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."

Comments

Well

[sortius_nod]

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.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one reason to keep PSTN - when the CO is 10 miles away and it's in a rural area that has lots of hills.

Satellite - not possible due to terrain
Wireless ethernet backhaul - need towers
Cellphone - no service

There's still a few people that cannot be served with new technologies without significant costs.
Once, the phone company refused to install DSL, but the location was in-range (installer didn't wanna do it...).
I had him install ISDN and he had to run an entirely new line :)
Now it's set to 1.5Mbit service when the signal quality supports 3.0Mbit.
They also refuse to increase the speed, even with offering to pay for a higher tier of service.

Re:Well

[the_raptor]

"At this time to plan the removal of POTS seems like a conspiracy to reduce options, to force people to spend money on equipment, and to increase monthly costs."

What, rather then the tax payer giving massive subsidies for a service that less and less people use each year?

POTS/PSTN is fading out of the mainstream, when that happens keeping it going for the few rural/paranoid/luddite users would be a huge drain on the public purse. POTS/PSTN is only cheap now because it was mostly paid for by taxpayers in the 60's - 80's. Likely the "last mile" PTSN stuff will still be there in some areas for another hundred years, but the local exchange will be hooked into a link like the Australian NBN.

Complaining about the demise of PTSN is like complaining about the demise of the telegraph.

a comm. alternative

[just_another_sean]

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.

What happens when the power goes out?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:What happens when the power goes out?

[ledow]

Let's now be silly here. PSTN operates on a separate grid + backup power basis so that it works even in the case of a (normal) power cut. There's no reason that cellular or broadband networks can't be required to do the same and/or don't already do that.

I've never experienced a cellular "outage" except through something other than simple power - i.e. oversubscribed networks, busy periods (e.g. New Year Eve), or just plain stupidity of someone changing settings they shouldn't. So there's nothing to say that the cellular network isn't already backed in terms of additional / temporary / emergency power.

It's like saying what would have happened during a PSTN outage even if the normal grid wasn't affected? Same problem, and would have happened just as often (PSTN networks aren't somehow infallible, and sometimes HAVE to be shutdown for safety reasons if they are still supplying power to places that could be dangerous - e.g. fires, gas leaks, etc.). All that happens is that instead of PSTN you use cellular, or broadband (which is still essentially running on the same PSTN copper/street cabinets/exchanges).

The only "problem" is that cellular isn't a guaranteed service in that it could be up and running but far too busy to let you call rather than, say, the emergency services. Although they have a QoS for such emergency services, you won't necessarily be able to get signal in an emergency purely because of the sheer number of people near you trying to do the same. But broadband? That's a different matter.

PSTN was just "a" network. What did you do before you had cellular and there was an accident? You relied on PSTN or "something else" (i.e. your neighbours PSTN, or CB radio, or whatever). Now you just shift your expectations and use other methods.

To be honest, in an urban environment, I've never had quite so many completely independent ways of contacting people in an emergency. The loss of one, albeit one of the most reliable, is hardly a loss at all in terms of safety. There are at least three different methods of Internet connection available to me just sitting at home - cable internet, phone-line-based internet (e.g. ADSL, etc.) and 3G internet. They are all more-or-less independent of each other so if the 3G goes down, SOMETHING else will work and if the ADSL goes down, I can always hook up a 3G dongle (on any of 5 major networks that all run seperate infrastructure and frequencies).

If I was out in the sticks, I'd be slightly more worried but your basic landline phone isn't going away - it's just changing its underlying technology. There's still plenty of options open to anyone that needs them. It's not like it's the 40's anymore where the next phone is several miles away and you have no other backups at all.

Re:What happens when the power goes out?

[Teancum]

I think this is a valid point. Quite often the PSTN is the one utility that I can count on functioning even when other utilities (particularly the electrical grid) is shut down. This isn't to say that the telephone network has no interruptions, but the "uptime" is usually of such quality that it sets the standard in my opinion for what ought to be expected from utilities in general. Even cable television service has more outages. That isn't accidental too.

Then again, I still have a landline which I still use on a fairly regular basis. My family also helped to install that network, at least in America, where both my father and by grandfather were former employees of the old Bell System companies. I'm having a hard time imaging what life would be like without it.

Re:What happens when the power goes out?

[Anonymous Coward]

TL;DR

The POTS system has had a hundred years of experience to work out issues like redundant power supplies. Cellular networks haven't. So POTS often works when cell doesn't; the reverse is almost never true.

In another seventy years, this will probably not be the case.

Re:What happens when the power goes out?

[s122604]

Let's now be silly here. PSTN operates on a separate grid + backup power basis so that it works even in the case of a (normal) power cut. There's no reason that cellular or broadband networks can't be required to do the same and/or don't already do that..

yes and no, yes, technically you are right (although my guess is cell tower transmitters would require a lot more battery power than the POTS network)

but no, that kickass reliability was engineered into the landline network back when AT&T was a very fat and happy, and heavily regulated, monopoly.

The mobile network providers have to constantly think about undercutting competitors while delivering maximum shareholder value. Also a big difference between then and now; politicians who express belief in the concept of government regulation can expect to be accused of being a follower of Pol Pot by Fox news and their sycophantic viewers..

Re:What happens when the power goes out?

[Deadplant]

There are 6 POTS COs in my city. They all have space for a large diesel generator.
There are 3000 cell towers. They are all over the farking place, the tops of apartment buildings, churches...

So yes, theoretically possible. But not remotely practical.

Too bad

[Cornwallis]

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.

Re:Too bad

[Phreakiture]

It just works. Always has.

I disagree that it has always worked; the PSTN is generally very reliable, I'll give you that. I will agree with your apprehension about maybe seeing it go.

When it does fail, it fails very badly, and often takes other things with it.

Personally, I often find myself longing for the higher sound quality of a fully-wired phone line versus that of a cell phone. Isn't that ironic?

911 access

[sunderland56]

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??

Re:The actual PSTN might not be needed . . . but

[Teancum]

First of all, we are AMERICANS over here, but that aside...

We are also talking an infrastructure that had at one point a 99% penetration into the homes in America for a population that is about 15x the size of the country your are talking about too. Some of this infrastructure goes back to before World War I and is still in use. The sheer magnitude of what you are suggesting here is akin to rebuilding the entire interstate highway system.

Yeah, a concentrated and coordinated rebuilding effort could happen, but the price of copper on the world market alone would substantially suffer from such an overhaul of the communications system.

won't happen

[genner]

Doing this by 2018 is pretty much impossible. There's still huge chunks of land without BB service or even decent cell phone coverage.

Re:won't happen

[PingSpike]

That was my thought as well. They're probably making assumptions based off those same old faulty broadband maps that count an entire zip code as having broadband if one person in it has broadband. I just got DSL service last week for the first time, and I have no other options. My area is fairly rural I'll admit but the United States has large swaths of space that are just like here.

2018 seems completely unreasonable and sounds like the myopic suggestion of some one that has lived entirely in high population density areas. And I'm not even going to go into the change averse nature of our large elderly population who statistically are going to need reliable 911 service the most.

It will be dead in Australia in about a decade

[ras]

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.

Bad Graph

[Dishwasha]

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.

Something's gotta happen first

[kelemvor4]

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.

Making predictions can be misleading

[PuddleBoy]

"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.

Re:Making predictions can be misleading

[Duradin]

I have to wonder what cell/mobile/wireless and VoIP will cost when they have to meet the same uptime standards as landlines.

I can't remember which company it was but they dropped 10,000 911 calls during one snow storm. A land line company would have been fined out of existence for that but it was A-OK for them since it was only cell phones.

Re:The actual PSTN might not be needed . . . but

[yodleboy]

That's nice. The GOVERNMENT is also filtering everything that comes through that fiber and is only concentrating on kiddie porn at the moment because it's easy to get buy in. It won't stop there, their original filtering plans were much broader in scope and they will slip it in a bit at a time.

Enjoy your new Great Firewall, or maybe it's the Great Barrier Filter in your case. SO FAR we have none of these shenanigans in the U.S. (not for lack of groups that would love to see it though.)

Re:The actual PSTN might not be needed . . . but

[aekafan]

They can listen to our phone calls (and i am very uncomfortable with that), but they don't dictate what we can and can't see on the web. Yet, admittedly. Plus I firmly believe that the NSA should be wholly done away with. Don't get me wrong, neither side is good, its just that i find a national firewall unconscionable.

Re:The actual PSTN might not be needed . . . but

[zach_the_lizard]

In English, America and American almost always refer to the people of the United States of America. Sure, if you speak Spanish, call us USians (estadounidense), but only in Spanish (or any other language that uses the same convention). If you call us USians, you also run into the whole "which United States" problem. Do you refer to the USA or United States of Mexico?

Then apply the same protections as PSTN

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:I hope it doesn't go away!

[NewWorldDan]

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.

Re:It's not going anywhere.

[drussell]

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! :)

Of course, you know what will happen...

[jejones]

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.

Self-Powered PSTN Can Be a Life-Saver

[DERoss]

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).

Oh it's gonna happen

[cdrguru]

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?

Re:The actual PSTN might not be needed . . . but

[alexo]

--> First of all, we are AMERICANS over here, but that aside...

By "here" you mean that whole continent outside the borders of the US too?

Nope. If you want to refer to the population of a continent, you use "North Americans" or "South Americans" (or even "Central Americans"). There is too little in common among the residents of the whole American continent to justify a common term. Similarly, you don't refer to the residents of the largest landmass on Earth as "Afro-Eurasians" and even the term "Eurasians" has a different meaning from what you'd assume.

Seriously, you people need to come up with a more representative adjective than "Americans"...which also applies to canadians, mexicans, colombians, argentinians, chileans, brazilians, venezuelans, peruvians, haitians, cubans (there, I said it) and so many many more...

I am, among other things, a Canadian and have yet to meet a single Canadian that refers to himself (or herself) as "American". I am willing to bet that all those other nationalities, that you are so eager to speak on behalf of, do not classify themselves as "Americans" either, nor do they, as a rule, have anything against Americans "co-opting" the term.

I like this USAians.... going to use it until you come up with a good replacement.

They did, you just chose to ignore it, which says more about yourself than about them.

It is generally accepted to use the demonym that a group chooses for themselves. After all, how would you feel if people ignored your given name and decided to use the arguably more descriptive "Ignorant Douche" instead?

True story

[sean.peters]

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.

PSTN != POTS

[Vrtigo1]

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.