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AT&T Readying For the End of Analog Landlines
nottheusualsuspect writes "AT&T, in response to a Notice of Inquiry released by the FCC to explore how to transition to a purely IP-based communications network, has declared that it's time to cut the cord. AT&T told the FCC that the death of landlines is a matter of when, not if, and asked that a firm deadline be set for pulling the plug. In the article, broadband internet and cellular access are considered to be available to everyone, though many Americans are still without decent internet access."
If I had a reliable VOIP service, I would be happy, but the most reliable thing is POTS. It's simple and it works. I know some people that are just VOIP or just cell phone, but neither is reliable enough to replace my dedicated line - I've tried it, twice, and its just not enough. Plus land lines are dirt cheap.
This is my sig.
The majority of older people I know are still on dial up, and for the most part have no idea what broadband is. There are going to be allot of confused people when this fianally goes down.
Aaah! The delicate irreality of think-tank fueled corporate musings that are mostly thinly veiled attempts at doing away with current regulation and obstacles to pure profitability
Lets stabilize the current cellular service you currently offer before assuming you can handle the onslaught of customers when the 'cord is cut'.
Speaking of handling loads, how are you doing with the barrage of iPhone users?
Before you all jump on me, I am a happy AT&T customer. I am just being bluntly honest.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Have you seen how much they charge for broadband access via wireless? Seeing as its already normal practice, its a nice way of forcing all those DSL customers to pay by the bite. Not to mention where ever the government mandates an update to necessary infrastructure, a huge hand out isn't far behind.
As far as AT&T is concerned though, I have them, and my calls drop at my house all the time in a city of around a million people. Screw them, course it's not just them, Verizon and Cricket both dropped calls at my house too. A-holes, all of em. Each one of them should change their slogan to "Providing the least amount of service possible to as many people as we can dupe for the most amount of money that the market will bear."
Now THATS a true company mission statement if ever I heard one...
This system has been built up over 100 years, the reality is they want to cut costs and force people to pay more for the same service they get for $29 a month.
decent internet access from many people because it is unprofitable for them to deliver, while still holding on to their granted monopolies in those areas. and then they even go to the extent of saying that they want to cut the landline cords. this basically means a lot of people will not only be without decent internet access, but also decent phone communication. unbelievable bastardiness.
yet, if, any government agency would, god forbid, to step in to eliminate this blatant slighting of citizens, those bastards all start up yelling 'competition' , 'hands off business', 'no government intervention', 'socialism'.
maybe socialism is indeed what is needed. for, apparently, what we have on our hands became an outright feudalism.
Read radical news here
All of the valid points/problems in the previous comments aside, at least this would finally put an end to fax machines, eh?
If AT&T wants the FCC to set a date to cut landlines, the FCC should force AT&T (and other corporations) to get the country's infrastructure up to snuff first. We can talk about dates after that.
I've used VOIP for years at both my business and my house - but we still have a landline. Just a few other roadblocks we ran into that weren't mentioned:
I love the flexibility I get with VOIP, I can work from anywhere with a decent internet connection and have all kinds of routing options through my Asterisk server, but we still have our incoming calls defaulting to a POTS line that runs into the Asterisk box. VOIP is constantly gaining ground but it's not there yet.
The problem is one of market share and costs. At some point, the costs of maintaining POTS will exceed the revenue produced by it. When that happens, or maybe a little before, POTS is dead. It really doesn't matter if not everyone has switched over or not, it will just be terminated.
That is the reason they want an announced-by-the-government date, as it would eliminate the carrier from being the bad guy.
The problem is today end-user vVOIP has no tariffs that require reliability. If Vonage service goes out, so what? Because of the number of hands it has to go through, it is unlikely we are going to see much mandated reliability for VOIP service anytime soon. This means that your "landline" phone is not going to have anywhere near the reliability that POTS service has today, and there will be no regulation that says it has to be.
All in all, this sounds like an interesting, but utterly useless idea. But unless something is done about pseudo-carriers like Vonage and Magic Jack POTS service is doomed.
start a conversation in the subject only to finish it in the body of the comment.
Knock it off.
In Katrina the power went out, the cell phone towers went down, the police multiplexing radio stopped working. The only communication people had when the water started coming into their homes were their analog phone lines. When everything else stopped working those remained operational. I still remember people calling in to a local radio station (from their landlines) to say that they were trapped in their attic and request help. Getting rid of analog phones is the worst idea I've ever heard and shows that that the people suggesting it have never seen the information black hole that results from a major disaster.
The FCC Public Notice (TFA refers to a Notice of Inquiry, but links to a Public Notice soliciting comments as to whether the FCC should issue of a Notice of Inquiry) isn't about cutting "landlines", its about replacing PSTN with IP as the implementation technology for telephone service.
But the concern you raise is valid even in that context; issues like usefulness in emergencies (both in terms of 911 service and resilience to power failures and other sources of outages) are things that would no doubt be significant areas if the FCC's investigation of such a transition moves forward -- which I fully expect it to.
The context of the FCC Public Notice is about the transition in the context of the Congressional mandate for the FCC to provide guidance on acheiving universal broadband access and utilization, and transitioning the phone system to IP so that the IP network is the single universal communication network that has to be maintained would make sense as a means of doing that.
Of course, that does raise the question of the kind of common carrier provisions that have applied to the providers of access to the PSTN network because it is the nation's principal universal communication system and frequently and naturally (because of the infrastructure requirements) the subject of regional monopolies, but not (though they are often the same providers) to the providers of IP access.
I can't really see AT&Ts reasoning. The fact is copper line wire pretty much runs everywhere, and by adding some DSL line extenders, much of this could be reused for providing DSL service everywhere for relatively little cost, compared to having to build new networks. So POTS infrastructure can be used to help bring broadband to rural areas relatively cheaply reusing much of the existing infrastructure. Wireless tends to be expensive and slow. due to the limited bandwidth, simply due to the fact everyone in an area is sharing that bandwidth. DSL could probably offer cheaper and faster service more reliably.
If that's how you choose to read AT&T's request... I see:
M. FCC chairman, landlines for consumers make us no money, yet we are legally required to supply them. Can you please make them optional for us? Oh and we'd like not to have to supply fiber-to-the-home at anything less than 10 times the price kthxbai.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In parts of Europe, voice phone service has been digital for a decade or more, using ISDN. ISDN voice is 64Kb/s uncompressed, so you get digital audio for the last mile in the same format as the rest of the phone network, and with no packetization lag. ISDN was supposed to take voice digital. Unfortunately, US phone companies took it as an opportunity to switch from flat-rate local call pricing to per-minute pricing, so it never went anywhere.
The US did ISDN power wrong - Europe provides power over ISDN, but the US does not. So ISDN home equipment remains powered up as long as the central office has power. (There's a cute trick with ISDN power - normally, it's one DC polarity, and you can draw a fair amount of power, enough to run answering machines, wireless base stations, and ISDN phone displays. In emergencies, the central office reverses the DC polarity and lowers the current limit. You can still make calls, but the accessories power down.) Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark are about 1/3 voice ISDN.
Here are some modern ISDN phones. They have nice features, like a running display of call cost and SMS capability. ISDN and DSL can be run on the same wire pair, so using ISDN for voice and DSL for data works.
Did AT&T ever provide a web page that allows you to monitor usage so that you could cut back if it looks like you are about to go over the limit?
If they haven't, then people need to start getting their local politicians to demand it.
ATT whines about people leaving for alternative services as if it were inevitable. I don't think it was.
VoIP gave people alternatives to being gouged $25 or $30 a month for just *dialtone*, and people chose. I have a T-Mobile prepaid cell phone and I pay less than that *per year* for the 'dialtone' component.
I'd pay $100/year for a wired circuit and dialtone, but that kind of money just isn't enough for the likes of AT&T.
A.
(who has been off the PSTN for a long, long time)
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
...as long as it is a fair trade, rural versus heavy urban. I'll take no broadband while living in the log cabin because it doesn't exist out in the sticks as long as the big cities, those folks living in a more "sensible" heavily packed high rise apartment means they get no food, because it doesn't exist there and has to be trucked in, which we will cut out then.
Fair enough? You keep your 50 meg down high speed connection, we keep the food, seems totally fair to me, no reason to push one product or the other one way or the other when it doesn't exist there, just let folks live with what they have locally and be done with it. No need for commie subsidized and shared roads, nor commie subsidized and shared wires on poles then, everyone is happy, no urbanite pays for anything from or for the rural areas, no rural folks pay for anything from or for the urban areas. Even steven, complete split there. You got yours, we got ours, no one pays for the other guy's life in any manner.
err..good luck man, hope you like those tasty electrons....
You're spot on DrJimbo. Lots of TVs went dark in my home town. Lots of TVs went to the dump too. So much for going green. The unemployed and underemployed can't afford fancy new TVs or the expensive services.
We have POTS and DSL. It has been very reliable. I like the small, independent DSL provider we have. Capable local techs answer the phone on the rare occasion we lose connectivity and it's usually the phone company's problem anyway, not the ISP.
POTS is such a simple mature technology, there's little they can screw up. There's also not much they can overcharge for.
It's no surprise AT&T wants to do away with this so they can gouge me for lousy service and a more restrictive TOS.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor