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FCC Preparing Transition To VoIP Telephone Network
mantis2009 writes "The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a request for public comment (PDF) on an upcoming transition from the decades-old circuit-based Public Switched Telephone Network to a new system run entirely with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. This is perhaps the most serious indication to date that the legacy telephone system will, in the near future, reach the end of its life. This public commenting phase represents a very early stage in what will undoubtedly be a very complex transition that makes this year's bumpy switch from analog to digital television look relatively easy."
The death of dial-up has been greatly exaggerated. No broadband available where I am in NY, within 50 miles of Syracuse.
Dave
In many countries, it is not uncommon to find namecards with information on both sides of the card. Typically it is English on one side and the local language on the other. This allows a single card to be useful just about anywhere in the world without putting undue strain on either the local partners or the foreign customers.
By flooding the networks with VoIP packets, we are in essence printing one-sided namecards. Instead of having two robust solutions, the American government again seems to want to force everyone into the same shoe size. Better systems will come about in time. The current switched system has served us for a very long time and most people are still using it.
The next step will not be VoIP over wires, but rather it will be some sort of wireless radio communication mechanism. The old wired system will remain for emergencies, but the vast majority of people will simply migrate to handheld personal communications devices. There just isn't a need for VoIP over wires at this point, at least not to the point that it needs to be mandated by the government.
Lots of long distance links are SDH, and an enormous number of equipment is using T1 or E1 in circuit mode.
The transition (I still don't understand why technically a transition is needed or even useful but apparently to some people everything looks like a nail when you have a hammer) won't happen anytime soon.
Is the FCC going to mandate the phone companies to provide battery backups for when the power goes out? And how about all those battery backups consuming massive unnecessary energy in the midst of an "energy crisis"?
By the time FCC gets around to rule making and enforcement about POTS, Google would have deployed a coast-to-coast Wi-Fi for free. It would still be called Beta though. All the telephone companies pumping voice through a pair of copper wires would go the way the companies that shipped freight over a pair iron rails. And the cell phone companies would be huddling in a corner, dazed, seeing stars wondering what hit them. They will just be joining others in the same corner newspapers, Rupert Murdoch, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
POTS is and has been stable and secure.
VOIP... not and never will be.
At this stage, we're about where the FCC was at in deciding what format DTV was going to be. We're around 1992 if we're comparing the VOIP timeline against the DTV timeline. It's gonna be a few years.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
...is that the user terminal (the phone) is totally passive - no power needed, it's a totally dumb terminal, and very robust (at least, if it's a Western Electric product!). The POTS system is the result of some careful design and decades of improvements to increase reliability. That's not to say that there aren't benefits to be had from VOIP, just that we should think carefully before deciding that everyone will be converted to VOIP.
Disclaimer: In addition to my nifty 2.4G multiple handset cordless phones with built-in caller ID and voicemail, I have two POTS phones which work fine when the power goes out.
I really think they're trying to change the mass of interlata rules, charges, and fees since it's always been a headache - not immediately put a digital device at the residential address. At least that's my assumption. Think instead of a 5ESS type switch in the wiring office / central offcie, you instead have new hardware that takes that copper pair and is just an FXS port -> VoIP.
VoIP, while an interesting and disruptive technology, is not quite ready for ALL voice applications. Some thoughts;
It is frequently easy to tell when you are speaking to someone using VoIP. Clipped high and low tones, often choppy like a bad cell call. Most businesses will not want their customers having that experience talking to them. Residential is fine - those customers are just looking for cheap, cheap, cheap. Many businesses are concerned with appearances, and a bad call experience can sour a sale in a competitive marketplace.
Many (most?) alarm companies cannot successfully run alarms (fire, elevator, burglar) over VoIP lines. Not sure if it's latency, compression or what, but I have heard this complaint MANY times from various security (alarm) company people. In some states, doing so is actually against the law.
911 routinng - have all the 911 PSAP routing issues been resolved with VoIP? This is a biggie that most people switching to VoIP don't consider.
Your Internet connection goes down, your voice is gone. One thing you can say about the PSTN is that it is pretty dependable. In all my years (I have some gray hair) it has been rare that I have trouble with a POTS line.
VoIP has its uses - I'm not denying that. But the landline network will not disappear overnight, this year, or even this decade.
In my lifetime (I'm 49), I have never picked up a telephone and not heard a dialtone.
Internet service is an entirely different story. Many times each year, I need to do some combination of computer reboots and power-cycles on my router and cable modem in order to restore service.
Since the 90s, I have seen my Internet service get slightly more reliable. But at the current rate of improvement, it will require many more decades before Internet service becomes as reliable as telephone service.
I will need to see VoIP's reliability equal to PSTN's before switching over to VoIP. I've never talked to anyone about this who doesn't agree. Who are these people who are willing to give up 100% reliability for flakiness and why does anyone think they will be a significant market force?
One POTS, only the connection from the CO to the home is analog. From there it is digital, which is a form of VOIP. It has been this way for many, many years. There are no technical barriers to fully digitizing voice communications, just ignorance and greed.
PLEASE FCC, come up with some sort of protocol for connecting an analog fax modem on a VoIP. I have a large client base of analog fax modems connected to some VoIP networks (a huge hospital, they won't use scan to email due to HIPPA restraints of security of email outside a private network). Over the years, I have come up with a batch of adjustment I have had to do, to get a V.34 fax modem to work on a VoIP network. Basically, you have to choke the fax modem down to 9600bps, which is silly, considering on a PSTN, you can get a V.34 modem to work at a proper 33.6k speed without too much difficulty. What's the use of upgrading an old 9600 fax to a "super G3" system, if you have to run it in 2nd gear all the time? And the manufacturers are no help, because the FCC never wrote a rule regarding connecting V.34 systems to a digital network. I understand why, they probably thought who in their right mind would want to tie up a phone line for 30 minutes to send a 20-30 page fax, when you can scan to email and send it in a flash, but, analog fax modems will be around a LONG time.
My compa y has VOIP an it see t have pro le wit cu out.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I wonder if their providers will apply the true "network neutrality" principles to whatever sip trunks they have serving them, or will the fcc traffic get priority, since they are the fcc and everything?
The VoIP that many of us are used to runs over the regular internet, and is subject to all the QoS and performance issues that entails. There are other options to VoIP besides hijacking your broadband connection - options that are especially important considering how many people still can't (or don't want to) get broadband service. For a large-scale, carrier grade deployment of VoIP to be successful, it must provide the voice quality, reliability, and security of the existing network. This is most easily accomplished by creating a PRIVATE IP network similar to the circuit switched network in use today. The difference is that the circuit-switching guts of the network are replaced with packet-based infrastructure. What this means for the network is that the current system of circuit-based loop carrier systems (with T1 or SONET backhaul), and digital circuit switches, are replaced with VoIP loop carrier systems (with GigE backhaul), and soft switches. The POTS interface to the customer is unchanged - they still draw power from the network. This type of transformation is no different from the conversion from analog to digital switches that took place in the 70's, 80's and 90's.
Show this to your networking folks: QoS
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
They'd better not be planning on using Skype over Comcast cable internet...
Right now, when internet goes down, even in corporate settings, it can take up to a freakin WEEK to get it back.. and that's just in every-day non-disaster type situations.
If the phone service goes out (that's a BIG if, i've only seen it happen 3 times in my entire life) it's never down for more than 3 hours.
Until they bring internet up to this level of reliability, I don't want to see it behind the one device in my whole house which is capable of summoning paramedics.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
POTS works over low voltage DC. As I recall, it's somewhere in the vicinity of 48 volts, but don't quote me on that. It's entirely feasible to have a cheap, dedicated VOIP chip that runs on 48 volts and draws perhaps 50 to 100 miliamps of current - well within the normal range of today's POTS power draw.
VOIP doesn't have to be VOInternet. They coul just as easily have a dedicated IP network for telephony, then run something like PPPOÈ or VPN to gateway to the public Internet and do away with separate SL MODEMs.
You'd still probably need a long distance plan, even though the point of one is technically idiotic.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You can throw away your dial-up credit card machines then. We are starting to see telcos switch to SIP trunking. Credit Card machines are very sensitive, even more so than fax, which causes them to flake out across a SIP trunk. We already can't sell dial-up terminals to people using DSL or VoIP (Vonage, Time Warner) because the terminals just can't handle it.
This move ensures the FCC keeps itself well-funded despite the technology moving well beyond the bureaucracy's purpose. VoIP was desirable in part because it was free of FCC oversight/abuse; threatened with being marginalized into oblivion (at least regarding phone service), the FCC now has a plan to assert control over such growing liberties.
Kinda like the "rural electrification project" which, despite having succeeded in its goal and thus eliminated its purpose for existence, now receives greater funding than ever.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
For all intensive purposes, this has already happened in Canada. Despite what Bell Canada would have you believe, they are 100% VOIP. And where Bell is going to try and take over Telus [Not the other way around as people think], they most likely are 100% VOIP as well. Cable companies are "Digital" so, they are VOIP too...
Your tele ho y dep rtme t s cks
because we use it (large value call centre) and not only did it free up our tons of time chasing bugs in a 20 year old analog/digital PBX setup. (crossconnect panel, miles of crossconnect wire in a 10 foot space), but the setup is fast and easier, phones are more feature rich, sound quality is better, and infrastucture is much easier to expand.. I can connect from home with a SIP client and talk to my employees... and lots more funky stuff that i dont have time to mention at the moment.
go to your telecom department, and teach them what a VLAN is, and what QOS is... Don't blame the car becuase you don't know how to drive it.
If I could mod you up, I'd crank you to 11.
But not only the reliability problems, you've still got problems with:
Fax
Alarm systems
Medic alert bracelet thingies
TiVo modems.
Credit card machines
SOME VOIP can do it, but reliably? Bet-your-life-on-it reliably? Don't think so.
I have Vonage service and have an alarm system with a modem and it works fine. Vonage in fact supports up to 56K modems AFAIK.
This isn't about getting rid of your phone and giving you a software phone, it's about ripping out the core of the phone network and it's fundamentally circuit switched systems, and replacing them with IP based packet switched systems.
You'll still be able to plug a plain old telephone into the socket and make a call.
This is the same idea as British Telecom's current 21st Century Network project. When your line terminates at the exchange, it no longer connects to a circuit switched system, but to a packet switched network. For the end user, nothing much changes.
This is a massive project but most of us end users will see and hear few differences. In theory it should allow the phone companies to do more interesting things with their networks, and may help improve broadband coverage/speed (although that remains to be seen). It massively simplifies their infrastructure by carrying all traffic over a single packet switched network, rather than multiple circuit switched systems.
Paul Leader
I wonder what bit rate we can push through the copper at most houses in rural America? My father-in-law's old house used to get very bad static on the line when it rained, but voice was still audible. Would this VOIP be capable of service, or does that house require new wiring? Anything requiring a lot of people to change the wires in their walls is going to face some serious problems. I bet new hardware in the field could get 64kbit or maybe 128kbit digital without much problem. If you're not worried about a computer talking on the line at the same time, that is way more than sufficient. Since the FCC solicitation seems to suggest they're using this as a way to force wider broadband deployment, 256kbit might be the minimum for a connection intended to share with a computer, although I'd hesitate to call that "broadband".
I bet we could help with the reliability of VOIP by putting cheap NiMH batteries in each VOIP device (one per house, at the pedestal? or each device needs its own?). Enough capacity to last a few hours on standby and maybe 15 or 20 minutes of talk time would cover emergencies.
I think it would be very interesting to be on a technical committee to write a new standard to cover bidirectional communication on low quality twisted pair. There would be interesting coupling challenges with using one wire for send and the other for receive, but using a current sense methodology on a differential signal has its own ugliness too. It would be cheating to take turns every 10-100ms using a training sequence, but there would be power and signal benefits to weigh against the increase in latency and cut in available bandwidth (and if each device gets its own CODEC, having more than 3 people on the phone may have ludicrous latencies).
Assuming that this is not VoIP to the home, but rather everything between the last miles, there's still some transitioning to be done. Mainly anything that is data over the phone, e.g. fax machines, alarm systems, and dial up networking. This requires some physical and procedural upgrades.
There are far too many legal and medical industries that won't accept a scan/pdf over email and insist on a fax for some simple forms. Heck, even Ameritrade asked me to fax in a form or to mail it in, you'd think they could setup a web page for updating personal data.
All of the major alarm companies that offer support over an IP line have a VoIP box to continue working with the older hardware. Switching to IP would allow 2 way communication, greater scalability, lower hardware costs, etc, but I've yet to see one do this.
Dial up networking is still used by not just the rural areas, but also things like credit card transactions that are performed over the stand alone readers.
All of these will need to be transitioned off of voice technology or updated to work reliably over a VoIP based connection. Personally I'll be happy to see the death of the fax machine and an upgrade of alarm systems, but I think we are stuck with some devices for rural locations.
Are you implying the network is analog to the core? Is this because of the funding of the `foreign policies`?
You forgot how the politicians legally guaranteed their own ability to spam our phones with phone calls, and there is no way for end-users to voluntarily choose to block political telephone calls. Politicians exempted themselves from the Do Not Call list.
People act as if this were something new. The long distance carriers have been using VoIP technology since the mid 90s. Almost all LD calls over the last 5-8 years use IP at some point. However, I'm pretty confident that POTS will outlive me and I'm 31.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The telephone was invented in 1876, making it 133 years old. So telephone technology was 84 years old when you were born. ARPANET first came online in 1969. I bet by 2053 (when the internet turns 84) plenty of people will be saying "I've never gotten in my flying car and not had immediate access to the internet." or some other nonsense.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
I used to be the sysadmin for a public high school with about 170 phones and 40 trunk lines. The phone system: a Meridian Option 11C, every single phone line home-run into one room in the basement.
Pain in the ass to manage? Not if it's well documented. There were a few reasons to love it:
- Public schools tend to survive on peanuts, especially in IT and infrastructure. The building LAN was all fiber, installed in 1994 when it was the "hot thing", so unless it was re-wired with Cat 5e, you could forget about PoE. The phone wiring installed in 1994 was Cat 3, with most runs exceeding 100 m, so that was useless for Ethernet too.
- Here's the biggie: the PBX in the basement had a nice, heavy UPS and was on the generator circuit; rock-solid reliability. Even in brand-new and renovated school facilities, the LAN racks weren't on the generator circuit--and sure as hell didn't have UPSs.
- For that matter, in said new and renovated buildings, I wound up having to deploy 5-port switches all over the place for rooms with more equipment than ports. Yes, I know you can get PoE switches, but they're useless in a power failure.
In the name of safety, the intercom and PBX absolutely had to keep running through a power failure. The Intercom was a refrigerator-sized cabinet with a giant amplifier and every speaker home-run into it, plugged into a generator-served outlet--again, very reliable. No UPS needed there, since the intercom booted in seconds--the PBX needed a UPS since Meridian Mail took 20 minutes to boot.
The point of this move by the FCC is to respond to a mandate from the Congress of the United States to move from an obsolete model of providing universal dial tone on the POTS network to provide universal broadband access. The FCC is asking for comment for their proposal that once universal broadband access is delivered, would we really need POTS lines for anything other than Neo and Morpheus to come and visit us? Or should they provide two expensive subsidized networks? Should rural network subscribers (such as myself) have TWO expensive subsidized networks, a subsidized broadband access and a subsidized POTS access? Or could the broadband access be delivered in such a way that the services we enjoy with POTS (911 calls, calls to grandma, faxes, ability to tunnel through the POTS network to other network providers) be effectively delivered with a standardized national broadband infrastructure?
Actually, I think this could be a problem for VOIP. With POTS, you have the line to your house and the phone. Very few places for the consumer to screw it up.
For the two companies I have been in that had VOIP (including the current one) the VOIP relies on locally installed servers and were constantly needing tweaks by the provider. Often, they needed us go to the server room and reboot their server.
So VOIP is great, with great features, etc. But not everyone has the resources of a large call center to dial it in and maintain it.
Ha! I can see someone talking to their grandma about VLAN and QOS.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Same arguments over and over about how great POTS is.... VOIP is fun and flexible. Sure it has disadvantages but these are being worked on. It also has some huge advantages which make it more than a worthwhile effort. I thought this was a site for forward thinking technology minded people. When I see comments like the ones on this article it makes me wonder.
I'm curious what people have to say about how the Telcos will fare with such a move. In my limited understanding that would mean increased competition and thus faster errosion of their customer base, though they still have to maintain the extensive infrastructure.
IPv6 and enforcement against ISPs who chose to prevent users from running their own services.
Data transmission is not subject to common carrier, and it is looking like even if something called "net neutrality" does go through, it will have lots of fun lawyerisms in it like "reasonable". If we replace POTS with VOIP, are we going to carry common carrier over, or will the ISPs and backbones be allowed to "reasonably" manage your telephone calls?
IMO, bring common carrier over to data networks. I like it because it uses a natural stick: Want to engage in biased gatekeeping? Fine, but you are liable for what travels on your network. Don't want to be liable? Fine, but you can't engage in biased gatekeeping. Yes, you can charge more for more pipe, but you can only engage in bias if you accept legal liability for everything you carry. Simple.
I think it fundamentally makes sense too. Essentially what it is saying is: If you think you are smart enough to distinguish content that is healthy for your network from that which is not, you had better be able to demonstrate that you really believe in your ability to distinguish content. That you believe it strongly enough that you are willing to take legal responsibility if you fail to distinguish content that is legal from that which is not. Until you truly believe that you can distinguish legal from illegal, you cannot be trusted with inhibiting free speech based on your supposed ability to distinguish network-unhealthy from network-healthy.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Broadband is not yet everywhere and certainly not cheap. If they focus on that then VoIP will just happen on it's own.
... throw out the 99.999% uptime clause then as no battery backup system currently used for end-users would've survived the great black in the NE. I only had phone service since I had a very old touch tone phone that needed no external power other than that provided by the phone system.
I think some of the other people posting here hit on the most likely scenario .... If VoIP ever becomes the "standard" for voice telephony, it's highly improbable they'd just run it over your ISP of choice, as you do with VoIP today.
Part of the "secret" to achieving rock solid reliability is to control the entire infrastructure the technology runs on. AT&T does that now with POTS, and they won't want to give a big part of that up if things transition over to VoIP.
So what would probably happen is, they'd provide you with VoIP that only happens on the "back end", in their central offices. You'd use the same phones and it would give the appearance of being the plain old telephone service you've had all along. They wouldn't expect you to maintain a "terminal adapter" that has to be properly configured and piggybacked off of your router or cable/DSL/satellite modem or what-not.
With this arrangement, they'd take care of having redundant Internet connections to/from their central offices, and ensure that your calls still go through, regardless of what happens to your own personal Internet broadband connection at home.
Circut switched does not *LAG* or produce annoying artifacts when there is not enough bandwidth.
They work when the power goes out. I've been through multiple hurricans where the lights were out for over a week with down trees resting on power lines right in front of the house. Never once lost dialtone or the ability to make calls.
You can have as many phones as you want share and participate in a single line. VoIP is like cable companies requiring you to buy boxes for each TV.
They don't use god aweful codecs which are laggy or sound like crap in an effort to save bandwidth.
The telco network is trust worthy enough for normal communications. VoIP in terms of broadband or cringe Internet routed traffic essentially clobbers trust without requiring everyone to deploy end to end crypto key/management which is a pain and will undoubetly attract draconian LEA inspired legislation.
Why break something that isn't broke? No telcom core network is circut switched anymore and for gods sake the telecoms are responsible for transport of most Internet traffic so its not like we're talking stone-aged technology (up to the last mile anyway)
VOIP is a race to the bottom, especially for the millions of people on DSL connections. Vonage and their ilk are squeezing the profit out of the phone system while still relying on the phone system for making the connections. Without paying for it.
The end result of this is when the subscriber base falls below some minimum point the physical plant is simply going to be unmaintained. Nobody left to work on it and fix stuff. This might last for a couple of years, but once they stop maintenance it is pretty much over. Nobody is going to step in and take over the physical plant, even by government mandate. There is no profit in it at that point and would just be pointless to continue.
DSL becomes a thing of the past overnight. Vonage and their ilk are pretty much left out in the cold, because they rely on the phone network to operate - you didn't think they set up an independent network did you? Do you believe Vonage and similar companies are paying enough to the existing telco folk to maintain the physical plant and the reason the "standard" telco rates are higher is simply because they are greedy?
VOIP companies are paying state-mandated rates for connections which were plucked out of some state legislator's behind. The relevance of these rates to what real costs are is nonexistent. But today there are still enough PSTN subscribers to keep things going. Not for much longer.
Who are these people who are willing to give up 100% reliability for flakiness
The people who got rid of their land lines and went solely to cellular?
Can't get much flakier than that!
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Many people can't afford all this new stuff. They just do without. The USA is about to be further polarized into haves and have-nots. The shift to digital TV caused lots of old TVs to be tossed. Many people no longer have TV in their homes, if they still have homes.
The shift to VoIP from circuit based telephony will make us even more vulnerable to power outages. After a major hurricane or ice storm, old timey telephones are one of the few things that work. To maintain service, everyone will have to have a damn generator.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Unlike the Digital Television Transition, VOIP based telephony can be done in pieces, there is no need to force a consumer to upgrade, nor does there need to be a concrete deadline as there is no "future use" like there was with the freed TV bandwidth.
Also, the technology is well understood and requires little investment in R&D for anyone migrating to it... while I can only imagine the demands put on broadcaster's engineers during the digital transition. Not to mention that many (most?) businesses have stopped buying traditional switches in favor of VOIP.
Saying this will be MORE difficult than the Digital Television Transition is like saying it was difficult to transition from horse and buggy to the automobile. Sure, the transition took time, and the infrastructure had to be upgraded to allow the automobile's advantages to really shine, but it didn't need to happen overnight as the two technologies could co-exist quite nicely.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
This is a replacement for POTS using VoIP, not Voice over INTERNET. Further, the calls will terminate at your local NOC directly, not go out multiple hops through your firewall, then your ISP, then their external connection, then the the backbone, then to a phone company's network, possibly a 3rd party carrier depending on where your ISP's headend is, and finally to your local NOC to place a local call....
The SIP connections would have nothing to do with your internet connection, and would work in most cases even if you lost that connection (as it would optionall be a seperate connection) Of cource low cost central providers like Vonage would still operate, but the call quality and reliability would be designed like a business class VoIP network, not like a centrex style hosted solution which has questionable quality and reliability.
Keep in mind, to replace POTS, the government and emergency services require at least as reliable of a system in emergencies. The only thing that should stop calls are massive power outages (affecting multiple square miles or more), or actual down lines. Such systems do exist, and SIP terminals cost about $100 each today.
this is also a 15-25 year plan, not something they'll slap in over a few years. The DTV transition started being discussed in 1988 and became an actionable task in 1992, with a formal plan in 1996, finally completed 13 years later... This process will take longer...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
For shits sake, we need a READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE moderation point, -5. -10 !
Based on personal experiences in Natural/Otherwise disasters, the first thing to go is cell phone networks; very close runner-up: Cable TV / Broadband; usually last to go: POTS with its separate power and cabling system.
This could be an interesting fight.
Technically, a switch to VoIP (whatever that really is) could be a good thing for both the customer and telco. But currently, digital telephone service, as provided by cable companies, over telco fiber to the home systems, or wireless broadband providers falls into a different regulatory regime than POTS. And I anticipate that the sellers of these services will fight to keep it that way.
In reality, your voice telephone service is becoming more digital as time goes by. Although the addressing and packet switching functions are separate from the IP networking, they often travel over the same infrastructure (fiber, pipes, tubes, whatever) and capacity is dynamically allocated between the two functions by the operators as needed. The transition to the copper loop typically occurs at the central office, but sometimes in a cabinet in your neighborhood. In the near future, in areas served by fiber to the home, its conceivable that your copper loop will terminate inside the little box (the NID) on the side of your house and, from that point on, travel right along with broadband, digital TV and telephone, etc.
What will keep all of this from happening is the legal status that POTS and "digital" services have. Actual digital telephone service (VoIP from Skype, Vonnage, FiOS telephone service, etc.) are subject to different and fewer regulations than copper loops. And the big players in this business will fight to keep it this way. In my neighborhood Verizon has just finished installing a FiOS system. And they are peppering everyone with adverts to switch to their new digital telephone service (and TV and broadband in the bundle). They are also planning on selling off their POTS infrastructure to a local telephone company. Once they are out of the POTS business, issues like universal service, long distance and regulated rates no longer apply to them. This is their (4) ???? just before (5) Profit!.
If the FCC steps in and begins applying standards of reliability, universal access and others to broadband similar to what POTS has today, most of the infrastructure would switch to digital technology quite rapidly, with the holdouts for the copper loop service transitioned to an interface at the curb. But that will never happen so long as the digital 'last mile' remains unregulated. No company (either the fiber operator or some third party purchasing wholesale digital access) could provide regulated service on unregulated infrastructure.
Have gnu, will travel.
who are glassy eyes and bated breath, let me clarify this article: FCC is preparing to transition to a proprietary, vendor endorsed and ma bell developed network of deep packet inspecting, transfer throttling, backdoor laden, expensive and locked-in protocols that bear not the slightest resemblance to, yet insist they are, VoIP as we know it today.
oh but how can i be so certain?....turn on your HDMI television.
we're shuffling deck-chairs here folks. if im right, youll continue to see the same players. if im wrong, you might hear a few words from companies like digium, who for 2-3 years now have done nothing but shown the world they are the fastest wakeup call for an industry that hasn't changed in 80 years.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The people giving this (PSTN) up for flakiness are the same as the people giving up landlines altogether for cellphones. The day is coming, the technology is here. The will to implement it to the final mile is all that is missing. No one is saying that your new VoIP line can't be powered from the CO on a circuit separate from your normal broadband. Just that once the broadband is in place (fiber or whatever), the sky is the limit.
The people giving this (PSTN) up for flakiness are the same as the people giving up landlines altogether for cellphones.
That's completely different. By going to cellphones, they got mobility.
My question was about changing a land line from PSTN to VoIP. Is there anybody who wants the huge degradation of reliability that will result? Why?
The DTV transition started being discussed in 1988 and became an actionable task in 1992, with a formal plan in 1996, finally completed 13 years later... This process will take longer...
From your lips to God's ears. I work at a company that does a LOT of VOIP for the customers and they do not love the idea of power cycling/rebooting CPE every dang time the voice goes down. I will never get another VOIP service if it resembles what is currently available.
... the Federal Agency in charge of pipe dreams?
First the failed auction of spectrum to try to convince companies that already have national networks, to build another one.
Now the desire to drop a well-engineered system for one that's barely manageable and doesn't cover where the original does.
Are there any real engineers left at the FCC who have any say in this silliness? Any that the FCC Commissioners actually listen to?
+++OK ATH
I think the original poster failed to recognize that this is not about getting a Vonage MTA or Comcast VoIP in every house. It is about converting the technology in the Central Offices (CO) of legacy phone systems to VoIP for efficiency. The end user will probably not notice any change when s/he picks up the same phone at the end of a copper line. It is just that the call will become a digital IP packed in the CO and sent through a private IP network to its destination rather than over the old PSTN. This is probably the best version of VoIP. Imagine not having to reset your MTA or worry about your Internet connection when you want to make a call! Maybe Ma Bell can even lower the prices if she is using VoIP to be competitive with Vonage and others.
Ask everyone who switched to Vonage.
Power cycling VoIP? We do that all the time. Our N+1 infrastructure is not dependent on spinning disks for dialtones like Avaya or Cisco's system and is based on VXWorks (a realtime OS like pace makers and ABS brakes). Any single box can be taken out and calls are not even interrupted (provided there are free channels in the remaining infrastrucutre).
Hosted services are an issue when you reboot routers, non-redundant switches, etc, but this also does NOT apply to local telco versions of VoIP that would run on your existing PoTS lines like DSL, and not simpy over whatever internet connection you might choose to use which would be far less reliable. The phones will be native SIP devices on their network, and not require routers to be used (it;s baked in).
Cervices like Centrex rely on sending call data halfway across the country, then back again to make a local call, and many inexpensive commercial VIP systems rely both on spinning disk and microsoft OSes (BAD ideas both), and also rely on customers actually buying a fully redundant architecture (which they rarely do since most systems require a doubling of infrastrcuture and calls are still dropped if a switch goes down).
Check out ShoreTel, currently they're the provider we have the best services with. Cisco is god awful. Avaya is only reasonable if you buy into their 8500 series systems but it;s still baked by OS clusters which support dialtone and call tree systems...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.