used to support audio line-in from the modem port, but they dropped that feature for some reason, and it seems to have gone unnoticed. Having an audio line-in function for a dial-up modem would be a precursor to using it as an answering machine. One of the problems of having a fax is that people usually use a dedicated line for one rather than having the same number for both voice and fax. That's two phone bills, and there's no reason for it to be that way. I always thought that computers would merge voice, fax, and data into one phone line. But if you use a mobile phone for voicemail, then you won't be able to link it to your computer.
There's plenty of spectrum. The problem is that we squander it in stupid ways. Take for instance broadcast television. 80%+ of households in the US have cable, but we still dedicate vast swaths of really good spectrum to the exclusive use of television broadcasters who didn't even pay for it originally in most cases. Then we compound it by giving them more spectrum for digital broadcast. Let's do the math: a 6Mhz channel can carry 38Mb per second, broadcast quality TV can be transmitted in about 3 Mb per second. So even if broadcasting video over the air were a good idea (which I maintain it isn't), we are using 10+ times as much spectrum as necessary to do it. I'll start taking people seriously who claim we are running out of spectrum when you can't get TV with rabbit ears anymore...
I guess 10 years and all the old wires are gonna start to be taken down.
As long as there are xDSLs, the wires remains where they are.
People who like this sort of sig will find this the sort of sig they like.
I've been thinking about switching to callvantage soon, I'm interested to see how it pans out... $35/mo, but you get a lot of extra stuff (like locate-me and do-not-disturb). I like the idea that I can tell my phone not to ring from 10pm to 6am unless its really urgent. I figure between callvantage and a cell phone I'm set.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
The phone company needs to realize it's no longer a monopoly and use good old fashioned customer service to keep their customers happy.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
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.
-I started using a cell phone and cable connection a year ago and havn't looked back. All my friends thought I was wierd but I all ways told them it was the way of the future.
HTC EVO 4G LTE w/ CM 10.2 | NookColor w/ CM 10.2 | Samsung Epic 4G w/ CM 10.1
I happen to like my landline service. When I'm gone or sleeping, absolutely no one can annoy me with their problems, requests, or irritating want to keep in touch, just not on a same-room basis. Also, I find there's something irresistably sexy about being completely lost, I might actually have to [gasp] talk to a real person and not a vibrating piece of cancer plastic making friends with and sterilizing my balls. Slashdot probably isn't the correct place to talk about wanting to be disconnected sometimes, but what are YOU going to do about it eh?
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
What do you mean? Phone signals aren't carried by wires in the air, but in the ground. And wireless phones don't work by connecting to directly from cell phone to cell phone, but, as the name implies, from phone to cell tower, over wires (in the ground) and from cell tower to phone. Wires are here to stay, I'm afraid. Actually, fiber is here to stay. ;P There's a HUGE amount of it, thank goodness, making all our telecom goodness cheap. Long live wires!! or, um fiber!!!!
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
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."
This is a paradigm shift, this is not the death of an industry. I've been seeing small peerings of VoIP on websites, Vonage has been leading the charge, and now I'm seeing Comcast, AT+T, MCI, and Verizon all blasting their VoIP offerings all of a sudden. The companies aren't dying, they are just switching their technology. Verizon has the DSL network and is parsing it out to all these DSL providers. Comcast has it's network. Now the othr telecomms are getting in on the act and catching up to Vonage. They know they have to join this wave or die, but of course they will join up and flourish.
What's great about this VoIP revolution is that this frees the phone number and service from the physical network. You buy the IP first, then connect your VoIP to it. And you can switch VoIPs and keep your number. Creating layers of technology each with different tasks opens up possibilities not seen before and will be a huge boob to the customer.
The telecomms won't be at the front, they aren't leaders, but they are never far behind. They'll charge a little more, try to buy up Vonage and the other companies, then consolidate into powerhouses again. Vonage might grow big enough to be a new telecomm, like T-Mobile and Cingular almost are.
My prediction is that it won't be until the NEXT revolution that small companies and mom and pop telecomms pop up and provide kickass service and competition. That revolution will be long range wireless networking.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Most customers will benefit but soome (eg. less profitable customers in outlying areas) will lose out.
Hahahaha! I take it you don't live in an outlying area.
My exchange was one of the last in NORTH AMERICA to be moved off an old switch that used in band signalling. While some might understand this provided much amusement in my youth, we didn't get private lines until about 1992 if I remember right. The line quality is BAD here.
Dispite millions? being promised and provided for broadband development in Rural areas by the Canadian government, my estimated date for DSL arrival is on a geological timeframe. Luckily, the terrain here is such I might be able to get a 802.11 link to a benevolant soul in the next year or so.
Where do I live? About 30 minutes outside a major center. Not the middle of nowhere. Basic service is what the law says I get, and basic service is what I get.
Here'e to hoping for the ability to get an affordable cell-based broadband connection. Two way satellite is still out of the question.
..don't panic
i still have my phone line because:
the local cable company videotron has download quota limit, but primus canada does not have any download limit. so I use primus DSL for internet access. (offtopic: bell canada recently took away their download limit because too many customers cancelled their services after complaining about that. Me and many of my friends once got charged over $90 for downloading over the limit without even being notified.)
but using dsl means i still have to pay $34 to bell per month for the phone line.
also videotron requires to sign a contract. being a student that's expected to finish up my degree soon, i'd say no thanks.
all in all, i'm keeping my phone line.
my blog
"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.
Well I must admit, for the telephone/dial-up side, this article is correct. But on second note, telecom companies continue to offer DSL service, which in some ways is better than broadband-cable. For starters, your line isn't shared among your neighbours, *usually* always guaranteed maximum speeds. On top of this, security is somewhat enhanced because once again, the *cable* isn't shared. Another thing is, Telus (the largest telecom provider in Western Canada) is beginning to offer a new type of servce. They call it Telus TV. Right now it is in beta form, but once this gets realeased to all (it will be using the MPEG4 compression to my knowledge), it, on paper anyways, will blow cable out of the water. Who knows what the future will bring us!
to go to waste. You need wide band they'll have it and the ones with lots of loot will go to multispectral fiber.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
When I went off to college in August of 2002, my roommate and I both got cell phones. I currently pay $40 a month for 750 anytime, 8pm N/W and free mobile to mobile with Sprint PCS. Then I have cable which has been pretty reliable. I got Vonage 6 months ago but I need to cancel it because between the two of us my roommate and I used 9 minutes out of 500 last month. So landline free has worked great for both of us. We've never run into a problem where we needed a landline. (although last time we moved I did go through withdrawal for the 2 days it took the Time Warner guy to show up)
I was talking to my telco the other day, trying to get some charges removed that were initiated by a third party. At the end of the conversation, the guy told me that they could give me more options on my business line, AND reduce my rate by about 30%. If anything, the competition will help- at least in the short run.
First off, the Telco's own almost the entire backbone that VOIP, and your Internet connection and cell phone run over. Many of the Telco's offer VOIP, such as Qwest, and they are planning on increasing their VOIP subscribers in the near future. I don't think that many of the people posting on here have any idea how large and developed the "land line" or wired network is. This network will continue to evolve but its not going anywhere. The Bells are the only companies that realistically have the infrastructure and money to maintain this required network. Cell phones and wireless subscribers will continue to grow but POTS, SS7, and ISDN will remain, in part, due to their reliability. It wont matter what technology the future holds, it will be wired to the network at some point. Your cell phone, VOIP, wireless, and fiber networks are all linked to the backbone that the Bells own. They arn't going anywhere, ya might as well get used to it.
I predict that 80% of non-last-mile "telephone-grade copper" will be gone by 2020. What's left will be in rural or other low-profit-to-upgrade areas.
The "last mile" copper will still be there but it'll be a lot less than 5280 wire-feet and it will connect to a neighborhood hub. You can get a LOT of bandwidth out of existing copper if the distances are short enough, and there's no reason to rewire neighborhoods if you don't need to.
I see CATV and telcos competing for everything - phone, 'net, television, and other services - over their respective networks. Some customers will get "500-channel cable" - or more likely "every available channel cable" - over twisted-pair copper which, in reality, is only delivering them the handful of channels they are actually watching at any given moment courtesty of a magic box somewhere in the neighborhood. Their next-door neighbor might contract with the cable company, and have his telephone over the cable, either as VOIP or some other technology.
Both CATV and Telcos will have neighborhood boxes in high-revenue areas to allow them to deliver "everything" over their existing neighborhood infrastructure. Lower-revenue areas will be stuck with whatever the connectivity-providers think will make the most money, or whatever the regulators make them put in.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
At least where I live, it's not competively priced at all. I can pay x number of dollars to my cable company and get 3.0 Mbps, ISP services included. The telcos, for whatever reason, think it's cute to unbundle everything- they advertise that you can get a 1.5 Mbs DSL connection for $29.99 a month, and you can - but this does NOT include an ISP. Once you add that in, you're close the price of cable, and at half the speed.
80% of the non-last mile copper is already gone. All inter-office or long distance communications allready uses fiber. Neighborhood boxes already exist and are in place today in most areas. These boxes are normally fed by fiber. They are what feed the DSL and cable for your area. In many cases the only part that is copper is the wiring from that neighborhood box, to the phone jack in your house.
I had been using T*mobile for two years. This past year I started using text messaging and the AOL IM feature a lot more, bringing my cell phone costs upwards to $200-$300 thanks to overage fees. Ofcourse, the highest they could sell me was 1000, which I would quickly go over before halfway through the month.
I also tried to get them to automatically take the monthly charges from my Visa check card (same card I used for manual billing) and every month they would fail to debit the account, and they would shut off my phone until I gave em a ring to give them the same credit card number they were supposed to be automatically billing.
Now, I hadn't switched providers up to this point because T*Mobile offers the best coverage in my area, and I knew if I switched, not only would I have to get one of those newer shoddy flip phones (yuck) but it most likely wouldn't get any signal where I live.
About the end of June, they once again shut my phone off, and I figured maybe if I didn't call them they would figure it out that they were supposed to use the SwiftPay service for the automatic billing. They had the phone completely booted off the system (the phone wouldn't log in at all) by a few weeks ago. So, I gave in and tried logging in online to pay the bill. The website acted like they never had my number setup!
So I called them up on the land line. They charged me for June, July, and August, though I was unable to use the phone the entire time, and August it was booted off the network. I was furious at this and there respose was pretty much too bad too sad. So I told them I didn't want service from them any more and that was that.
Then they gave me a buzz the other day asking me to come back and try their new UNLIMITED text messaging! What a crock! I have actually been happier with out the cell phone these last couple months, and don't plan on getting another provider.
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Hippie Logger Jock
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This free software gives the best voip quality. Now you can also use it to call to land lines.
http://www.skype.com/
I am waiting for a mobile phone that can use this one. Since I live in Japan we already have IP mobile phones since some time now.
Lars
I am thinking right now to use VOIP with vonage for my business but for my personal line I don't like the idea right now, because of the lack of reliability of the current service.
If I have an emergency and my ISP is down, then no more telephone.
If I have an emergency and I have no more electricity, then no more telephone.
In 30 years of existence I can't remember once when my telephone stopped working even during natural disasters that occurred in my area (well in fact maybe once). But I certainly can tell that I have not enough fingers on my two hands to count the number of times that my ISP what down or that there was an electric outage in my area, that only in the last 4 years. Each time of course, my phone was still working perfectly.
Until they offer a bulletproof service, I prefer to stick to my good old analogue line.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
The whole "last mile to the user's home" issue is very soon guna become less and less of an issue with WiMAX and WiFi.
The city where i live just deployed free wifi internet access to most residents, with its reach to increase overtime.
IP is insanely powerful. Bandwidth is increasing, and compression algorithms are only getting better.
I'm looking forward to a future where all consumer-telco, cable and satellite companies will be replaced by a large multitude of ISPs.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Last time we had a POTS line was back in 2001, now we have a cell and broadband. Almost everyone I know has a cell and NO POTS. I mean, you get a fixed bill that for us costs $45.00US a month, in-state free LD, voice mail and unlimited anytime minutes. If I need to call out of state, I go to Walmart and buy a 120 minute AT&T card for $8.99 and there you go. (check out those cards, there is a big difference rate wise)
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
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?
Yep, same here. A cellphone is actually cheaper, since most of my talking time is spent talking to people out-of-state.
Also, since I'm at work all day, I never use many of my 400 daytime minutes, so after a few months of worrying about daytime/evening rates, I noticed that I never came close to using up my allotment, and stopped worrying about it. I don't know what the previous poster was complaining about; I guess all his friends don't have jobs to keep them occupied during the daytime.
The trend seems to becoming widespread, I guess 10 years and all the old wires are gonna start to be taken down.
Down? Where I live the wires will hardly go any deeper.
T-Mobile is no newer than AT&T Wireless or Verizon Wireless, being the subsidiary of telecom dinosaur Deutsche Telekom.
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)
Where I live we have to rub two sticks together to make a fire and then shear a passing sheep, spin the wool, weave it into a blanket and use that to make smoke signals to a passing ship asking them to drop off our message the next time they make port.
And you tell that to kids today and they just don't believe you!
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Theres a lot of naive talk about some nirvana of cheap or free unlimited calls over the internet with no rental charges and 99.9999% uptime just around the corner. Great , but how about a reality check first.
1) The internet is nothing more than a load of copper cable , optic fibres , co-ax, microwave & satellite transmitters.
2) All infrastructure has to be maintained & upgraded. So if you with your 0.1p 5 hour call to timbuktu isn't paying for it then who is? Or will we have the same situation as the US power companies where prices went so low they didn't update anything with the problems consequent now?
Its time we all moved out of this juvenile mindset that we can have everything free cos mummy & dayy will pay for it. When you're an adult someone has to foot the bill and if its not you then it could be me through taxes or suchlike.
There is a bit of FUD about Tele 2 in this article. Actually Tele 2 is also offering broadband telephony at low costs and aren't being outdistanced at all (although I guess the Skype promotors in this article would like you to think otherwise). I use it at home and it is working perfectly.
well.. actually BT are going switching from POTS type operation to IP signals right up to your house. they reckon its goign to cost them £3 billion to implement over 3 to 5 years, but afterwards whey will save over a £1billion a year...
explains why are very actually VERY keen on pushing VoIP..
Have a nice day!
> The trend seems to becoming widespread, I guess
> 10 years and all the old wires are gonna start
> to be taken down."
Judging by the century old infrastructure around my neighborhood, those lines will be there for a long time to come.
I just lived this yesterday:
A guy calls me on my business line - a really miffed guy. He claims (based on his caller ID) that I've been berating him with a sales pitch of some kind. The more I try to explain that he's found the wrong guy, the angrier he becomes.
I called my provided to verify that his number had never been called from my account. I call the guy back (using my caller ID, of course) and explain that the number of his caller ID is wrong. Although he calmed down a bit, I just don't think he's prepared to accept the possibliity of his phone 'lying' to him.
My point - people have a much higher expectation of their phone service than they do of e-mail. A quick google for articles like 'phone spoof' will yeild a variety of articles about the dangers of VOIP hacking. You might also consider that fact that we're used to land-lines that survive power outages - as the telocs tend to own pretty serious UPS systems.
I'll keep my land-line for now...
Your monitor is staring at you.
Here in the UK, 999 use cell triangulation, since you are so rarely in less than three cells. No need for a GPS.
Do you have to run your mobile phones off the mains in the US? Mine works just great when there's a power cut. Must have some sort of battery or something.
...Class Warfare.
Seriously.
The top tax bracket used to be 80%, now it's half that. Minimum wage, in the 1960's, actually allowed a single wage earner to support a family of four. Every time Forbes runs for President, he floats out his flat tax proposal (further lowering the top tax bracket), but his proposals only tax salary, not income, and he gets all his money from investments.
is that the solicitor was using VOIP or some other means to spoof his phone number. Unfortunatley, the number he chose was mine.
Your monitor is staring at you.
Maybe not (my calling card was always $0.09/minute at night) but Sprint is charging $0.40/minute if you go over your cell phone minutes now, unless you get that silly pay as you go plan. When I first signed up, it was only $0.12/minute, but of course I had to cancel my service for six months when they were being especially retarded. Sigh.
I remember 10 years ago going to InterOp and you couldn't sling a dead cat without hitting a VoIP display. Here we are now and how many companies/people/entities do I know of that use it? 0! Oh there are articles, examples in articles, hype etc. but I know of no major corporation running their phone systems either in part or exclusively on it. Somebody post a list so I can be as impressed as so many seem to be.
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.
when they offer me flat-rate unlimited cellular with .99999 uptime and 4hr. MTTR for the same price per month.
Simple.
$30.00 rechargable pay per use cellphone, and a $10.00 100 minute time card. Now not only do you have an emergency phone you can dial 911 with, but you have one that can be used anywhere (as long as its charged or plugged in) you can take it to your car, etc.
And really in most emergencies you dont just need to dial 911, husband/wife, kids doctor etc.
And most of the time cards are good for 1 year, some for longer.
TruePunk | Games
Wrong. A guy from the telco told me "a contract is a contract. If you pay us the rest of the contract upfront we'll remove it immediately. Otherwise we cannot remove it." The rest of the contract was about 9 months worth of money - quite a large sum.
"What if I just stop paying?" I asked. "Will you still be unable to remove the line?" It turned out this wasn't really a problem - if I stopped paying they would stop providing me with the service. "So if I just stop paying you, I will in fact get what I want?" I asked. And indeed, I would get what I wanted - but, I was told with a smirk, I couldn't actually get another phoneline from them until I had payed whatever money I still owed them (including fines, interest, etc.). "In other words", he stated triumphantly, "you'll never have another phoneline again!"
At that point I explained to him that the days of KPN being a monopoly were over, and that any of the new upstart competitors would be overjoyed to welcome me as a customer. He got a bit grouchy after that, and he had to talk to his boss for a bit, but the end of the story was that I was downgraded from ISDN to a normal line, for free ;-)
Long live the power of competition.
Saying they "should" is all well and good, but why would they? that is, what's their incentive to replace the thousands and thousands of miles of copper they've got lying around? particularly in the face of declining revenues, most of them are going to look to cut costs, not incur new ones. further, i think your proposed motivation is sketchy. DSL can push more bits over standard copper than most homes care about. This becomes even more true if you don't have to carry voice over the same pairs, or have to carry less of it, as this trend suggests. The ILECs are already in a very good position to deliver bits - lots of bits - without performing any upgrade. So those of us who want FDDI to the home are just gonna have to wait. :-)
your argument gets more interesting when you note that fiber solves (mostly) the distance problems. but, again, where's the incentive? If they can already get to 90% of the population with their installed infrastructure, that last 10% would have to be pretty huge to justify the fiber infrastructure. And again, this is in the face of decreasing revenues. No, unless something significant changes, i don't thing the ex-monopolies are going to pull this one off for us.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I agree. I have a land line phone with DSL tied in and it's cheaper than Time Warner's Road Runner. TW would only do RR with digital cable, and the price of that is $15.00 more than Direct TV(with local channels and 2 receivers).
And the cost of your land line (required for DSL) is less than $15?
Plus the fact that there are alot of people hooked up to RR in my neighborhood and I have seen their systems running slower than dial-up when the kids get out of school.
I used RR for years in a crowded COLLEGE neighborhood in a major city--arguably the home users that use the most bandwidth. This crap about "slower" connections due to using the same trunk is just not true.
I do not have a cell phone and don't want one. I like being out of contact, it's quiet and peaceful driving somewhere. When I'm not at work or home, I don't want anyone getting in touch with me.
So turn if off!! Why does every anti-cell phone person say this like the phone is something they HAVE to answer at all times? Cell phones do not fuse to your body. You can leave it at home like just like your land line. You could even argue they are more peaceful than land lines, because you CAN turn them off or mute them very easily. Compare disconnecting all the phones in your house when you want to watch a movie to just turning off a cell phone.
The difference between Direct TV + DSL fees is $15 less than digital cable + RR. The land line is a constant.
The infrastructure here is maybe not as good as your college town or they are pushing the limits on distance or TimeWarner lies about the speed. The white box dealer I help on occasion went to DSL two years ago when RR was slower than dialup during the summer. He also saved 25% on his business class bill every month since. TW's prices go up at least twice a year.
I have no interest in a cell phone. It might be useful for emergencies if I traveled a lot but since I don't, who needs it? They are also more expensive than a land line no matter who the vendor.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
You'd think, but the telephone company isn't in the business of running power; they just provide local phone service.
It would probably be much more expensive for them to get approval to run power in the same right-of-ways as they run their fiber. Not to mention the voltages would have to be reasonably high to counteract voltage drop, and you'd have to have expensive switchgear and protective equipment at each RT that the telco isn't used to maintaining.
Much easier to just talk to the power company, which does this stuff all the time and can do it cheaper.
-Z
That is probably the most useful comment i've read in a while. To be honest, i have been thinking about working for a bit, clearing some school debt, and getting an MBA as they didn't teach jack for business in my engineering classes.
:)
The company i'm about to sign on with is still private (and will be for a bit, i hope), still small enough that access to the top folks is alive, and they seem to be a Good Company (so far). A friend and engineering classmate is there at the same level as i, and we have enough free time and have talked about what we would want to go into business doing for ourselves at some point. Some of the guys that work there have gone the route of 3 cars, big house, and bigass debt to go with it. He hasn't and i won't, so we may be in good shape in a few years to get it rolling. i appreciate the enouragement for sure
The infrastructure here is maybe not as good as your college town or they are pushing the limits on distance or TimeWarner lies about the speed. The white box dealer I help on occasion went to DSL two years ago when RR was slower than dialup during the summer. He also saved 25% on his business class bill every month since. TW's prices go up at least twice a year.
I can't argue for how it worked in your area obviously, but my experience in two different states has been that the bandwidth is capped only by your contracted limit, not by anyone else's usage. I guess we'll only be able to agree that this is a YMMV kind of thing and you'll probably need to check something like dslreports.com and see what other customers have said for your area.
I have no interest in a cell phone. It might be useful for emergencies if I traveled a lot but since I don't, who needs it? They are also more expensive than a land line no matter who the vendor.
You interest is your own, so I'll only argue the facts. Like claiming that it invades your privacy when it can easily be turned of or left at home. Pricing is true, BUT with equivalent options; voicemail, 3-way calling, caller id, call forwarding, etc, you'll probably see a similar price on a landline. Also, a good amount of cell phones plans include nationwide LD, which is quite pricey for land lines, under normal contracts.