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Could PSTN Go Away By 2018?
An anonymous reader writes "If current rates hold, only 6% of the U.S. population will still be served by the public switched telephone network by the end of 2018. Tom Evslin reports that the 'Technical Advisory Council (TAC) to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommended last week that the FCC set a date certain for the sunset of the PSTN rather than let the service fade slowly into oblivion as it is doing now.' Since doing 'nothing' isn't really possible, he suggests: (possibly) end(ing) the Universal Service Fund subsidies, ensuring PSTN-dependent services like E911 work on new technologies, and assuring that everyone who now has PSTN service has access to either a broadband or cellular communication alternative."
As someone who's programmed PSTN, it's really not needed anymore. It's so inefficient it's not funny. Both ISDN & PSTN are so archaic now that there's no logical way to justify keeping these technologies going. It's why I don't understand opposition to the NBN here in Australia.
Real business is done over loop start signaling
and assuring that everyone who now has PSTN service has access to either a broadband or cellular communication alternative.
I'd rather they work on making sure we have multiple broadband and communication options. I don't like the words "a" and "or" being used here.
Not that the PSTN was much better in that regard but here we have a chance to do it right.
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The actual PSTN might not be needed . . . but the copper to the end user is required for most broadband users. If PSTN goes who will be responsible for maintaining this.
Freely admit I don't understand most of this, but, doesn't mobile phone traffic (once it gets to a tower that is) get transferred to the PSTN?
Here's a potentially stupid question.
My family's gone cellular; we only have a landline for DSL. Last night we had a power outage in my part of Philadelphia. Not too bad, perhaps 20 minutes or so, but the outage apparently also took out the cell my phone connects to. As I recall, the PSTN works even if the rest of the grid is down. So what happens if, during an outage that also eliminates cellular connectivity, someone has, say, a medical emergency? With wireline redundancy on a separate system, I can call 911 and get an ambulance to my location in a hurry. Without it, I'm SOL.
The question, therefore, is: How do we mitigate the risk that some related service interruption leaves us completely disconnected at a moment of crisis?
You know, perhaps it's just my years of hanging out on slashdot, and the age of the meme, but instead of being shocked and repulsed, I got nostalgic.
I happen to like and trust PSTN. It just works. Always has. And it is simple. Sometimes simple is good.
For those comparing this to the switch to digital TV - yeah, I hear you but you know what? The promise of digital TV was over-sold. The picture may be great *most of the time* (not going to discuss the programming - crap, alway was/is/will be - see "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander) but it isn't reliable either. My beautiful HD tv breaks up as often, if not more, than the analog signal I used to receive.
I don't have any confidence in cell or IP service. There are too many ways to make it not work for me to feel comfortable - especially on a "dark and stormy night"...
Luddit? Maybe. I've been an IT manager for over 20 years, use all the toys at work, but still don't trust them. Sometimes simple is good.
Nice link to have!
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Today the government requires VOIP providers to warn people about the unreliability of 911 access by any means other than copper. Now the government wants to take away the copper since it is obsolete. What??
Doing this by 2018 is pretty much impossible. There's still huge chunks of land without BB service or even decent cell phone coverage.
I totally agree with you; you nailed it. It is a tried-and-true, proven technology. One of the first casualties of major events, such as storms, floods, etc is the cellular network! Unless the wires, themselves, get damaged, Ol' Ma Bell still works. Power goes out, and stays out for a week? Ma Bell's phone still works.
Willie...
I don't know about the US, but with the completion of the NBN in Australia the PSTN will be history here.
History means all copper land lines gone and all the analogue gear the copper is connected to in the 1200 exchanges becomes land fill, along with all the ISDN based switch gear. The 1200 exchanges will be reduced to 120 point of interconnects. We are talking scorched earth here.
The only thing left will be the analogue phones in the house. They connect to SIP ATA's, so by the time the voice leaves the premises it will already be IP, switched by internet routers, being transmitted in ethernet frames over fibre or fixed wireless. Our resident teloc's will all be become SIP providers.
It might be someone's theory the analogue PSTN will disappear in a decade or so in the US. In Australia govenment lawyers crafted iron clad agreements, the contracts are signed, the opposition has admitted defeat, and the money is committed. They are digging up the ground now. The PSTN's death here is almost a certainty.
I live in a small town in rural Illinois. I have cell, but service stinks in town due to being close to a boundary between two different providers (the small family owned one goes nutsy whenever the big company signal hits their turf). There is only one provider that has good service in my town. I have a phone through the cable company, which sounds good and has a lot of features, but has an unacceptable amount of down time (we have some medical problems that make it so that we need something reliable). What is left, PSTN through the phone company. The only time we have lost access, it was only long distance when a contractor cut a fiber line. Until broadband reliability is in the many 9's category like PSTN, I want to keep it.The entirety of the US is not big cities, there is a lot of middle of nowhere with a decent amount of population also, and, along with that, unreliable wireless and broadband infrastructure.
Im no expert, but every time the topic came up in a networking lecture the "simplicity" of PSTN compared to its more modern counterparts was the explanation why the tech is still widely used
I do not like cell phones. They are devilish devices that encourage the stupid to be even more stupid behind the wheel of a car. They are possibly the worst invention thrust upon mankind. That said, I do own a pay-as-you-go cell phone for cases of road-side assistance. I spend about $20 a year for it. The mobile phone plans in the USA are monstrosities. They are convoluted and expensive. I keep my old telephone because it works, even when the power goes out. When the hurricane blew through Ohio and places lost power for days and weeks, I still had phone service while my neighbor's cell phones died and the local cell towers lost power. My big old phone has excellent voice quality, a big old speaker in the handset to hear the caller.
I will not go quietly. You will not take my phone service.
The broadband quality in my rural area sucks, big time. I can barely stream Netflix movies, let alone consider making phone calls with it.
Bearded Dragon
Is it just me or does the graph do a steep and then gentle curve in the actuals and then take a linear nose dive in his projections? I'm not a math genius but that totally looks like somebody making up their own agendas and skewing the evidence to support it.
I telecommute full time as do almost all of my co-workers. PSTN is a requirement primarily because of the audio quality on skype/magicjack/cellular is not as good as a good ol' land line. I know some of you skype fanboys are going to cry "yes it does" but I assure you that you are mistaken. We've got several folks on the team that use it and it is consistently a problem.
There may be great business class solutions along the lines of getting a T1 or better line and setting up some kind of service across a direct connect, but I don't see that replacing pstn either. Cell phones are great, and voip is OK in a pinch but neither are "up to snuff" in my opinion.
"If current rates hold, only 6% of the U.S. population will still be served by the public switched telephone network by the end of 2018.
(Disclaimer: I work for a landline company)
You are assuming that 'everyone' wants this, including retirees, people in rural areas, people who just don't need broadband and know it. You assume that the cellular/VoIP offerings will be as robust as the PSTN. You also assume that, if the landline business is 'dissolved', these other networks can take over the load.
Do you know who connects those cell towers? Those towers don't talk to each other wirelessly, they use terrestrial copper/fiber. If you sunset the network that keeps the copper/fiber infrastructure in reasonably good shape, the economics of maintaining the cellular network change, driving up costs significantly.
And please, don't maintain that there is quality parity between these types of services/networks: I have had so many conversations with business owners who tried using VoIP-based services for their dialtone and came running back to the PSTN because their customers complained about voice quality and dropped calls. Also note that while many government agencies have adopted VoIP internally, they recognize that they must have a reliable network to serve the public, especially for emergency services, and thus the vast majority stick with the PSTN for dialtone.
The PSTN and the Internet are both great networks, but they were built on different premises and with different (internal) priorities. One is really good at low-latency communications, one is very good at network survivability.
I'm not a Luddite suggesting that we throw away new technologies, but I'm also not some knee-jerk hype-meister of What's Hot Now. Both networks have their place and will coexist for many years to come.
Great idea! Let's put all of our telephone traffic onto the Internet where there is no guaranteed quality of service. No, that's a terrible idea. The best effort paradigm of the Internet doesn't work for all applications and that especially goes for telephone type services.
I have no plans to do away with my PSTN service.
1) I like having a phone in most every room instead of having to always carry one around
2) I get a LOT better international calling rate with my PSTN provider than their cell phone international rates, even with the same carrier
3) My DSL broadband line uses the same wiring. It is still going to have to be maintained even if the PSTN goes away
4) Ever try to make a call with a cell in a regional emergency such as an earthquake, tornado, etc? No cells available. The PSTN lines get full too at such times, but not usually to the extent that the cells do. Local weather events can disrupt cell coverage. Once during a hurricane I lost electricity for 2 days, yet never lost my telephone signal.
5) Quality. In nearly 40 years of phone service, I can't remember a single dropped call, where that is a weekly occurrence on my work cell phone. While I have had some occasional bleedover and humming at times on my regular phone, the quality of the sound is still a lot better than my cell.
So, they want to shut down the PSTN in favor of cellular service?
What the FUCK do these dimwit politicians think is the mechanism that actually transmits their cellular call after it leaves the NSS? Magic and unicorn farts?? Or are they just in bed with the broadband/cable television companies who want to see even more critical consumer data pushed across their cheap last mile infrastructure so they can append it to people's data caps?
"Oh, you're being robbed and need to call out to 911? Sorry, but you have exceeded your monthly data cap and can't do that."
I live in Tokyo. When the Great Sendai Earthquake hit, everybody decided to call home simultaneously.
The phone network was, for all intents and purposes, crashed for two days. We have ISDN at the office, POTS at home and cell phones. None of them worked.
Our internet connection kept chugging along. I could call the US over VOIP but couldn't make a phone call inside of Japan. We run our own e-mail server so that kept going, though the ones run by the big ISPs overloaded.
That's fine, but first the wireless and broadband carriers must be made common carriers like they are over telephone. That is one of the biggest differences between the systems. Telephone companies are not permitted to delay, degrade, alter, or record telephone conversations or modem signals. But no such protections exist over broadband or wireless. They have no requirements for call quality, nothing stops them from inserted advertisements or charging you differently depending on who you call.
Those same protections need to apply to other services, in addition to deregulating them so we have choices.
Could PSTN Go Away By 2018?
I read that as "Could the PSN go away by 2018...". I was thinking: "Only if the script kiddies hit puberty!"
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Good point, but that's not all. Cell-phone connections are poor, as becomes painfully evident when you try to talk with people with thick accents. That poor quality effectively impairs your hearing, and can make it hard for people with mild hearing impairments to carry on conversations. I'm on the phone a lot, and do a lot of interviews on the phone, so I always use my land line and only call cell phones reluctantly. Often when I do call a cell., the voice quality is poor enough that we eventually switch to a landline. The bottom line is that cell connections are not good enough for many purposes, especially for many people who have mild hearing impairments but can use the PSTN. Can you say handicap access??
Oh, you laugh, but there's actually a lot of old communications equipment out there using 2400 baud modems to communicate. One variant of the product that I make is still using them! On a practical level, it's at least an order of magnitude more reliable than an ethernet product. There's no firewall, the CO is battery backed up, and no configuration other than a phone number. Ethernet, by comparison, goes off line frequently through no fault of the product itself. People change DNS servers and the product doesn't get updated. Likewise for firewalls, routers, etc.
Why is doing nothing never an option for federal bureaucRATS? If the service was really that bad, wouldn't the last few customers just stop using it completely? I guess then the cronies wouldn't be able to stick their greasy paws into every aspect of our lives. I am convinced that these FCC jobs are nothing but expensive busywork for the buddies of our elected officials. Nothing they do makes any logical sense.
In fact, historically speaking, the English word "American" was used to mean inhabitants and features of the English colonies in North America, which later evolved into the United States of America. The part that became Canada was not under British control until after the Battle of Quebec (1757, I think), and even after that, it was quite usual to use "America" or "Americans" in its by-then historically-established sense as referring to the thirteen older British colonies, and to use the term "Canada" to refer to the recently-conquered formerly-French colonies.
Being a natural language issue, it's not perfect, since "America" also included former Dutch possessions, so you don't get a nice rule out of it, like "America == British-established colonies", since not all of the 13 American colonies were of British origin.
But, the point is, an educated British subject of, say, 1776, would have thought it odd to use the term "Americans" to refer even to English inhabitants of Canada.
Of course, it's a source of irritation to folks who think that natural language usage ought to flow from axioms, that same word which describes the American continent does not, historically speaking, also describe all of its inhabitants, but the simple fact is that, for most language users, usage flows from history rather than axioms, and so obvious inconsistencies persist.
Note also that the scope of this discussion is restricted to the *English* words "America" and "Americans". I have no expertise in other languages (I am an American, after all...), and don't pretend to know their preferences on this.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Any competitive provider will provide you with the appropriate CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) to connect your analog PBX to their VOIP/whatever network. Obviously traditional T1s are a very expensive way to get 24 phone lines but, for example, a cable provider (traditional TV cable co, the ones with a single coaxial cable to your premise) will bring a box that has a coax cable in and a standard 50-pin AMP telco connector out. They provision however many lines you need at the head end for your box, connect it to your phone system and away you go.
Then you have a lovely single point of failure when the one coax loses signal for some reason, you lose EVERYTHING. Whee!
I recently tried to explain this to the new owner of a restaurant/bar where I do all the IT work; why it was a TERRIBLY bad idea that he had fallen victim to the marketers from Shaw who told him "everything would stay exactly the way it was" when he signed up with them instead of the phone company. Now when there's a problem with the cable (tends to happen a couple times a year for various reasons), not only will all 15 TVs go blank (except the internal video loop) but it will now also take out the internet (formerly a totally reliable DSL) which includes the main connection for the ATM machine and the debit card machines for payment AS WELL as their backup! (usually a POTS line) which are now through the single point of failure... No phones, no ability to take payments from customers?!! Gonna give away a lot of free lunches the next time the cable goes out.... OUCH! He still doesn't seem to get it... Won't even spring for a second internet connection for redundancy... as that would erase the supposed "savings" he's getting by using the TV company instead of the PHONE company.
I guess there IS such a thing as a free lunch! :)
Some Congresscritter will come up with the idea of making everyone with cell phones, VoIP, and broadband connections pay even more to subsidize the dwindling number of PSTN users.
I dumped PSTN somewhere around 2002, first went to vonage and shortly after to Asterisk + PSTN gateways. Over these 9 years I think I've developed an idea of the pros and cons of VOIP.
* Call quality, on average, has been very good. This probably depends mostly on one's ISP, but call quality is better than a cell phone which most people are OK with. I prefer PCMU since it's what the telcos use and is a simple (little processing overhead) and raw codec. Keep in mind that it's possible to use codecs with higher quality (HD in marketing speak) that what's on the PSTN.
* Reliability is OK, but I've had occasional problems with PSTN gateways not getting calls out and the occasional dropped calls, which I'm not always sure where the blame lies. My biggest headache has been NAT, mostly when trying to bridge calls with someone else behind NAT. I prefer to try to bridge calls directly to keep latency to a minimum.
* Cost and features ROCK! Keeping a DID (phone number) with Vitelity is just $1.99 per month. I love paying just for the minutes I use, typically between $0.0008 and $0.0016 per minute. And of course the feature list in nearly left to the imagination with Asterisk.
I have my network equipment and IP phones on a UPS and my ISP (cable company) keeps functioning when my power goes out so my phones still work. I could see this being a problem for the average Joe though. A straight DC solution would be nice and could be cheaper that using a UPS.
In many areas (including mine), they still haven't solved the issue of power outages dropping out your VoIP service.
We switched to FiOS a couple years back and this is one of the things I don't like about it (I knew this was an issue going in, of course). The battery backup does hold for several hours. I've considered plugging the box into a UPS so that it'll continue to receive power for somewhat longer when the power dies; I don't think it draws much current so it should last at least a couple more hours even with a small UPS.
" and assuring that everyone who now has PSTN service has access to either a broadband or cellular communication alternative"
What country does this guy live in? There are still areas (MANY areas) in the US that are either only served by PSTN or satellite. I'd personally rather use dialup than satellite especially for the work I do in a shell (insane ping times on satellite...)
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
This is why basic voice communications DOES need basic government oversight and regulation. If any type of phone company doesn't have the profit motive to serve a customer and serve them well, they'll naturally just ignore them instead of spending money they'll never recoup on you. This is why regulations were created in the first place, so everyone could have at least a basic standard of communication. Nothing has really changed. The access methods by various types of phone companies may have changed, yes, but the concept is the same. Everyone should be able to expect the availability of some form of basic communications to be available. Does it NEED to be POTS? I'm not qualified to answer that, but EVERY type of communications can't be made universally mandatory and POTS was built out the way it was for a reason, and it works fabulously well.
While I understand many commenters are sad to see the PSTN go, I hope all acknowledge that it is simply not feasible to keep it running. Even today we're shelling out somewhere in the neighborhood of $12-15 billion a year in subsidies through the universal service and intercarrier compensation systems to rural telcos to keep the PSTN running. As PSTN subscribership continues to drop steadily (and it will), the required subsidy levels will only go up. Sure the PSTN had its merits, but ultimately it could not compete with IP networks in terms of efficiency and capabilities, and hence both service providers and customers are abandoning it in droves. Unless we are all happy to shell out tens of billions of dollars a year in subsidies, the PSTN is going to die and die quickly.
Last I knew, the FCC didn't run the PSTN -- they just regulated common carriers (the providers of the PSTN to consumers). They don't have the authority to shut it down, nor would they save any money doing so. All they do is regulate the carriers, approve interconnection agreements, and make skewed reports on its use.
What is also neglected here is two major things :
- The cellular network runs over the PSTN. Without the PSTN backbone, cellular calls would not be able to be connected to people outside your provider (and even then when you are roaming, you can't call people within your provider either!). Dirty little secret -- most cell towers are connected via T1's via the PSTN to their local backhaul.
- Most businesses utilize the PSTN very heavily. Because the cellular companies have been so apt to lock down cell phones, there has been very little innovation to make these devices work in a business enviroment. Things like PBXs are still very widely popular in the enterprise and these require connections to the outside world -- something more than a cell phone.
I live in southern California. My electrical service is Southern California Edison (SoCalEd), which can have outages any time of the year.
My broadband service is through Time Warner Cable TV. When SoCalEd fails, Time Warner's amplifiers die, leaving me with no Internet, no VOIP, and (if I had it) no Time Warner phone service.
I don't have a cell phone, but my wife does. When SoCalEd fails, the local cell towers die.
However, my phone service is land-line (PSTN) through AT&T. This phone service is self-powered by AT&T and is not dependent on local power from SoCalEd. Only with land-line phone service can I call SoCalEd to report an outage. More important, if SoCalEd fails, my land-line service becomes the only way to call 911 for emergency services (police, fire, paramedics).
Do you think the government should maybe subsidize broadband connections instead?
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... when the replacement has the reliability of PSTN. At a minimum, the battery backup for the fiber box in my house must run longer than the worst-case power outage in my area.
I could switch to FIOS right now, and they'd give me an interface box they claim is good for up to 12 hours.
I live in the Washington DC metro area. Neighborhoods in this area have lost power for DAYS within the past few years.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Interesting; my office phone has cat5 coming out the back, which has been the case anywhere I've worked for a few years now.
But is a VOIP phone, or just an analog phone with an 8-conductor cable?
I've done all the phone work for the little company I work for for the past 20 years, and helped some other companies with their systems. RJ45 plugs and cables were often used with the old analog key systems and PBXs, long before VOIP came around. You can't tell what communication method the phone uses by looking at the plug. A lot of the newer business VOIP phones look very similar and to the user appear basically the same as the analog systems that went before, as those analog systems had become pretty advanced.
Putting moderation advice in your
The migration of individuals from landline service to cell only insures that at some point there just isn't going to be enough revenue to keep the infrastructure maintained. So the maintainers are going to want to pull the plug and will start lobbying for that... like it seems they have already.
First casuality will be DSL. It requires really good copper connections to the CO and they are going to degrade. Even if they don't pull the copper out and leave the CO as a unmaintained building the lines will degrade enough to doom any possibility of DSL in a short period of time. So if you don't have cable now, you might want to look into it REAL SOON.
Second thing is people will notice that cell phone service isn't tariffed like landlines are. The operating companies are required to have pretty much 100% up time, or so close as to not make any difference. Cell towers are not required to be up. Cell towers are not on large building-size battery banks and do not have backup generators like every CO is required to have. So when there is a power outage, the tower is down until power is restored. Yes, there are UPSs in place to hold the tower service up over short outages, but we are talking seconds or maybe at most minutes not hours or days. Might want to think about that and lobby for getting cell service upgraded from being a luxury to being tariffed like landline phone service is today.
It sounds really nice that the Australian government is taking over the last mile connections. It isn't going to happen in the US for a couple of reasons. The first one is can you imagine the response to spending 3-4 hundred billion on such a project today? No, sorry, it would not be approved as the money simply isn't there. Then there is the idea that the government would be actively supporting and facilitating child porn, porn of all sorts, etc. etc. etc. Someone would notice in a big way. You might be able to pass that off in some other places, but I don't think it would fly here. I can see it now where someone fights a child porn charge by having someone testify that the government provided their Internet connection and did not filter it to ensure that child porn could not be viewed. This then constitutes permission and facilitation.
The private companies that are today running fiber are in large part still supported by landline phone service. It may be a declining part of their revenue, but it is still there. Should that revenue disappear - as is seems certain to do so - why would they continue wiring the world when their remaining revenue is from wireless services almost exclusively? Verizon and Qwest (the two that I know of with fiber programs) could drop all landline services, get rid of the thousands of trucks and wireline-servicing employees and focus only on wireless pretty easily. It would be a consolidation and focusing of attention, both things that are good for businesses. They would likely benefit greatly from increased efficiency - translated as revenue per employee. Oh, did I say that if you didn't have cable you might want to think about it?
But where are you when the other great memes are dying sir? Do you know how long it has been since I saw a "Pay your $699 license fee" troll or even a classic Natalie Portman post? The Goatse is the TOS Star Trek, sure it doesn't get the airtime it once did but it will never truly go away, while there are true classic like Penisbird and cocksmoker that are truly on the verge of going extinct! So if you want to do your part save one of the rare trolls for future generations. Maybe someday you'll make it into the big leagues yourself, like being the head of Comcast!
As for TFA when all those thousands upon thousands like my mom that both the DSL and cable companies refuse to serve, even though she is a lousy TWO BLOCKS away from the junction are served? I'll be all for it. But thanks to monopolies and cherry picking there are plenty like my mom that get a "choice" of crappy satnet or a WISP that is often down for a week or more at a time, and thanks to the valley cell is spotty at best.
What are you gonna do, tell a 68 year old woman that has worked for more than 30 years to pay off her dream house "Sorry but ur old and POTS suxor so move LULZ!" ? If anything in this dead economy the cable/DSL duopoly is spending LESS money on rollouts than the meager movements they were before, and thanks to cherry picking many just don't give a fuck. I know that when I lived there a few years ago there were places in downtown Nashville that didn't have anything but POTS, you gonna tell me in the middle of Music Row is considered the sticks?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You sir don't understand the tariff situation with the telephone system.
The landline phone network is required - by state regulation and FCC - to have pretty much 100% uptime. If you aren't getting that, get on the phone! Maybe from somewhere with real phone service, I suppose. Your state regulators are required to get the problem fixed and they will put unlimited pressure on the phone company to fix the problem, even to the extent of replacing every piece of copper between your house and the CO. And Verizon will be happy to do so to avoid the fines that would result otherwise.
You are clearly talking to the wrong people about this problem. Verizon (or any landline carrier) will try to sidestep the problem but they are subject to such severe regulation that once the "right" people know about this problem it will be fixed. Fast, too.
The problem that this article is discussing is having the regulators authorize shutting down, which hasn't happened yet. And might never happen if people wake up and understand the difference in how cell phone service is tariffed and how landlines are. VOIP as far as I know is not subject to any regulation at all right now, or if so, certainly nothing relating to reliability.
The government is going to save a fortune by shutting down the Interstate and US highway system by 2018 as everyone moves to hovercraft and flying cars.
A few years ago, Hurricane Isabel blew through my part of the world, causing a lot of severe damage. My power was out for almost three days. I had no cell service (damage to either the tower or its power supply, I'm not sure which), no cable service for quite a while even after the power came back on, etc. But! I had kept an old Princess phone around (my wireless handset was useless, obvs), and as a result, had POTS the whole time. Luckily, we didn't have any emergencies, but if we had, I could have called someone.
I'm not so well prepared any more - we replaced our landline service with your standard TV/Internet/phone bundle (Verizon FiOS). While this system has a battery backup that will allow phone calls for an hour or so after lights out, after that... if the cell service is also down, I guess it's back to smoke signals.
The whole basis of the recommendation is a finding that without any policy change, the current trend would have about 6% of the population still using the PSTN network by 2018. I don't really think its anywhere near impossible to bridge that 6% gap with appropriately targetted incentives for service provision and integration of the types recommended.
PSTN is broken as a mechanism for connecting people reliably to emergency services. It is not broken because it is technologically inadequate, it is broken because people are not choosing to retain access to the PSTN network.
The alternative services which people are choosing are also, currently, broken for connecting people reliably to emergency services.
The recommendation is to recognize that the first fact is a trend that is largely desirable except for the second fact, and to address the problem posed by the second fact.
I might consider a phone line, esp since we are in hurricane country. However it costs friggin $60 a month!!!!!!
Lousy facepalm.
The author of this piece has confused the public switched telephone network with Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). The PSTN isn't going anywhere; the question is, will old-fashioned analog phone service?
Dog is my co-pilot.
During natural disasters of various types, the first to go: Cell towers; seond: Cable TV / Broadband; third: power; forth: POTS.
Careful what you wish for.
This guy needs to get a manual carbon-copy card imprinter and then process those transactions when the connection is back up.
It saves bandwidth to cut sound below a certain level. I'm looking at cell towers when I say that - they'll do anything to save a bit. Their bitrate is already awfully low for sound. For VoIP, silence suppression is usually an optoinal setting at the ATA, though I'm sure some VoIP providers may do the same.
Many business (small stores) that I know ring up credit card purchases via simply CC readers that use PSTN to dial into CC verification centers. I don't think these stores are interested or can afford paying 4X for an Internet connection instead, even if they could get BB Internet (which many semi-rural or rural locations wouldn't be able to, for *any* reasonable price).
This would also be the death of FAX as most VOIP and NO cell services cannot do FAX well or at all. Yet many businesses still rely on FAXing...
ergo, I don't believe in this 2018 date... not at least until BB Internet is available EVERYWHERE that PSTN is, and I mean everywhere, not just 99% of the population (which is a meaningless statistic for public policy, even though it is what, from an economic standpoint what might may sense)...
At least in our area (Upstate NY) Verizon has STOPPED deploying fiber... not economical... not enough profit... so no, it isn't necessarily going to happen commercially...
They do, of course, have a manual imprinter (as I believe is always required as per the merchant agreement) for credit card transactions (although paper-copy charges can be easily disputed as it isn't a "chip" transaction now) but it doesn't help for debit cards when you have no ATM to get cash and no debit processing... I'd keep at least ONE real POTS line, but it's not my establishment...
Nobody who experienced wonderful "consistency" of cellular and cable networks would want to depend on one in an emergency or even to call a taxi to airport. That's like saying it's time to get rid of seat belts in leu of self driving cars.
I gave up on fax a long time ago because the technology just doesn't work reliably on VOIP, and you can't tell who has VOIP. E-mail is so superior to fax it isn't funny. So as far as I am concerned fax is dead already.
As far as cost of PSTN business lines, I bet if you took a look at their tariffs you would find that they can get Internet connectivity at a lot less than 4x the cost of a PSTN line.
in the first world those point of sale connections work through cellular data networks, because it's way cheaper than paying for dialing. you only need a fax if you're doing business with the french(and you could send faxes with cellphones in 1995 - nobody gives a shit about that capability now so almost no new phone supports it, they assume that if you want fax you'll use an email-fax service or similar).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The "internet" started with the PSTN. Using modems, and the "internet" inherited the reliability of the the PSTN. Of course, having multiple paths is more reliable, and, unlike the PSTN, the "internet" is more tolerant of less reliable connections.
As more data needed to be shipped, things like fiber were implemented. Packet switched, just like the "internet". Now, the PSTN uses that same infrastructure. Instead of the "internet" being supported by the PSTN, the PSTN is supported by the "internet".
Which means that the "best effort paradigm of the Internet" DOES work for all applications, including telephone type services.
Now, local telephone loops supply power separately from the grid. If the grid doesn't function, the telephone may still be powered. An accident of history.
PS. There was no guaranteed quality of service from the phone company either. In fact, it was a running joke while it was still a monopoly.
Lily Tomlin: "We don't care; we don't have to. We're the phone company."
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
i havent seens a busness rely on faxing in years.most are using email and pdf files.
FCC Report and Order 10-201, Adopted Dec. 21, 2010.
Those actions, for the most part, are the background that motivated the current Report and Order. The rules are adopted but not yet effective because required approval of information collection components associated with the enforcement process has not yet occurred (the public comment period ends August 8, 2011.)
It is true that a previous net neutrality-related order adopted on the basis of different statutory authority was struck down as unauthorized by the authority on which it relied.
Obviously, were this order -- the existence of which is part of the premise of other subsequent FCC broadband actions and proposals, including the one related to PSTN under discussion here -- to be repealed (as some in Congress have already attempted, though they've failed to line up sufficient support) or struck down by the courts (as both Verizon and MetroPCS, and maybe others, have already sought to have done before it went into effect), that would change the landscape with regard to other broadband efforts that build on the framework of broadband access with limits on broadband operators power to constrain legal uses of the network that the Open Internet order sets up.
I didn't read TFA to see if they're talking about residential PSTN connections only, but in terms of businesses, I don't see this happening anytime soon.
If you're a business, you basically have three and a half choices when it comes to voice communication with the rest of the world:
1) POTS, most small businesses still rely on this, but it's impractical for larger businesses with more than about 50 employees at a given location
2) ISDN - many medium and most large businesses use ISDN for connectivity to the PSTN because it just plain works
3A) On-net VoIP - I.E. phone service from your cable company, or SIP over a dedicated link (i.e. from a CLEC over a T1, etc / not over the Internet)
3B) Off-net VoIP - I.E. Skype, Vonage, Ring Central, Google Voice, etc.
Of these, off-net VoIP really has no QoS capability, so it's not especially suitable for business use. I know tons of people use it and are happy with it (myself included, for home phone service), but when the rubber meets the road, businesses are more than willing to pay for ISDN or on-net VoIP for the QoS and reliability.
On-net VoIP is where I see the traditional PSTN losing most of their business over the next few years. But, you have to realize that the majority of small businesses that are using it are doing so over channelized T1 circuits, which still require the PSTN (T1 circuits = PSTN). You can also do it over fiber, and that's where I see the bulk of Ma Bell's business going. Although the phone companies are in some cases still providing the fiber, I don't consider that to be the PSTN.
So when you look at it, the phone companies are losing business, but I don't see the PSTN going away any time soon.
I think what the article meant to say is that POTS is going away, but POTS != PSTN. I think the article is just poorly summarized.
No, just another important part of the national infrastructure
that we all have an interest in. When railways didn't have a common gage, it tied up shipping. So, they were regulated
to common mechanical standards and encouraged to allow each other's trains to share tracks.
When telephone standards were needed (numbered dials
and phone numbers aren't NATURAL, they're an imposed
standard), they were created and imposed uniformly.
Likewise, electrical power standards were imposed (the
Japanese have incompatible electric grids-it's UGLY).
And TCP/IP connections cannot easily replace POTS
unless additional rules are imposed. What use is FIOS if you're miles from home and looking for a phone?
And Skype and cellphones and landlines CAN connect,
because of the imposed rules. These are GOOD rules. Enjoy 'em!
TIC: A couple years ago the Verizon CEO said they don't care about land lines anymore. Perhaps it could be that they are essentially an unregulated monopoly when it comes to cell service where we live. Profit... and how might they make more money, perhaps do away with the POTS lines.
TAC or FCC TECHNOLOGICAL ADVISORY COUNCIL: and get a bunch of other business people with conflicts of interest http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db1025/DOC-302376A1.txt who will profit from increased business to tell the govt what is best for them.
TOE: We will hear about this one later. Does anyone remember how Verizon promised to put fiber every where in exchange for being able to get back into the long distance business? And how the delivery of that so called promise doesn't exist, at least not in our county, or any of the surrounding counties. A phase out will be announced with some promises about how great cell and broadband will be, and we will probably just see higher monthly bills...
We lost power for almost two weeks after Hurricane Isabel and cell service was mostly down, cable TV was down and the POTS line worked intermittently. My brother bought a cheap generator and we could use our dialup service while the landline worked. Although only one very old computer and the laptop could take the non standard voltages of our cheap generator... It was about 3 weeks without cabletv, which also is our current ISP. A couple of months ago I tried to call 911 with our cell phone when I saw (likely a drunk driver) a truck driving slowly down a dark road with no lights, and guess what 911 didn't work! My parents are elderly and I have argued with my father for a couple of years now not to get rid of the land line because it is more reliable in an emergency. This is all I need, now he will get rid of the land line and need it for an emergency call...
But where are you when the other great memes are dying sir?
I was busy pouring hot grits down my pants!