VoIP As a Solution To Rural Broadband

boyko.at.netqos recommends his article up at Network Performance Daily, which notes the recent reports that up to 30% of households do not have a landline telephone, preferring a VoIP or cell-phone based solution. What to do with the miles of last-mile phone line infrastructure already in place in almost all the homes across the country? Maybe there's a solution to rural broadband by using the high-reliability frequencies reserved for voice purely for data — and using VoIP to make phone calls. From the article: "Repurposing the broadband of 0-25kHz would result in... speeds of around 14.4 kBytes/s (or 115.9 kbits/s) upload and 28.8 kBytes/s (231.3 kbits/s) download. That's not much of a speed boost. Still, if you've been plodding along on a '56.6k' modem, at speeds of 7.2kBytes/s, this would be like an oasis in the desert. And what about those phone calls? Well, if you make the same phone calls with VoIP that you were with the standard 0-4kHz landline, it would only take about 20.8kbits/s using the G.723.1 codec — that still leaves you with 80% of your broadband capacity when on the phone — and 100% of your broadband when you're off it." Only the US FCC calls 231K "broadband," but as noted it does beat dialup.

Comments

FCC definition of broadband

[E IS mC(Square)]

Not to be pedantic (and I understand the general drift of the article), but from wikipedia: "... the US FCC used 200 kbit/s in their definition until march 19th 2008 after which it was scaled up to require a minimum of 768 kbit/s to be defined as broadband and at that time the FCC introduced new tiers in their definition as follows: 1) 200kbit/s to 768kbit/s ("first generation data"); 2) 768kbit/s to 1.5Mbit/s ("basic broadband"); 3) 1.5Mbit/s to 3 Mbit/s; 4) 3Mbit/s to 6 Mbit/s; and 5) 6Mbit/s and above." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[esocid]

yes, yes. shallow and pedantic.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[cube135]

But useful.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

"Broadband" isn't a data transmission speed, not anymore than "cable", "modem" or "DSL" are transmission speeds.

Here's a real definition of broadband:

broadÂband adjective

1. of, pertaining to, or responsive to a continuous, wide range of frequencies.

2. pertaining to or denoting a type of high-speed data transmission in which the bandwidth is shared by more than one simultaneous signal.

[definition]

Hence: "the broadband of 0-25kHz" mentioned in the article.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[datajack]

Hear! Hear!

Why were they allowed take a well-defined technical term and re-purpose it as meaningless marketing drivel?

This mis-use of 'broadband' also has repurcussions for other terms. There are many people who thuink that baseband or narrowband means 'slower then broadband'. I'd love to see a public broadband link that comes close to the speed of my baseband network.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[karot]

...And then there is the "general public" definition of broadband, which is usually just "anything that is not dial-up".

This is largely due to
a) The fact that they largely neither know nor care what a Mbit/s is
b) Have been subject to TV advertising for so long that they just know that they need to "buy a broadband to make the Internet in their PC go fast"

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[Bryansix]

Words can have different definitions in different usages. Welcome to the English Language.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[jc42]

Why were they allowed take a well-defined technical term and re-purpose it as meaningless marketing drivel?

The main reason is called the First Amendment. ;-) It permits anyone to misuse any term they like for any reason.

In this case, they're just Doing What Marketing Does. They use whatever words are effective in selling what they're selling. They figured out that to the public that has no clue about such technical terms, "broadband" just means "faster". So they adopted it as a marketing term.

It's nothing at all unique to Internet marketing. The same approach is used everywhere that it works. People have been complaining about marketers' misuse of words since marketing came into existence back in prehistory. There's no way we're going to change this, short of educating the public about the actual definition of the terms. And considering the general public contempt for geeky stuff that requires education, that's not going to happen any time soon.

(This misuse isn't nearly as agregious as the use of "quantum" to mean "large", when the technical definition is more like "the smallest difference possible". I'm sure others here have their favorite misuses of technical terms. ;-)

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[datajack]

Yes, but isn't the FCC a technical certification or standards body, not a marketing group? (I'm not from the US, so don't shout too loud if I'm wrong!) Why are they 'defining' 'broadband' in this way?

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[Gilmoure]

The FCC appears to be made up of lobbying groups funded by the tel-cos. And they dress funny.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[datajack]

The problem is that this is redefining the term for the same usage.
What can you call a broadband transmission at 20Kb/s? It's broadband by it's very nature.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[LandDolphin]

I find it interesting that you say it is not a data transmission speed, yet in the definition you provide:

2. pertaining to or denoting a type of high-speed data transmission in which the bandwidth is shared by more than one simultaneous signal.

It mentions that data transmission speed is part of what broadband is.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[MarcoG42]

In response to "b)", this man speaks the truth. Nine times out of ten, when someone calls me up and says, "My internet is broken.", I've learned to take that to mean "I fucked up my web browser." Your average computer user does not, in my experience, differentiate between an internet connection or the big blue "E" on their desktop.

I find this story fits, a little. I host an apache server for my family where they can upload pictures to share. I also made a page for my new nephew. When my sister came to visit, I showed her the server, telling her that's where the web pages she uses come from. She looked surprised and said "Oh, I thought they were on the Internet somewhere!"

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[Comboman]

"Broadband" isn't a data transmission speed, not anymore than "cable", "modem" or "DSL" are transmission speeds.

You're right; it isn't a speed, it's a bandwidth (a broad bandwidth).

1. of, pertaining to, or responsive to a continuous, wide range of frequencies.

Note the use of the word wide (i.e. broad) in that definition.

Hence: "the broadband of 0-25kHz" mentioned in the article.

This is the part I have a problem with. While "broad" and "narrow" are somewhat relative terms, broadband is typically bandwidths of megahertz or gigahertz. A bandwidth of 25,000 hertz (less than the bandwidth of human hearing at around 32kHz) is definitely considered narrowband by anyone in the RF or data transmission world. While you are correct that the word "broadband" does not refer to a specific range of data transfer speeds, using the word to refer to "anything faster than standard dial-up" is an equally serious mis-use of a technical term.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[limaxray]

The same can be said for other terms as well.

Take 'bandwidth' for example. It traditionally means the width of a channel, as in the difference between an upper and lower cutoff frequencies. So say you have a bandpass filter that blocks all frequencies below 1 MHz and above 5 Mhz. It's bandwidth is said to be 4 MHz.

In the digital era though, it has evolved to also mean data rate. This has come about because channel width on an analog medium directly impacts channel capacity; the wider the channel, the greater the capacity and the faster the data rates. This somehow got manipulated into using bandwidth to describe data rate in general, and now you regularly hear people using it to describe how fast their internet connections are.

Using the term bandwidth for a digital medium, (such as a differential signaling medium like USB,Firewire, PCIe, Fast Ethernet, etc) doesn't make any sense in the classical sense as there are no 'channels' to have 'widths'. In today's terminology though, it makes perfect sense and is completely acceptable.

Basically, get used to it. Technology evolves, and language must evolve with it. The fact is the people evolving the language aren't the ones evolving the technology; they're usually the ones selling the technology.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when does the public have contempt for technical geeky stuff? The other night I was watching a program on PBS about how kids pretty much live on-line these days. Marketers definitely have a knack for confusing the public, and this could easily be avoided by marketers actually using the correct terms instead of trying their hardest to confound and confuse potential buyers.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[fbjon]

Ah, but the opposite of broadband isn't narrowband, it's baseband. Wideband is the opposite of narrowband.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[mr_mischief]

Using MySpace, Flickr, GMail, and YouTube isn't technical nor geeky. It's a mainstream popular activity with a low barrier to entry and almost no learning curve.

The whole "desktop computer" metaphor and the seriously strained interactive web applications with the "Web 2.0", "AJAX", and "WebApp" monikers are ways for non-geeks to use tools that previously were used primarily by geeks. It might take geeks to make the stuff work, but it's not necessary to be a geek to use them, and that's the point.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

Better example: both light bulbs and stereos are rated in "watts", which may have technical merit, but is definitely meaningless.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[Sniper98G]

It gets really annoying when companies call fiber optic services broadband. Unless they are going to run an OC-96 or better to your house that fiber is going to be a baseband line.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[petermgreen]

For the purposes of this post bandwidth is defined in the traditional sense of the range of frequencies availible for your transmission.

ALL real world mediums are analog. Signals reflect off discontinuities. Noise gets added and higher frequencies get attenuated. Your channel may be all the usable bandwidth of a cable or it may be only a subset of it but it is still most certainly a meaningfull figure. A differential pair has a limited bandwidth just like any other cable (it has good noise immunitiy though especially if twisted, that along with being much cheaper than coax is why twisted is such a popular medium).

Even fiber has a limited bandwidth though unfortunately the limitations of current technology means most of it gets left unused.

We may choose to use the whole bandwidth of a communications medium as one channel. This is usually done for short distance links where we can relatively easilly install a high bandwidth low noise channel.

Often however it is to our advantage to divide the bandwidth we have availible into a number of narrower channels. It reduces sensitivity to reflections in cables or multipath distortion in radio. For point to point links it allows our equipment to negotiate different numbers of bits per symbol depending on how noisy that bit of spectrum is.

The problem with redefinitions like this is that they leave a lot of ambiguity. Especially as in the digital world you usually need to refer to both.

Re:FCC definition of broadband

[TeknoHog]

Technology evolves, and language must evolve with it. The fact is the people evolving the language aren't the ones evolving the technology; they're usually the ones selling the technology.

This looks a little contradictory. As technology evolves, there are usually new things that require new expressions. However, salespeople are making language more "narrowband" ;)

There are two very different technical concepts of bandwidth and channel capacity (aka data rate). Modern parlance makes the word "bandwith" refer to both kinds, depending on the context (technical or mainstream). This, IMHO, is not evolution in any sense. If this is the way we're going, I predict future English to have only the one word "ugh" whose meaning must be deduced from the context.

Sounds cheaper

[esocid]

And better than satellite since it shouldn't degrade when the weather isn't perfect. That was the main complaint of people I know who live in the boonies and have to go with satellite (note that those people don't require low latency).

Re:Sounds cheaper

[MBGMorden]

Not only that, but my brother is a dial-up user and while he does comment on my connection being faster than his when he's over, the most common "OMG teh coolness!" thing he likes about my connection: it doesn't tie up the phone line.

Seriously, most rural people are not technophiles. I'd suspect that 256kb/s download would be just fine if they also got to free up their telephone line.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[jlindy]

Seriously, most rural people are not technophiles. I'd suspect that 256kb/s download would be just fine Speak for yourself :). I live in the boonies and just recently was able to get a 256kb connection. Granted it's better than dialup but only just barely. YouTube is still a painful experience.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Lumpy]

if you dont "cheap out" and get the basic package satellite does not degrade when it's cloudy or rains.

I upgraded to a 2 meter dish and only when it's a insane downpour does my HD and SD tv signals drop out. and I know that works for the sat internet as well. we had 4 of them at headends at comcast in the late 90's. I had connectivity unless it was raining insanely hard (hurricane hard)

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Amouth]

i don't think "YouTube is still a painful experience" is due in any respect to your connection speed - it has alot more to do with the content and people who comment there.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[assassinator42]

But it can degrade when the weather isn't perfect (or at least during a thunderstorm). My DSL connection has gone out a couple times during a storm (although the connection obviously wasn't very strong to begin with).
Certainly the signal quality would degrade, but probably not as much as a minidsh connection.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[flyingsquid]

I think it depends on what your goal is. If your goal is just to make it slightly easier for people in the boonies to surf the web and use the phone, then OK, this is probably a fine solution. But I think it's kind of a half-assed solution if your goal is to bring next-generation infrastructure to the United States, and if you think that high-speed internet is one of those things, like telephones, mail, water, and electricity, that we ought to make a serious effort to bring to everyone in the United States. Personally, I think we should be trying to do that, for several reasons.

(1) It's just the right thing to do. Like roads and electricity, high speed internet is rapidly becoming a necessity of modern life, not a luxury, and the government has an obligation to help provide it to people, or at least provide incentives for corporations to provide it.

(2) It will be good for the economy in the short term. With an increasing number of transactions taking place online, and services offered online- iTunes, Netflix, Amazon.com, eBay, Craigslist, online banking, WoW, Xbox Live- building this infrastructure will help more people take part in this economy, and result in transactions that otherwise wouldn't be taking place. Particularly when we're facing a recession, investing in high speed would be a good idea.

(3)It will be good for the economy in the long term. Our economy is changing rapidly, and high speed online communications are increasingly going to be a part of that. Whether it's being able to telecommute from rural Idaho, having a videoconference with a businessman in Wyoming, or families downloading movies on demand in backwoods Alabama, high-speed is going to be an important part of the economy 20 years from now. If we want the U.S. to remain competitive for the next 20 years, this would be a good way to help make that happen.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[GweeDo]

I live in a town of 2000 people and thank the Lord every day that I have 7Mbit/3Mbit cable!

Re:Sounds cheaper

[MBGMorden]

Then your definition of "rural" is a bit looser than mine. When I spoke about my broker earlier: his closest neighbor is 6 miles away ;). There is no "town" to speak of.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Gordonjcp]

Why not just use 3G data? It's cheap and quick these days.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Toonol]

Seriously, most rural people are not technophiles.

And a fair amount of Slashdot posters are evidently urbanites who have very little experience with actual rural residents.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

NO THANKS! I'd much rather pay AT&T for years and years to come thank you! (/sarcasm)

Re:Sounds cheaper

[spazdor]

not for Americans.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Ant P.]

As someone who waited six months to get an ADSL line that was dropping the connection every 5 mins fixed after heavy rain damaged the outside equipment, I can say the weather can degrade it.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[MBGMorden]

Um, I grew up in the middle of Francis Marion National Forest and still live there. I have to drive 20 miles to buy groceries and have chickens running around in my back yard you insenstive clod!

Trust me, I am more than qualified to speak as someone from a rural perspective. I just have broadband because there is a switching station a few miles from my house and by some miracle I'm close enough to get DSL.

Of course there are exceptions (hell I AM one), but that's why I threw in that little word "most". My point still stands that MOST rural residents typical are not all that into tech. 99% of the people I know live out in the woods, and they are JUST getting around to where most of them have computers at all (and many that do have old outdated machines). For the subset of those that go forth and get internet access, most don't care one bit about how fast it is, but would prefer not to hear the screech when they pickup the phone.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[mr_mischief]

"Most" urbanites and suburbanites aren't technophiles, either. Technophiles are a minority wherever you are, unless you happen to live near a place of technophile congregation.

A city with a research university, an engineering school, a large high-tech manufacturer, a big software company, a government lab, or a military base with a specifically high-tech arsenal will have more technophiles around than the average place of the same size.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[MBGMorden]

Yes, but understand: the average person in a city is far beyond the people that I'm talking about. The people I'm talking about don't buy songs on iTunes. Many of them still watch mostly VHS tapes. They don't twitter, they don't use Gmail.

I'm talking about people who use a computer the way most average people (not Slashdotters) used them 10 years ago: as a glorified typewriter that their kids type up school papers on. Many scoff at paying hundreds of dollars for a computer and are only getting them now because you can get kinda-sorta decent used machines for about $75 at this point. These are the types of people who probably wouldn't even pay the asking price for broadband if it was available - most are on whatever $10 dial-up plan is cheapest to them some even find that too expensive.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[mr_mischief]

Actually, the ground expanding and contracting, the copper or aluminum conductors getting wet, cards hitting poles in bad conditions, and winds blowing down lines off of above-ground poles (or the poles falling over, trees breaking in the wind or under the weight of ice and falling on lines) is a huge problem for electricity out in the country, let alone telephone service.

My parents go without power at least 18 hours a year, and they're only 7 miles from the closest town, with no two houses along their road being more than a couple hundred meters apart. They call AT&T from a neighbor's house or from work about once a year to let them know they've been without phone service overnight.

By contrast, a 30cm dish will break up a bit in a bad storm for a few minutes and not require a truck roll unless the dish actually comes off the mount or the positioning bolts come loose. A 120cm C-band dish will work through almost any weather. Those are for TV data rates, and those are much higher than voice lines.

The latency on interactive services over geosynchronous satellites is crap, though. Point- to-multipoint home wireless from a tower is a much better for those who can get it, and the startup cost for installation is much cheaper than running a new cable plant to every house.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[mr_mischief]

My parents live 7 miles from a town of 18,000. They don't have Internet access at home because my mom uses it at work when she needs it and my dad's more interested in mowing the 8 acres on which they live or going camping. They still have DVD players (one for the house, one for the camper), digital OTA tuners (two for the house, one for the camper), a computer (my dad plays single-player games on it, my mom uses it as a photo album, word processor, etc). My mom's in her late 50s and my dad's in his early 60s.

About four miles down the road, one of my best friends and his wife and kids have 8 computers hooked up to DSL. They're still three miles from the closest town, but they host LAN parties.

One of my friends has 3.5 Mbps DSL in his town of 4500, and the other side of town can get 7Mbps. He telecommutes for much of his work. His home office is a testament to everything geek.

My sister lives in a town of 900. She and her husband have four computers, video equipment, sound recording equipment, cable Internet access, and digital cable.

My cousin lives in the middle of a 42-acre plot at the end of a gravel road off of a two-lane blacktop. That blacktop itself is off a US highway and never goes closer at any point than 5 miles from a town. She and her husband have two big screens, digital satellite, wireless ISP, video game consoles, electronic surveillance systems, cell phones, a digital camcorder, a DVR, and more.

I'm not sure exactly what your experience with rural residents is, but I think you're making assumptions that don't hold everywhere.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Annymouse Cowherd]

No, they would download more porn, faster.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Annymouse Cowherd]

*No, they want to download porn faster (than 256kbit/s).

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Lost Engineer]

$60/mo is not bad for unlimited 3G data, which is what sprint is charging. In my experience, it's about as fast as DSL except that the latency is 1s.

Re:Sounds cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

How the heck can your friend get DSL 3 miles from the nearest town, but I can't get it in the middle of freaking Silicon Valley? (too far from the box)

Re:Sounds cheaper

[mr_mischief]

Actually, according to the official DSL availability map he could't when he tried to order it. He happens to live along the route where the phone company connects the town to the long distance network.

He had to work his way through several different people on the telco's end to convince them to send him the equipment and mark his line active for DSL. He also had to sign a waiver of quality guarantees, since the official support from the CO didn't reach his house.

We're not sure, but from the speeds and the reliability he's getting we think the telco installed a smallish DSLAM in the substation near his house in order to start offering it to his neighbors, too. It's an unincorporated area in the county, but the houses are just as close to one another as in many subdivisions in town. It makes sense if they can get enough penetration in the market to run DSL out of the remote substations as well as the CO.

Much like ISDN...

[pagley]

That was much like the overall premise and promise of ISDN BRI - "high speed" digital access over voice grade plant, which failed miserably due to a number of technical, political, and corporate reasons.

Granted, the OP's proposal is somewhat different, as I assume he was referring to using DSL-like technology in the full voice band. But, there are also limitations on how much data can be carried in a given amount of spectrum using various modulation and encoding schemes.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[Anonymous Coward]

ISDN didn't fail. I'm using it now. Latency kicks ass as low as 16ms for the first hop and 150ms around the world. ISDN is pricey at $40/mo for the ISP and $37/mo for the line. Reliable 128kbit with no throttling policy beats satellite though.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[zappepcs]

There is a missing item to consider. Much of the infrastructure that exists, even in rural USA is that there are more than one pair of copper to most homes. Ma Bell wanted to see you two phone lines at one time, so the possibility of DSL grade equipment that bridges two network connections could in fact provide a quite reasonable ride for your bits.

In fact, if the RBOCs sold that bundled with VoIP, I'm certain that it would be bought up handily. I know that some of my family would do so if reasonably priced without blinking an eye.

So think not of just a single DSL capable line, but of two or more of them shared across a single network (TCP/IP) access point within the home. That could easily fall inside the definitions of broadband connectivity.

This kind of networking is simple for router type equipment: terminate two DSL lines, bridge, route, add switching for end user connections... done.

Yes Sir, and if you are smart, add (for nominal monthly fee) a small fanless backup server in the router box. Not that I believe for a second that RBOC management is smart in that way.

The technology is available. The infrastructure is available. Those paying for satellite, phone, cell might well save a good bit of cash to convert to a bundle service, so cash should be available....

DOH! slap forehead... why isn't this done already?

Re:Much like ISDN...

[Amouth]

isdn BRI didn't fail do to technical or political reasons..

it failed to become main stream because durring the time frame where it would have been the first broadband that could be delivered anywhere - the phone company priced it out of existance for nearly any home user.

yes the first gen did have anissue of requiring f1 pairs.. (2 at that).. but they later changed it so it could use a single pair and also be routed accross fiber nodes..

pricing is what killed it (well more of a still birth).. but functionaly it was great (i used one for many years)

Re:Much like ISDN...

[billcopc]

Yep ISDN looked great back in the 90s, but the ridiculous cost of installation and the two separate bills made it impractical for most people. I laugh hard when I see businesses still using ISDN 64k today when "business-class" cable can be had for half the price and 20-30 times faster upload. If that kind of basic service isn't available in your area, fire your cable co.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[Amouth]

where i work we wanted to get a business cable line for mutiple reasons.. but the guy who oringaly build the building didn't have them run any cable lines to the building.. so TW wanted us to pay for it (>10k).. we ended up bonding several PRI's.. sure the montly cost is more.. but overall it is better solution..

Re:Much like ISDN...

[Achra]

I loved ISDN when I lived in TN. It turns out that the big horror of dial-up isn't the bandwidth, it's the high latency. You cut that latency down to nil, and everything feels a lot faster. Plus, it's very nice to be able to use the phoneline and the connection simultaneously.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[pagley]

It did fail on "political" reasons, mainly referring to corporate politics, you could boil that down to "pricing" if you wish.

It was priced at better than *4* times as much as *2* POTS lines in my area, delivering the same number of voice channels, and using at most the same amount of switch backplane capacity (two DS0's). And the Telco's got the advantage of having the A/D conversions done at the customer premise (giving cleaner analog performance), and using half the copper pairs of two POTS lines (once the integrated NT interface became the defacto standard). Benefits on two fronts that should have ultimately made providing the service *cheaper*, but it didn't.

And, on the technical aspect, it too failed. Not because the technology didn't work, but because of the limited reach it had. "Back then", even in metropolitan areas 12-18kft of cable was fairly easy to exceed if you were in the wrong place in town. Forget rural, it was often well over length by the time you reached the first home/business/farm out of town.

Overall, it failed. Miserably. ISDN PRI survives and thrives to this day, but is really only seen used in high density voice-grade situations such as ISP dialup or business applications with PBX'es and a need for 6+ voice lines, DID, inbound and outbound CID, and all the other amenities you can get with it.

Brad

Re:Much like ISDN...

[Amouth]

when you said political i wasn't thinking of corprate politics as you had "political, and corporate" so i thought you ment government when you said political..

yea there is alot of reasons it failed and it was mostly all the phone compines screw up..

i wasn't aware of the cable length problems as that never seemd to come up when places i knew ordered them.. i could see that being an issue for rural.

PRI services do thrive.. and today are in my mind the only way to go for any decent size company - but again they are not for your average joe consumber.. the phone compaines just hasn't really gotten to the point (in my mind) where they can drop the corprate lvl requirements on deployment and service to put their necks on the line for broadband to the average joe

Re:Much like ISDN...

[mr_mischief]

Some ISPs offer ISDN bonding, too, if you are interested in spending that much.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[Anonymous Coward]

But, there are also limitations on how much data can be carried in a given amount of spectrum using various modulation and encoding schemes. Reliably, with existing modulation and encoding schemes. Limitations only exist in the present, and when you have a purpose in mind.

This kind of thinking is why I always end up in a fight, to the death, with economists. I'm incapable of accepting that unsolvable limits exist, and they keep believing in their puny "resources". They lack imagination though, so I'll eventually win the argument.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[petermgreen]

Afaict if you are getting 128K you are already bonding two channels (a BRI interface carries two ISDN channels).

Some ISPs may well let you use more than two though.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[petermgreen]

The DSP revoloution has allowed us to extract performance from channels that would not previously have been thought possible. Probablly the best example of this is DSL extracting performance from phone lines way way beyond what they were originally designed for.

There are limits though. beyond a certain frequency the attenuation will reach a point where the line is unusable. You can increase the SNR by increasing the power but unfortunately achivable data rate is proportional to the logarithm of SNR so there are limited gains to be had there.

Improving the modulation may help a bit but there are fundamental limits on how much can be achived for a given bandwidth and SNR and afaict we are already pretty close to them.

Re:Much like ISDN...

[billcopc]

Wowzers! Around here I could get some dark fiber patched in for way less than 10k. I guess it all depends on how competitive your area is for telecoms.

Waste of time

[eln]

Seems silly to spend all that time and money trying to get the FCC to change its regulations when this situation seems tailor made for a good RFC 1149 implementation. Latency is still an issue with such a setup, but bandwidth can be virtually unlimited if you have the resources.

Re:Waste of time

[Dekortage]

Unfortunately, in rural areas, RFC 1149 datagram carriers may be actively destroyed for human sustenance. This would further increase latency, and could pose a significant security hole. In such network regions, packet sniffers tend to be numerous and very active, working on four-pronged mobility structures, and may occasionally carry fleas.

However, within this modality, the risk of VoIP being unscrupulously wiretapped is already very low, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Re:Waste of time

[spazdor]

RFC 1149 provides great throughput, but the latency and jitter are probably not suitable for reasonable VoIP performance.

"...Can you hear me NOW?"

Dream on...

[jlindy]

Sounds nice but,try to get the telco's to implement it in areas that they deem unprofitable without an act of congress. The best solution for broadband in the boonies as I see it would be broadband over powerlines.

Re:Dream on...

[pilgrim23]

Powerlines? Have you looked into it? the hash this produces in the radio spectum is unbelievable. It disrupts communication...and...opens a security can of worms you have not even considered. Putting the net on power always struck me as similar to using the water line to carry the sewer waste; after all, sharring a pipe is not that difficult and it already goes into the home...then the FCC can sell the sewer pipe ....

Not broadband, but...

[Endo13]

It actually sounds like a good idea. Sure, it's not as fast as broadband, but it's still a good five times faster than dialup. And ten times faster than a lot of people get in those rural areas where no wired broadband is available.

Re:Not broadband, but...

[kipman725]

erm why so slow ADSL 2 manages 24Mb/s under ideal conditions while retaining the capability for traditional phone calls in the UK. With the spare bandwidth reserved for voice (3.5KHz I think) this should be even faster.

Re:Not broadband, but...

[Tony Hoyle]

ADSL degrades too fast over distance. A technology that's got to reach people out in the sticks so far that even ISDN won't reach, has to have a lot more resilience.

Re:Not broadband, but...

[petermgreen]

Of course the key word there is under ideal conditions. Afaict most of the gain from ADSL2 comes from extending to higher frequencies but those higher frequencies are lost even faster with distance. So on moderate length lines ADSL2+ is not much better than ADSL1.

Currently a fair chunk of the best (lowest) frequencies are used very inefficiantly to carry analog voice communication. That is bad if you are trying to optimise the utilty of a poor line.

ISDN

[nodan]

... what is the point here? I thought using a telephone line for data transfer is called ISDN and kind of 80s (more honestly, 70s) technology.

forgive my potential ignorance--

[way2trivial]

but-- even when these lines were laid, weren't they laid in duplicate/quad sets to the homes?

I know they have BUNDLES to boxes at endpoints.. why not use multiple lines for those who really need to be in the woods and need more speed?

What is this trying to solve?

[Zironic]

Isn't the problem with rural DSL not so much signal strenght as much as that the telephone companies arn't terribly interested in putting down DSLAMs in the middle of nowhere?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_subscriber_line

Also I suspect that data has higher quality requirements then just voice, small differences in the frequencies won't affect what you hear much but I'll mess up your loss ratio for data.

4 kHz != 25 kHz

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something in his math here...

From what I understand solely from the article, DSL uses frequencies from 25 kHz and up. Voice is restricted to 0-4 kHz. That's got to mean that 4-25 kHz is some sort of "guard band" for ADSL.

So, from what I understand he is proposing, he wants to use 0-25 kHz for a DSL-like technology.

That will certainly require new equipment wherever the phone line hooks up into the telephone station, because the current equipment will be, as far as I understand, some kind of PCM-based demultiplexer which takes voice data from a trunk of some sort.

To implement this kind of scheme, you'd still need to pull some kind of data trunk capacity to the telephone station, and you'd still need new equipment for subscriber lines.

So, what exactly is the advantage over ADSL? Keep in mind, I'm not a telecoms engineer (yet) and I have absolutely zero specific knowledge about how ADSL is implemented.

Re:4 kHz != 25 kHz

[Bovarchist]

I'm not sure about the math, but when I was working on my Master's degree, an old tech from Bell labs told us that the reason DSL can't go very far is that load coils are placed in the copper lines to prevent capacitance over long distances. These coils also had the effect of wiping out everything but ~300 - ~3300 Hz. DSL's range is limited because the frequencies it uses can't reach past these load coils. Once that distance is reached, the only thing left is the 3-4 kHz that is required for a single voice call.

Re:4 kHz != 25 kHz

[timbalara]

Quite true. Think of load coils (To simply state it) as a massive DSL filter. However, for standard DSL, without load coils in play, maximum distance for a pristine line would be about 25 thousand feet, depending on the end speeds you want to get. The faster the speed, the closer you have to be. The reason why telcos don't want to plop down a DSLAM in the middle of nowhere is because it would take ages to pay off the investment. In this day and age of customers dropping their service providers just because the company truck is blue instead of their favorite shade of gray, no sane person that wants to keep their job would approve that.

Questions.

[sexconker]

911 with VoiP?

And before someone says it - a lot of rural people don't depend on 911 anyway, I know (because of distance), but a lot of people us city folk would consider "rural" DO depend on 911.

And how do you IMPLEMENT this?
get every phone line set up for VoiP and train people, and then flick a switch one day? Do you stagger it so you move a chunk of people over to data, cap their speeds, and then move some more people? There WILL be holdouts - medical equipment, old credit card / check readers should work, but they'll have to be tested.

You won't be able to utilize the full bandwidth of that frequency range until you get everyone switched over. And who pays for it? Do you force this on everyone? A lot of people have no internet, and a lot pay through the nose (and have contracts) for satellite net service.

If we have money to be running around the countryside handing out VoiP phones, informing people, etc, why not just run some fiber all over hell? Let companies buy the last mile.

The major cost in both scenarios is paying for the man hours involved. We don't have the money for either plan (running fiber or getting people VoiP ready).

Re:Questions.

[Locklin]

911 works on VOIP -they call it e911. It works as long as your provider has your address. Many providers have it, including Acanac ( http://www.acanac.com/Phones.htm )

Re:Questions.

[FamineMonk]

Couldn't you just make a special model voip phone that could force the line to switch back to some kind of basic phone service?

It might be a little hard to set up but it would a pretty good back up.

Re:Questions.

[Belial6]

100% of the 911 scare was generated by the incumbent phone carriers. They have fought tooth and nail for the privilege of making 911 fail on VOIP phones. In some places they have won, and have been allowed to cripple 911. In other places they have lost, and they are not allowed to cripple 911. Besides, the whole 911 fear mongering is lame anyway. Most people spend HUGE amounts of time in places that have no better 911 capabilities than what are available in the places that the incumbent phone companies have been allowed to cripple 911. Driving to work for example.

Re:Questions.

[mnslinky]

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Seriously, before you open your mouth to make a 'statement,' know the subject at hand.

1) It's called E911, or Enhanced 911

2) Many credit card readers/etc have moved to supporting network connections in place of, or addition to, POTS lines. While I'll give you that it would require an equipment change, the technology is out there. This also goes for medical equipment and security systems.

In addition to supporting data/broadband, security systems can utilize GSM cellular service. Historically, they started with support for A and B side channels of analog cellular service, but that's all supposed to be turned off now.

3) You will be able to utilize the full bandwidth, as telephone networks are unique in that they have DEDICATED pairs running to every single phone line. The only exception to this is T1/E1 service, which is a whole different devil. There, you have multiple lines running across a few pair of copper, something most people don't have in their home. That being said, you would be able to use the full bandwidth. It's one of the things that's so great about DSL over Cable broadband.

4) There is a HUGE price difference between last-mile fiber and a $50 VOIP analog-digital convert box. How the hell do you think Vonage works?

5) Your last statement makes you sound like a crotchety old fuck in the Appalachians or something. Put down your gun, scrape up that 'coon, and make your stew. Get the fuck off the internet with your stupid comments and unjustfied outrage you uneducated fuck.

Have a nice day!

Re:Questions.

[saforrest]

911 works on VOIP -they call it e911. It works as long as your provider has your address

The "as long as your provider has your address" is the catch: a kid died recently in Alberta after the parents called 911 via a VOIP line and the company didn't have their most recent address on file.

While I'm prepared to believe that the parents ought to have made sure their address with the VOIP company was current, I'm guessing there must have been some paperwork to fill out when they moved, for billing purposes at least. I expect more could be done to really drive the point home to people that unless you've provided your most recent address, the operator will have no idea where you are.

Re:Questions.

[sexconker]

You're an idiot.
People expect 911 to work. Plain and simple. There are problems with E911. They don't know where you are unless you tell them, you have to rely on your VoiP phone having power, you have to rely on that thar internet to get your packets across.

Many? How about the vast majority? I know just about everyone is ready. The bottom line is that there is a COST involved in getting EVERYONE set up. I fucking defy you to look at a map of the US and draw up a plan to make sure every single person is on the same page about anything.
3.8 million square miles.

Phone lines are dedicated, yes. Infrastructure (where all the lines meet) is not.

You seem to be the typical slashtard who deals only in the imaginary, theoretical land of ignorance. The physical wires are bundled together and buried underground and strung up along poles. Phone calls rarely have issues with crosstalk because, most of the time, most lines aren't being used. If you want to get EVERYONE on board with this "broadband" plan, then you have to be prepared for them to use it like they would a typical DSL or cable connection in cities.

Physical wiring in these areas ranges from old to ancient. TFA mentions using a wider frequency range (0-25 KHz) for this data than traditional voice does (0-4K Hz). Are you suggesting that there won't be huge fucking issues? If so you're just retarded.

Go dig a bundle of cables out of a trench, and climb a few poles, and pay for it. Let me know how many hours and how many dollars it took.

You missed the point completely - run fiber and sell the last mile INSTEAD OF spending the untold billions it would cost (yes - it would cost billions) to make sure everyone's equipment is ready, the wiring is up to par, informing every single person, collecting information for 911, etc.
How does Vonage work? It fucking relies on fucking broadband penetration. That does NOT exist in rural areas, and it would cost billions to implement even a half-assed, gimped version of it.

You obviously are blind to the value of a dollar, the state of the economy, the scale of such a plan, and the number of people (who like to get paid) that would be necessary to execute it.

Re:Questions.

[mnslinky]

lol

Re:Questions.

[Russ Nelson]

Not to mention that the incumbents don't do a really great job with 911. We've been paying extra for E911 for years, and it still doesn't work. And then there's all the horror stories about busy signals. That's not the carrier's fault, of course, but it points to 911 not being as critical as people say.

Re:Questions.

[mr_mischief]

There are VoiP boxes with analog phone jacks. You could even make the network access box on the side of the house a cheap router with an analog jack and Ethernet jacks for the customer's PCs. The problem there is cost.

Re:Questions.

[mr_mischief]

Actually, Enhanced 911 means they know your address when you call and is still being rolled out for analog lines with the incumbent telcos in many more rural parts of the country.

It only gets interesting that VoiP providers can't provide your address for you in the event of a call if your regular phone company can. Lots of county dispatching offices are still getting the equipment financed for installation so that they can use E911. No phone company can hook up to the E911 system until the dispatch office has it.

Re:Questions.

[Tacvek]

Which E911 are you talking about? There are 3 different E911 Systems.

My understanding is that wireline E911 has been fully operation in most of the country for many years. There may be a small number of rural PSAPs that are not properly equipped, but I'm actually doubting even that.

Wireless E911 is newer and should probably be working just fine in all major metropolitan areas. How well it is actually working elsewhere I am not certain. This usually uses either Assisted GPS (allegedly phone captures raw GPS signals, and transmits them to phone company for decoding), full GPS, and cell tower triangulation. I'm not sure how well the providers support the systems though, which may result in the system failing even though the phone and the PSAP having proper support for Wireless E911.

VOIP E911 is the newest system. Actually half the difficulty here is figuring out which PSAP to contact. The Cell phones can reasonably choose to contact the PSAP that services the physical location of the tower itself. (Should be close enough that fire and rescue crews can respond in a reasonable timeframe. The same is true of police, althiugh jurisdiction is also relevant there. Thankfully cops usually have at least limited felony jusridiction statewide.) Wirelines know exactly where they are, so the difficulty there is minimal. But VOIP providers have no real way of accurately determining your general location, so figuring out which PSAP to contact is actually a major problem above and beyond providing location information to the PSAP.

Re:Questions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you're dumb.
You can't just flick a switch and move everyone over to the proposed system.

It'll cost lots and lots of cash money to implement this idea, and it'll only result in slightly less shitty speeds.

Re:Questions.

[Belial6]

Nope. While you CAN take the VIOP device to a new location. When you sign up with at least Vonage, you register the location of the device. Vonage knows where my phone is just as well as AT&T knows where my neighbors phone is.

Re:Questions.

[Tacvek]

You plug your POTS telephone into your neighbor's phone jack and your PSAP will see your neighbors address. AT&T knows the address based on the endpoint of the copper wire. You plug your Vonage device into your neighbor's internet connection and dial 911, and your PSAP will see *your* address. Vonage depends upon you registering your phone's location, which is a step beyond what is needed on POTs. That is very much a technical difference with special challenges. That is not to say they are difficult challenges for the most common usecase, but what about VOIP over Wifi on a smartphone. (Something cellular companies fear). There is definitely no easy way for your VOIP provider to know your location in that case, and there is currently no standard for your device to provide such information be it through GPS, AGPS, or Wifi access point triangulation. Heck, even with Cell phones, passive (tower-side) tower triangulation could be performed in many cases (look at which towers hear your phone, and with what intensity), but there is no way for a VOIP provider to do the equivalent.

Re:Questions.

[petermgreen]

911 with VoiP?
Assuming the VOIP soloution is part of the package and not a third party service I don't see why this should be a problem. The biggest problem with VOIP and 911 is when the voip is seperate from the line there is no way to tell if the user has moved the VOIP equipment without telling the provider.


You won't be able to utilize the full bandwidth of that frequency range until you get everyone switched over.
For the most part phone lines should be seperate channels. There may be a little big of crosstalk but if there was significant crosstalk in the voice band people would have complained ages ago.

Re:Questions.

[petermgreen]

I would think an access box with a port for the phone line and then phone and ethernet ports for the costomers equipment would be the obvious way to do it. Maybe add a panel with some punchdown blocks so it can be hardwired if desired.

This service sounds like it would need a custom modem anyway. I can't imagine building a voip analog adaptor into that box would be too expensive.

Re:Questions.

[petermgreen]

I would consider a factor of 4 improvement and the abity to use the phone and internet at the same time a major improvement.

Re:Questions.

[Belial6]

If I take my POTS phone and plug it into my neighbors VIOP box, Vonage sees me at my neighbors house. The same phone moved whether it is running over POTS lines or VOIP lines works the same for identifying location. Which is to say, the phone simply has no mechanism to do that. When you use standard AT&T phone service, you have a phone jack that you plug your telephone into. The location of this jack is registered with the phone company. When you use Vonage, you have a phone jack that you plug your phone into. The location of this jack is registered with the phone company. Yes, I can break the ability for 911 under Vonage to identify my location by taking the jack to another location. I can break the ability of 911 under AT&T to identify my location by cutting the wire outside my house. Either way, the user CHOOSES to break 911. There is no technical reason for VOIP 911 not to work just as well and reliably as POTS.

So, no, there is no way for a VOIP provider to track your position if you are actively trying to prevent it. This is a benefit to the consumer, not a drawback. The answer to your example of VIOP over wifi on a smartphone is that you are just as safe, as there is no equivalent that is not VIOP, so you would just not have a phone, and thus 911 wouldn't know where you were either way.

Re:Questions.

[Free the Cowards]

Yeah, because this sort of thing never happens on land lines.

Your provider can screw up your address no matter who it is. Don't think that just because you're with a provider who gives you physical service at a location that they can't possibly screw it up.

Re:Questions.

[sexconker]

Read the article, or the summary.
The plan is to use far more than the normal voice frequency range.

Just use ISDN

[Animats]

This is what ISDN is good for. It's not very demanding of loop quality, and you get uncompressed digital voice, plus modest data capability.

ISDN voice handsets are common in Europe. The Swiss PTT likes them. European practice is to power them from the central office, so you don't need power at the subscriber end. US practice is to power ISDN gear from the subscriber end, which makes them unreliable as a primary phone connection. There's no fundamental reason, though, why central office power for ISDN can't be used in the US. The gear is available.

The problem is that many rural lines have analog repeaters out on poles somewhere, and those are't compatible with DSL, ISDN, or much of anything else. See Rural Telephony Workshop Report..

Re:Just use ISDN

[Achra]

As a former ISDN user, I'd like to agree.. Except for the reliability statements. ISDN powered at the subscriber side is no different than my current Fios setup, which is also powered at my side. The Real reason that ISDN isn't more popular in the rural areas is that most of the time it is priced in a really silly price-range. $200 install costs and more than $100/month are not uncommon at all.

Re:Just use ISDN

[Animats]

The Real reason that ISDN isn't more popular in the rural areas is that most of the time it is priced in a really silly price-range.

I know. US Telcos really blew ISDN. (The guy who writes Dilbert used to be in the ISDN department at PacBell.) In Switzerland, ISDN and analog phone lines are the same price.

ISDN has better sound quality than almost everything else in residential telephony. End to end digital, uncompressed, with no lags.

Re:Just use ISDN

[Linker3000]

European practice is to power them from the central office

Not the case in the UK I'm afraid - ISDN2e (BRI 2 channels) has no CO power.

Re:Just use ISDN

[Linker3000]

Actually - let me qualify that: No power is provided to premises equipment (phones etc.)

Re:Just use ISDN

[petermgreen]

BT used to offer a service called BT home highway/BT buiseness highway which had a BT supplied box on the wall providing you with ISDN ports and a couple of analog ports. I think that box was exchange powered but I don't remember for sure.

Unfortunately it seems they recently dropped that product.

Re:Just use ISDN

[cibyr]

ISDN is only 128kbps (and that's dual-channel!) though. This proposed solution is much faster.

A lot of people I know refer to ISDN as the "Incredibly Slow Digital Network".

Re:Just use ISDN

[cthulhu11]

The pricing is due to several factors: o Clueless government tariffs o Distance-sensitive pricing, like you'd have with a PTP DS1. This adds up quickly. Note that telcos treat and provision ISDN like a POTS line, and if you have to backhaul it to a different exchange, that jacks the heck out of the pricing. o Telcos, *if* you can find someone to talk to who can even *spell* ISDN, are used to selling it to businesses with more money than brains, ie., ones who 15 years thought video conferencing was a good idea. I'm not sure that one can even buy new ISDN routers in the US. I had to get mine used on eBay.

Re:Just use ISDN

[Linker3000]

It came with its own PSU although one channel would supply power for an ISDN phone during power fail conditions ISTR.

The highway products are finally finally being retired on 30th June 2008.

Competition....

[budword]

This could provide some competition to the cable and telco companies. It would give the little man an alternative when they try to bend us over.

Re:Competition....

[jonwil]

No, this is not competition for the telcos. This is a way for the telcos to provide something better than dialup to customers who cant get anything else (DSL, cable etc)

Re:Competition....

[maxume]

The idea is to use phone lines in areas without cable...

Re:Competition....

[budword]

I understand the idea. My point is it could be rolled out to everyone, and bust a monopoly or two. I'm sure there are tech issues that would need to be solved, but busting the death grip cable has on decent net speed would be great.

Re:Competition....

[maxume]

Well, you initially said telcos and cable. I don't really see where this adds anything over DSL though, at least in areas where DSL makes financial sense (I don't get DSL because the lines are ancient and there aren't enough houses near mine to make an upgrade happen).

The Boonies

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live Just Off is just off the Interstate (I-95) The state road I live on is 2.5 miles from Verizon's and Comcast's City offices. There are about 15 houses on the Road and there is nothing but cable TV, not digital, and dial up. There is no broadband, here in the Boonies. My house on this road is only 0.6 miles from a main backbone cable run that supplies 90% of the county.

Sounds like IDSL

[rickkas7]

This sounds pretty much like IDSL. The problem has never been technological - the problem is getting your telephone company to implement it at a price that's reasonable. Instead of breaking up the low frequencies into two 64 Kbit/sec ISDN BRI channels and one 16 Kbits/sec D channel for signaling, IDSL just uses all 144 Kbits/sec (symmetric) for data. The suggestion is asymmetric ISDN based broadband, but that's a minor difference. ISDN goes much longer distances than ADSL or SDSL due to the lower frequencies. In the early 1990s I had ISDN and it worked fine, except the phone company charged $ 250 a month for unlimited 128 Kbits/sec. Great technology (at the time), but insane pricing.

My Data may be out of date.

[jellomizer]

I always thought the bandwith for dialup was stuck at 28.8kbs and the 58.6kbs modem speed was do to hardware/software compression built in the modem. Thus reaching an estimate peak speed of 58.6kbs.
Now if we took these lines and gave people parallel connection then we may get some speed performance.

Re:My Data may be out of date.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought that the maximum speed attainable without compression on a 56k modem would be 56 kilobits per second but due to FCC regulations about frequency/power usage they could only manage about 52 kilobits per second tops. Also, that's a downstream speed. Upstream is capped at 33.6kbps. In theory, it would be possible to reverse the flow when the connection was initialized and have 52kbps upstream and 33.6kbps downstream.

But either one of us might be wrong, and I'm too lazy to look up the wikipedia article.

Re:My Data may be out of date.

[operagost]

That's incorrect. The compression is part of totally separate protocols (v.42bis, MNP, v.44). 56K modems have a theoretical limit of 56Kbps down, 33.6 KBps up. This is done through the use of PCM conversion from the CO to the premises. Analog modulation is limited to 33.6. V.92 allows 48Kbps uploads via the use of PCM from the premises to the CO, but this reduces the download speed.

so ...

[B3ryllium]

It's going to be Voice over IP over Voice? VoIPoV?

Re:so ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a Russian hitman: "Voypawv".

Repurpose

[The Redster!]

Aww, "repurpose." That's a shame.
I would've had a great time explaining "IPoVoIP" to my relatives.

IDSL uses ISDN modulation without switching

[billstewart]

IDSL is an ISDN-flavored DSL version. It uses the ISDN modulation to send bits over the wire, but with a full-time DSLAM connection as opposed to ISDN switched calling.
It gets 144kbps - ISDN has two 64kbps B channels and a 16kbps D channel, and is typically used for a 128kbps bonded circuit.

The big advantage of IDSL is distance - it typically gets about 30,000 feet, compared to about 18000 for most DSL flavors.

Hit and miss politics

[billsf]

There isn't too much information in the article, particularly what problems may be encountered. The amount of data that can be delivered will vary greatly due to certain technical considerations. Politically, giving everyone in rural areas the 'same lousy service' is a minefield.

The outside cable plant and distance to the central office is everything:

* "Wires on poles" can degrade bandwidth 10x or more, particularly if there is industrial or broadcast interference. Modern underground cable plant can provide several Mbit/s up to 30km or so.

* Loading coils, commonly used in the past to maintain 600 or 900 ohm line impedance, limit the bandwidth of the lines to not mush more than 4kHz. They must be removed which is allot of tedious labour. Once removed, POTS may not work properly. Since some lines will need them and others definitely not, this gives a great excuse to 'take forever' to install the service.

* COTS DSL-modem/routers, common in many areas, may not work on large runs. Slightly modified units can put out greater signal and have better echo cancellation. This looks like a lock-in and higher prices. Higher transmission levels, lower received levels and longer runs invite crosstalk in a big way. It may be that many systems start out really good, but quickly degrade as more subscribers are added.

* Some rural cable-plant is "hollow-sounding" with voice and will simply not work with DSL. I'm no expert on US rural phone systems, but its fair to say most will get the pitiful 256kbit/s rate. This is what can be achieved with above-ground cable-plant at 30km in a city environment. The actual case I use example is Buenos Aries.

Any cable-plant that doesn't support 25kHz should be recycled! Otherwise, most will probably do much better, so limiting service to below 256kbit/s is deceptive. All told, there are a number of technical hurdles, which can be overcome, but the politics will go on forever.

This isn't a nice comparison to make, but in England there is more 'broadband' (there is a somewhat higher standard to the definition there) in the country than the city. Of course, like most of Europe, all wires are underground.

Re:Hit and miss politics

[petermgreen]

This isn't a nice comparison to make, but in England there is more 'broadband' (there is a somewhat higher standard to the definition there) in the country than the city. Of course, like most of Europe, all wires are underground.
Not true, in many urban/suburban areas of england the final drop to the house is overhead and in some rural areas phone lines run overheaf for miles..

Cell networks for last mile

[Rijnzael]

Until recently moving off to college, I have lived in a rural area. For the four years of living in this area, I used ISDN for data only, while also having two separate landlines for voice-only use. Let me tell you, for the price of the line installation, monthly line fees, monthly per-dial fees, and shoddy service with a very low cap, ISDN is not worth it. It exceeded $100 per month. I've just recently switched to Sprint EVDO for data service, and the quality is amazing. In spite of having virtually nil DSL penetration and absolutely no cable, this area has full cellular coverage, and I get fairly decent speeds around 1mbit, which is a godsend compared to 112kbps. I think cellular networks should be the platform on which to deploy more rural services, while deep penetrating but expensive, antiquated services such as ISDN and T1 should be put to rest.

Re:Cell networks for last mile

[zogger]

On the sprint deal, do they give you any hassle on hours of usage (total) or any download caps?

Re:Cell networks for last mile

[Rijnzael]

Nope. They have two packages, one at $30 or $40 per month for a 5 GB cap, and one at $60 per month for no cap. I chose sprint specifically because of this; Verizon and several other carriers offered the same price $60 price point for the 5GB cap offer.

Australia is almost as bad

[Anonymous Coward]

"Only the US FCC calls 231K "broadband," but as noted it does beat dialup."

Perhaps, but providers are still able to refer to 256kb ADSL as 'broadband' in Australia - not that much better :( .

A pig is still a pig

[davidwr]

And a poor quality copper wire is still a poor quality copper wire.

If your 56k modem, which already uses voice frequencies, can't get more than 8Kbps out of a poor line, what makes you think anything else will do better?

OK, I can think of one thing that might provide a marginal gain, but there's not a big market for it so it won't be cheap: A modem that is specifically designed to work on copper wire with specific quality defects.

Two other things to consider:

In the old days 50 years ago, phones were designed to transmit from 20 to 2000 Hz. 2000 baud with 4x-8x bits per signal change is 8,000-16,000 kbps. That's enough for fax, passable VOIP, or even postage-stamp-sized low-frame-rate live video.

The advantages of VoIP over dialup vs. analog voice are the same as digital TV vs analog TV:
* some ability to reduce static
* compression, freeing up space for a 2nd line, a fax line, or Internet
* in some cases, the ability to defer replacing a poor-quality cable

Re:A pig is still a pig

[Ethan Allison]

Oops. It's actually 8,000-16,000bps (8-16kbps).

Re:A pig is still a pig

[petermgreen]

If your 56k modem, which already uses voice frequencies, can't get more than 8Kbps out of a poor line, what makes you think anything else will do better?
A 56K modem is hamstrung by the device at the other end which means it can't use frequencies above 4khz at all and it has no easy way to avoid noise spike frequencies.

Quality of our rural POTS lines?

[ToasterMonkey]

I think he's overestimating the quality of our rural landlines quite a a bit.. Where I grew up in Maine for instance, to this day, the best you can get out of dial up is 24.4kbit, and we don't have cable.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't your line have to be AT LEAST capable of 56k (or 53333, whatever) in order to handle DSL? Something about the distance to a central office or something? Wouldn't that affect most of rural America?
My little podunk town can't be the only one out there with no broadband AND cruddy phone lines. Seriously, where in rural America can you get 56k and no cable TV?

If the phone system didn't get upgraded during the AOL boom, it sure as hell ain't happening today.
It might be cheaper than running fiber or cable I guess :\

Re:Quality of our rural POTS lines?

[mr_mischief]

Actually, running fiber to the pedestal alongside your road and making sure the copper to your house has no repeaters is probably cheaper than testing this for every home and rolling the same trucks to fix rural copper loops back to town for every two-lane blacktop and gravel road and maintaining the signal quality on that new copper plant. If you're going to trench, plan ahead.

Let me get this straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use broadband to offer....BROADBAND?!?!?!? Genius! Who'd a thunk it?

Reminds me of the /.er who thought he was an Einstein because he made soup by using two cans of pre-made soup.

The nice thing about landlines, they just work

[Duradin]

Power goes out. Landlines still work. Weather gets crappy. Landlines still work. Not much that can fail on the user's end. Start tossing VoIP in the picture and you're adding a whole bunch of equipment that has lot of ways to fail.

Re:The nice thing about landlines, they just work

[westlake]

Power goes out. Landlines still work. Weather gets crappy. Landlines still work. Not much that can fail on the user's end.

In the northeast, going wireless is still rare.

There are other numbers in the survey worth looking at:

The prevalence of binge drinking among wireless-only adults (37.3%) was twice as high as the prevalence among adults living in landline households (17.7%)

Wireless-only adults were more likely to report that their health status was excellent or very good, and they were more likely to engage in regular leisure-time physical activity.

The percentage without health insurance coverage (28.7%) was twice as high as the percentage among adults living in landline households (13.7%)

Wireless-only adults were more likely to have experienced financial barriers to obtaining needed health care, and they were less likely to have a usual place to go for medical care. Wireless-only adults were also less likely to have received an influenza vaccination during the previous year.

Wireless-only adults (47.6%) were more likely than adults living in landline households (34.7%) to have ever been tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Selected Health Measures by Household Telephone Status:

There are obvious contradictions here.

The wireless population is young but doesn't look like the picture of health it claims to be.

As age increased, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 15.5% for adults aged 30-44 years; 8.0% for adults aged 45-64 years; and 2.2% for adults aged 65 years and over

This is a much poorer and less stable a population than I expected. It rents but does not own. It has roommates not families. It is more inner-city than suburban or rural.

Re:The nice thing about landlines, they just work

[Wobble-U]

That's a good point. Where I live we have frequent power cuts, and the wireless reception isn't the greatest. We have a phone that just uses the power provided by the phone line, so we always have a way of contacting people if we need to. If we weren't able to do that, it could cause a bit of inconvenience, or worse if we had an emergency.

Yes, that's true

[default luser]

See here for more explanation. They are a necessary evil on phone lines, unless you complerely re-engineer the line for higher frequencies.

The other big problem that nobody wants to talk about is this: how can you assume you even have 4 kHz of useful bandwidth to work with, let alone 25 kHz? Modern 56k modems have trouble even connecting at 56k on rural phone lines, simply because the lines suck.

The fact is, if the line cannot support more than 4 kHz, you cannot increase download speeds. The download on 56k modems is already digital without overhead, and is already at the shannon limit.

Re:Yes, that's true

[anexkahn]

Your 56k modem is so slow because it is trying to fit into that 4 kHz. The frequency it is operating at does not necessarily relate to the speed it is operating at.
If the line has a lot of noise, the modem is going to have to re-transmit a lot of data, so you will get lowers speeds.
If you have a broader band of frequencies to work with you will be more likely to find a frequency with less interference and you will have a bigger pipe to try to push your data through.
Think of a water pipe with obstructions. If you have a tiny pipe with a rock in it you won't get much water through. If you have a bunch of those water pipes with rocks in them you still won't get much through, but you will get more than before. Now think of each of those pipes as 1 khz of bandwidth....if you double the number of pipes you increase the amount of available throughput by a similar (Not necessarily equal) amount....However, There are other factors that can also effect it, such as line attenuation and filters. In summary, you have made an assumption that since you don't get 56k out of your modem, you are not using all your available frequencies, which is not necessarily correct....you may just have interference or attenuation....both of which would be somewhat remedied by more available frequencies.

Re:Yes, that's true

[petermgreen]

See here [vonl.com] for more explanation. They are a necessary evil on phone lines, unless you complerely re-engineer the line for higher frequencies.
That may be though the impression I got from other sources is that the telcos often overdid it on the loading coils.

You would certainly want to get rid of them if moving the line to a modern all digital soloution. The extra bandwidth would be more usefull than a slight performance improvement for parts of the voice band

Modern 56k modems have trouble even connecting at 56k on rural phone lines, simply because the lines suck.
56K modems tend to fall a fair way short of 56K even on good phone lines which can easilly support several megabits per second of DSL.

56K modems suck because the device at the other end is not a modem it is a voice digitiser/undigitiser running at 8khz with 7 usable bits.

What that means is that in order to get even close to 56K the modems behaviour has to be similar to that of the voice digitiser/undigitiser. And that means it can't really adapt to line conditions except by dropping further below the 56K hard limit.

With modern equipment on BOTH ENDS you can do much better. You can use all the bandwidth of the line rather than being artificially limited to 4khz and you can split the line into many narrow channels which solves a couple of problems (though it does unfortunately increase latency). That is how DSL gets way way more out of phone lines than anyone could have anticipated before the DSP revoloution.

Splitting the line into many narrow channels achives the following
1: it means that narrowband noise is not so much of a problem. The hardware can simply avoid using noisy channels. That means that bandwidth that would previously have been regarded as unusable can become usable.
2: it means reflections are much less of a problem because symbol periods can be longer while still achiving a good overall data rate.

The download on 56k modems is already digital without overhead, and is already at the shannon limit.
The signalling rate may be at the limit assuming the line really has a usable bandwidth of exactly 4khz (which I find highly unlikely) but signalling rate is only one part of the equation for data rate. Practically though you won't get more than that down a 4KHz channel because data rate is proportional to the logarithm of signal to noise ratio.

Isn't this what modems do?

[joshv]

Modems already use the voice frequency range. They max out at about 64 kbps - and I was under the impression that this was pretty much the theoretical maximum using the 0-4kHz band.

Now, the author seems to be talking about pulling in the 4-25kHz band as well, but given that many modems can't manage to connect at even 28.8k in rural areas (I have personal experience with this) - this shows that even the 0-4kHz range is being heavily attenuated and distorted - why does he thing the 4-25KHz band will be any better without some upgrade to the lines involved? And if you are going to upgrade the lines, why not go full DSL?

Re:Isn't this what modems do?

[mr_mischief]

DSL is inherently distance-limited. Wider ranges of frequencies means the same signal quality can give better data throughput.

It'd be digital in both directions on both ends instead of digital from the ISP to the CO then analog on your end for your downloads and analog from you to the CO then digital from the CO to the ISP for your uploads.

The packet delivery management of TCP/IP could be used instead of the error correction built into your grandmas's $4 Winmodem's driver.

That said, it still sounds like the idea has some holes in it.

Standard for consumer internet speeds?

[Ethan Allison]

         0-55Kbps: low-speed
       56-144Kbps: standard-speed, mobile web
      145-768Kbps: enhanced-speed, mobile internet
     769-2047Kbps: basic broadband, mobile high-speed
    2048-4999Kbps: [*] high-speed
   5000-14400Kbps: [*] super high-speed
  14401-51200Kbps: [*] advanced high-speed
  51200-99999Kbps: [*] ultra high-speed
     100-1000Mbps: [*] network-speed
    1000-9999Mbps: [*] super network-speed
  10000-99999Mbps: [*] advanced network-speed
      100-999Gbps: [*] ultra-speed
    1000-9999Gbps: [*] T-class
  10000-99999Gbps: [*] super T-class
      100-999Tbps: [*] ultra T-class
    1000-9999Tbps: [*] P-class
  10000-99999Tbps: [*] super P-class
etc.
[*] = insert "mobile" when applicable</tt>

Re:Standard for consumer internet speeds?

[Linker3000]

You forgot ludicrous speed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB7tc9pVvYg

Re:Standard for consumer internet speeds?

[Ethan Allison]

Not again!

Re:the problem

[benjamindees]

The problem has never been technological As someone who helped to rescue a small business from $10,000/month AT&T frame relay, only to watch them turn around and sign a similar deal with Southwestern Bell (now AT&T lol), I can say the problem is most assuredly dumbfuck "consumers" who have no understanding of the concept of monopoly.

g.723.1 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

g.723.1 sucks big time, and it does not use 20 kbit/s as stated in the summary (that's more g.723) but between 4 and 6 kbit/s, and the quality is horrible (mr roboto).

on the other hand g.729 is known for its vastly better quality and a bandwidth usage of about 8 kbit/s

BadAnalogyGuy?

[spazdor]

Is that you?

thanks!

[zogger]

thanks for the info! I'm on dialup, and between land line charge and ISP I am at 60 bucks + right now as it is. I need to look into this...