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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.
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).
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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.
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.
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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).
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..
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?
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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.
Hell is other people's code.
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.
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.
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