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Ask Slashdot: What Is the Future of Old Copper Pair Technology?
p00kiethebear writes "My father works for a large corporation that licenses ISDN lines (among a plethora of other services) including T1 and T3 technology. Surprisingly there are still large companies that use fifty year old T1 technology to handle their voice and data use. My father's 30 year career has been almost exclusively in helpdesk / troubleshooting T1 / ISDN technology and both he and I are worried about the future. Cable modems and DSL have replaced ISDN in most cases and it's now an archaic solution reserved for voice actors, tech support-terminal workers, large companies that need voice and video conferencing, and data and private users too far from the loop for DSL or Cable. My dad is still 15 years from retirement. Is twisted copper going the way of the dodo or is it here to stay for the foreseeable future?"
All of that wiring will be reclaimed. It's not worth as much as wiring as it is in thousands of other items. Even the copper coated steel wiring is worth more as other things. You have fiber and wireless and I don't see anything else soon.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Yes its called wireless.
The question seems to use copper wire and ISDN interchangeably. In the UK the DSL you mention runs over those copper wires, so they aren't going anywhere.
You can buy 10 Gbps twisted pair copper NICs and switches right now.
You get all the benefits of copper wire: easy to mend, rugged, cheap to replace, works with a massive line of products, from tiny embedded systems to high speed data center links.
No matter how easy to use some new technology is, someone will still need help with it.
As to your father, he I'm guessing he will be able to learn enough to help others with it.
No matter how little you think you know about something, there are still plenty of other who know even less.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
At this point, he can probably ride it out as there will still be a few hangers-on for the next decade.
In germany some people ha e 20MBit DSL connections via old copper phone cables. The problem not having that throuhgput are usually interconnections, and not the twisted pairs.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If you're worried about your skills becoming obsolete, then GET NEW SKILLS! This isn't that hard. Anyone in a technology field should not expect to use the same skill set for 30 (!) years, let alone 45.
Granted, this far along in the process may experience a bit of a renaissance (much like COBOL programmers), but if job security is a concern, it's time for some new education/training.
Here in the UK, we have FTTC. Fibre To The Cabinet. BT has cabinets all over the place. These little green boxes are where the cable from the Exchange gets split out and then laid either underground or overhead to the customer.
There is very little incentive (read financial) to actually lay FTTH (Fibre to the Home). That is simply due to the cost.
I have FTTC. The bit from the Cabinet to my home is Copper Wire.
I get 80mbits down/20mbits up for $30 a month (250Gb download limit between 08:00-23:59)
If you change your focus to that end of the network I am sure that there will be plenty of work for the immediate future but honestly, you should bet up to speed on the new technologies involved in the industry.
Don't go the way of the Dinosaur. Adapt or die.
There will be need for last mile access in different ways, ISDN will be replaces by alot of different technologies xDSL, 3G/4G, WiFi, WiMAX and more.
And there will still be need for experienced support techs.
xDSL is just another way to speed up the copper wires, there is alot of fault findning that needs to be done since it is run on the same physical copper. i know some guys that work full time just to find problems with the access lines. Where the 2nd line support gives up.
3G/4G has other problems, WiFi and WiMAX is the same.
Be open for new things, nothing is eternal...
ATT is forcing DSL users to switch to Uverse fiber-to-the-box with short copper to the home.
I got a tour of a central office a while ago. Entire floors were empty as the old copper infrastructure was removed
They called it "mining" the old copper
The technicians say that no money is being spent to upgrade the copper infrastructure that remains. It will continue to decay until it fails
Yes, copper will survive into the future, but there will be less of it, and the quality will be worse
twisted copper isn't going anywhere anytime soon. you just can't fit as much in the air.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
1. Its already there, pretty much everywhere.
2. Only one end needs to have power for it to work. (This is the "911 works even when the power is out" issue)
3. You don't need multi-thousand dollar tools to splice it or terminate it.
4. You don't need multi-hundred dollar equipment to connect to it.
it's time.
ISDN, T1 and T3 lines are dedicated, whereas cable is shared. ISDN, T1 and T3 lines are also synchronous connections. Even in business-class cable and DSL connections, I rarely see synchronous speeds (doesn't mean they don't exist, just means that they seem to be rare). In the larger cities, I see major companies going to Fiber connections, but in smaller cities and towns, T1 and T3s are still the way to go.
Our company still has ISDN lines as backups when the fiber fails.
At least in the States, where you have a lot of smaller towns and rural areas with sometiimes hundreds of miles between them and the largest hub, I see copper pair staying around for a while yet.
It seems pretty clear to me that circuit switched networks will be phased out in the next 10 years. AT&T has petitioned the FCC to transition to an all-IP network by 2018. At that point, you might have virtual circuit-switched connections, but with none of the advantages of real circuit-switched networks or the cost savings of IP. Existing copper lines were never intended to carry much bandwidth, so while they're still used for last-mile access in many cases (e.g. DSL), going forward it seems like coax or fiber are going to be the only competitive technologies. I believe some telcos are already replacing twisted pair bundles damaged by Hurricane Sandy with fiber.
As for helpdesk support... support isn't going anywhere. Although I feel like it's a fruitless pursuit to spend your entire career in. If you're 15 years away from retirement, I would seriously be looking for opportunities for education and advancement, to a more managerial position, where you could have more impact, and maybe get a higher inome for a better retirement.
As you mentioned.... people too far for DSL.
Aside from clear channel DS3; which I don't think is even an argument, that those are going anywhere -- businesses still buy those. And the capacity and assurance that the bandwidth will be available is much higher than DSL.
As you didn't mention... businesses that need something more reliable than DSL, and a SLA from their telecommunications provider. DSL is typically best-effort by the ILEC; sometimes taking 48 to 72 hours to repair. ISDN services are less fragile, and typically have a tigher SLA for diagnosis and repair -- and hey the insult required to break ISDN are essentially drastic situations like stray voltage on the line, cut or short-circuit.
DSL reception can be totally broken, or the speed suddenly greatly diminished, by a huge variety of minor insults to the copper, where electrical continuity isn't lost.
The performance you will get from a T1 link by contrast, is pretty much a certain thing, barring severe damage to the copper.
Businesses requiring POTS applications; believe it or not, VoIP doesn't work for just anything, and still might not be preferred even if it's cheaper; the reliability and security characteristics of POTS may be preferred.
For example: IT security departments like POTS, because VoIP is so vulnerable, and easy to record, intercept, and forge calls, in case of network intrusion.
Various applications work better with POTS, such as fax machines and alarm systems. In large sites, there is likely to be some need, and maybe enough need that a PRI or channelized T1 is required for 24 phone lines.
Existing services where T1/T3 is already in place are unlikely to be changed; where they are filling the need. Not every business wants to tempt fate by switching kinds of service if there is no need to it --- for the forseeable future, there is no massive exodus for DSL.
DS3 signalling isn't going anywhere either; it's the way of muxing a bunch of T1s or SLA guaranteed customer circuits for circuit protection and mapping across the transport network infrastructure. A bunch of DS0s become DS1s; a bunch of DS1s become DS3s; a bunch of DS3s become OC-xxx; a bunch of those so-called obsolete T1s form the backbone of a telco transport network.
in SAN and/or cloud. And if he gets a chance to land a job supporting one of those, take it. It's much easier to land a job when you're already employed.
Having been in IT (Networking) for over 20 years, I think your Father's position itself is safe - PROVIDED that he can adapt to the new technologies coming up to replace the existing ones. Tx/DSy/OC-x systems will be around for a long time yet. Its not always about bandwidth even though there is an undeniable need for more. T1s/E1s (and greater) for example have technology through the smart jack that enable enhanced diagnostics that DSL doesn't/can't provide. This includes TDR capability for cable cuts, etc.Again; provided your Dad's learning grows with the technology, I think he can be safe through retirement.
And that stuff is still used as the backhauls for cellular -- and that is going to be around for a very long time. Many people in their 30's still use their cell phones for voice calls. The PSTN still needs to move those calls around. Everybody is talking about moving to an IMS core for the cellular network; but this change will take decades to complete.
Full disclosure: I work for a smallish LEC in rural America. I don't think there is much hope for ISDN outside specialized applications, T1s and a couple large Centrex deployments is the only thing we've got using it anymore. There is plenty of life left in DSL technologies - we've got fiber to the neighborhood and copper to the house using Calix gear, I'm getting 92Mbps at my house (shared between IPTV and Internet), works great. In places where the loop length is too long we're using ADSL, sometimes bonded and getting ~40Mbps to reasonable distances. Sure we're plowing fiber in with every new drop but the existing copper has plenty of years left in it.
Your father would like to stay in his industry, which means learning the new scene of cable modems, routers and access points, and etc., that the ISPs are providing now. But he might have trouble quickly getting a similar job working for one of these companies, because they'll suspect his outdated skill set. So he may have trouble learning customer service for these new technologies on the job. I suggest he sign up for one or more of these services at home, and start by delving into the innards of the equipment supplied. For example, Verizon FiOS creates a cable signal from their big wall-mounted interface box, and sends that to a cable modem. In my case they provided a third-party box from ActionTec; a combination cable-modem, router and wi-fi access point. This product has a detailed manual available on the web, and they provide all the information, so you can manage it yourself and change settings, etc. (In fact, their software is GPL open source!) So he can learn by experimenting, and update the experience and knowledge parts of his resume accordingly. Hah, he might be able to get consulting jobs helping companies change over to the new approach.
People steal it, soon they may even remove it off the poles.
HELLO?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Agreed. I've done some asterisk based installs for small companies, and I always tell them VoIP is great inside your network, that you control, but analog or PRI POTS is where it's at for upstream. Unless you want your phone to be as 'reliable' as your internet. In some cases it can make sense, like a satellite office. But once you get to 12-15 lines, a PRI tends to be price competitive anyhow.
First of all you should ask if ISDN and T1 are "going the way of the dodo", not copper. DSL runs over copper too so copper is and will be relevant in the foreseeable future. Although it certainly depends on where you live, most businesses that migrate from ISDN/T1/E1 services go to DSL or FO. With DSL you have adsl,vdsl,shdsl,vdsl bonding, anything that can do EFM anyway, so copper isn't going anywhere anytime soon. For some end users that are too far for DSL, there are 3G routers and other wireless solutions. ISDN will eventually die but again that's what they say for FAX for so many years, so nobody knows for sure. And really, your dad should know better, the industry he is in changes rapidly and only those who can adapt to these changes survive.
You seem to be focused on BRI ISDN which is what is used by those you referenced (TV remotes, voice actors, etc). It is an extremely low bandwidth connection (128 Kbps) but "it works" and is probably not going away anytime soon. PRI is probably much more prevalent. PRI is what I would consider the T1 of ISDN. It is commonly used for enterprise PBX systems, and I definitely don't see it going away anytime soon. The only other realistic option I see at present is SIP, but even then unless it's delivered over fiber SIP services are still probably going to come in over some kind of copper medium (be it T1, etc). Some companies are moving to fiber, but there is usually considerably more cost associated with bringing fiber to the premises as compared to copper which likely is already on premise.
My company has fiber on premise for IP, but we still have PRIs from the LEC for our voice service. Any time you bring voice in over an IP transport (as in SIP), you have to make sure the IP network has proper QoS, etc whereas PRI "just works". PRI is usually more expensive, but not overly so. When we replaced our PBX a few years ago we considered SIP, but when we presented the various options to the powers that be, they chose to stick with PRI because it has a proven track record whereas SIP was just gaining traction in the market.
I think in 15 years you will definitely see fiber steal a large market share of those customers that are currently using copper, but I think there will still be plenty of copper around.
He should have taken some time to learn some additional skills in the last 30 years.
I'm not sure why you're worried about the future, though. Did you spend all of your young adulthood preparing to also support copper pair technology?
Like someone else commented, the poster uses terms "Copper" and "ISDN" interchangeably. However, with the inclusion of terms like T1/T3, it's clearly about "what can an old telco-guy do in this newfangled IP-based world with 15 years before retirement". Copper here is a misnomer, a lot of stuff can happen over copper (DSLs being the most obvious example).
I have some familiarity in just how dead the technology is. We have a big customer who just placed a big order for Cisco's PVDM digital modems. Why "big", if the tech is dying? Well, that stuff is going to end-of-sale after this summer and they have lot of legacy systems around the globe that dial in (machine-to-machine stuff, and not easily upgradeable everywhere at once). They are moving to IP-based systems but cannot really do that fast enough. Anyway, one of the biggest vendors of network equipment just decided that they aren't going to sell modems that can talk directly to E1/T1 line (analog 2-port models are still in the selection though). I don't know that anyone else is selling such stuff either (Alcatel maybe?). That technology had it's day, but it's long gone.
There might of course be places where, due to signaling constraints, you need to run a E1/T1, but it doesn't really use any of the features. You just run PPP over that link and be done with it - no one cares about the intricasies of Q.931 framing or setting up calls for such links. Even in telephony, it will continue to have some uses, for example many PBX systems still only provide E1/T1 uplink - even if it's going to be used just to connect couple of feet to the SIP gateway right at the next rack.
Frankly, your father has two choices: Either
a) Get entrenched into some niche that really can keep on going with ISDN-based technologies for the next 15 years - you know, maintain job security by being the "only one left who understands this piece of legacy junk that we cannot migrate away from fast". Frankly, I find such positions hard to imagine - sure, maybe if he was retiring in this decade, it could work, but hardly in the 2020's.
or
b) Join the IP world. Frankly, I would think that with a reasonable effort he could still become an expert in VoIP - you still need skills like provisioning (for QoS), codecs (even the G.711a/mu-law is relevant), and so on. Lot of the concepts in SIP are still based on the good old stuff from telco days. You just need to wrap your head around the concept that instead of TDM sending each frame at exactly right intervals, you get packets that might occasionally get lost or routed wrongly or arrive out-of-order...And frankly, you also don't need to care anymore about stuff like SPID's or TEIs. Which I would think of a relief.
DS3 signalling isn't going anywhere either; it's the way of muxing a bunch of T1s or SLA guaranteed customer circuits for circuit protection and mapping across the transport network infrastructure. A bunch of DS0s become DS1s; a bunch of DS1s become DS3s; a bunch of DS3s become OC-xxx; a bunch of those so-called obsolete T1s form the backbone of a telco transport network.
I won't claim to be intimately aware of telco operations, but it's my understanding that more and more telcos are ditching channelized copper on the backbone and migrating toward IP based solutions over fiber because they're easier to work with. If copper will still be here in 15 or 20 years I don't see it in the backbone, I see it as the last mile.
Tens of thousands, perhaps millions of homes are already wired with it, all that cable... just sitting in the walls waiting for something to happen to it... F'rinstance, in my house we had a little project a few years back. We uprooted the phone jacks in all the rooms and replaced them with stereo jacks. Now every room in the house is wired to our computer in the living room, through several separate ports. Anybody can ssh in from anywhere in the house and play music directly to their room. Good, high quality music with no latency or buffer lag over the wifi.
I won't claim to be intimately aware of telco operations, but it's my understanding that more and more telcos are ditching channelized copper on the backbone
Telcos are usually using channelized fiber on the backbone.
IP based protocols don't provide reliable delivery and circuit protection switching. For the forseeable future, only VoIP providers are switching voice to IP at the backbone, and providers that sell circuits to customers are not.
I think twisted copper as a system of long distance wiring will gradually become less common but won't go away completely for years. Some telcos will likely phase it out quicker than others.
I think Traditional twisted pair telco interfaces (pots, ISDN BRI, ISDN PRI, inband T1 etc) will remain available for those who want to buy them regardless of the physical plant the teclo is using. However I also think such services will likely be priced higher than comparable services delivered by more modern technologies and as such buisnesses will gradually move away from them just as most buisnesses have already moved from ISDN BRI to DSL. IIRC the telcos already use adaptor boxes to run T1 down a single pair rather than the traditional two pairs and also use adaptor boxes to run T3 over fiber because of the very low distance limits of T3 over copper so I can't imagine it would be a big deal for them to do a converter box for T1 over fiber.
I think Twisted pair as an in-building wiring technique is likely to stay around for the foreseeable future because over short distances the ease of termination and low cost of end hardware outweighs the cost of the copper. However I think that phone signals over said twisted pair will increasingly be VOIP over ethernet rather than analog voice or traditional digital voice systems. Again some companies will likely move slower than others.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
My employers' primary business has, until recently, been based on T1. We are now migrating to VoIP.
The customer experience is improved (if they notice the change at all), we're opening up new paths for future development, and we're getting away from obsolete legacy hardware that is no longer manufactured or supported. We're also saving the company oodles of money. What the telcos want for T1 these days just isn't pretty.
I'm 51, BTW. Old dogs can indeed learn new tricks.
...laura
I'm an engineer with one of the largest communications companies in the U.S.. It will be a long time before we see reliable high speed saturation in the more rural regions... mostly because of the prohibitive cost of deployment. OP's dad may need to move or telecommute at some point...but his skill set will be needed for some time to come.
Do people still use DSL? In my area the choices are cable or fiber to the house. It seems like, if you were going to worry about DSL taking over for ISDN, you'd be doing that in the late nineties.
I suppose some big corporations still use ISDN for the same reason some companies still use 3179 terminals. A large initial investment in what has become stale technology, and it's just easier to continue to piece together what they have than to swap it out for a modern technology. That said, it seems like there should be a significant price advantage to switching to something from, you know, this century.
I'd recommend your dad train up on modern technology. Learning keeps you young, and let's face it, 15 years is a long time in computer tech. That's enough time to have a whole 'nother career. Sorry he won't have an opportunity to coast the rest of the way to retirement, but thems the breaks. (Speaking as someone who will be 56 in just a few days.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As for helpdesk support... support isn't going anywhere.
I agree with you except for this. Unless his dad is working from India, I'm amazed he's still got a helpdesk job. Time to move on or up.
Agreed. I've done some asterisk based installs for small companies, and I always tell them VoIP is great inside your network, that you control, but analog or PRI POTS is where it's at for upstream. Unless you want your phone to be as 'reliable' as your internet. In some cases it can make sense, like a satellite office. But once you get to 12-15 lines, a PRI tends to be price competitive anyhow.
Before you start extolling the virtues of POTS, keep in mind that everything is not always flowers and sunshine. We have 20 line POTS to the building I'm in, and the up-time is atrocious. The patchboard alone is a nightmare no one wants to touch. We had an old PBX go bad last year, and managed to blottobox all the digital phones on the phone network. cost us $10,000 to replace all the damaged equipment. On top of that, we regularly suffer multi-hour outages from our upstream provider, and they refuse to fix the problem. No one else around us does POTS anymore, its all VOIP, and someone sold the VIPs at our company that VOIP is the devil and we will have no end of up-time failures... So now, we are stuck with POTS with horrible customer service and 2 full days worth of unplanned outage every year, and no one wants to pay the expense of upgrading anything. We should have made the transition to full VOIP when we had to cough up the money anyway.
Around here, if you want a five 9s guarantee, your only option is VOIP.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
We use FIOS for our internet connectivity, but we still rely on MPLS over T1s to interconnect our offices and handle our VOIP traffic. VPN over the public internet simply had too much latency to be useful. It's archaic, but it works.
I am happy to have the copper that I can connect my DSL lines to for my VoIP customers. It's not going anywhere for the forseable future for the smaller customers. And that is not even considering the BRI and PRI lines for the small medium sized customers with their dedicated PBXs.
ISDN voice is great. No lag beyond speed of light lag. No jitter. No dropouts. No analog noise. True full duplex. End to end digital. It's telephony perfected. Switzerland has residential ISDN, and when I get calls from Switzerland, they're so clear.
Far, far better than cellular or VoIP. I'm really tired of voice cell conversations with a full second of lag in them. Sometimes there's so much lag the echo suppressors can't cope.
Why are we putting up with crap voice quality on telephones?
Unless his dad is working from India, I'm amazed he's still got a helpdesk job. Time to move on or up.
As long as he's advanced helpdesk Level 3 or higher, and he's not in the first line Level 1 or Level 2 support job; I don't think he has much to worry about from India.
The engineering outsourcing fad is just about over, if not over.
Go ask Dell about how well that worked for them in the long run, farming out all their work to overseas companies -- by outsourcing everything, they outsourced their competitive edge, and then their suppliers started working for the competition - enabling the competition in various countries to provide essentially the same equipment as Dell, for a lower price: in other words, outsourcing came to bite them, because they effectively exported the core of their business, directly resulting in them bleeding sales...
Anyways, while outsourcing customer service and low-level support works well -- a call center operator can just read from a script.
It doesn't work so well, for helpdesk, beyond low-level jobs, when you need advanced level troubleshooting, such as helpdesk logging into service provider routers and other highly security-sensitive network infrastructure to do some diagnostics, and not following a script.
It doesn't work so well, when a specific understanding of the customer's network design is required to troubleshoot the issue.
It doesn't work so well when you lose customers because they are fed up talking to "engineers" with accents they cannot understand.
It doesn't work so well when the person taking the call needs to physically touch something, to provide the service the customer expects.
Or when the helpdesk person needs to coordinate with a field technician for diagnosis.
He should move to NZ! There's no cable, we're doing a fibre rollout, and that's going to last until at least 2019, so copper will be the only option in some areas until then. On top of that, the fibre install costs will not be met 100% by the government, so I believe it will be at least another 10 before it's gone, especially in areas with lots of rented houses as the landlords won't fork out for insulation, let alone unnecessary technology.
I say let those two long-suffering wires finally get it on with each other... enough with the twists and stress and tension already!
Tons of people still use DSL. Not every local phone co is running fiber and who in their right mind would buy from Comcast?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
As someone who has worked on a IP/ISDN drive for a popular networking company, I'd be very happy to see ISDN leave forever.
The protocols involved are horrid.
If he loses his job, he can always work at Micky D's and move into *your* basement.
Those two words generate fear in any business endeavour. Simply put, if what's out there and available is "good enough", e.g., meets enough of the consumers' needs that their desire or the pain factor is low enough, then new products face an uphill battle. When it comes to those copper loops, they continue to deliver "good enough" voice and data services that in most cases are "good enough". They'll be there for quite a long time.
The only reason why Dell has survived is due to outsourcing the layers such as coders and engineers (which are extremely hard to find of any quality level in the US.)
Lets be real. An offshore firm can produce 10 times the result as one local employee, especially when one adds the payroll taxes, the potential for lawsuits, employee theft (that source tree can wind up on a MicroSD card in a heartbeat and sold to the highest bidder out of China), and many other things. Outsourcing saved Dell, and it saved HP. Were it not possible, we would be importing our computers from China just as we do our TVs, radios, set top boxes, microwaves, etc.
The outsourcing "fad" has just begun. Even H-1Bs are extremely attractive. Think one can pay a USAian with a CCIE $30k/year? Won't happen, but you can easily get H-1Bs for that pay and qualifications with just a couple forms.
Copper will definitely be around for another 15 years, easily. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean you're guaranteed a job if that's all you know. When any technology becomes less popular quickly, there's a glut of personnel, and massive layoffs can be expected.
Copper is sure to remain in-use. While Verizon is (very slowly) going fully fiber to the home with FIOS, AT&T is sticking with U-Verse, which is fiber to the block, with copper still making-up the last mile. And that installed base of T-1s and T-3s isn't about to just go away. But like I said, telcos will need fewer and fewer people around to support the dwindling customer base, so layoffs are likely.
And besides twisted pair, there's no sign of coax disappearing any time soon.
As others have said, you should have be brushing up on your fiber optic skills. In fact you should have been learning about fiber 15 years ago like I did. That was back when every ISP on the planet was pulling huge amounts of fiber across the planet, and the future of data was obviously going to be fiber. Now, wireless (802.11 & LTE) are undercutting the bright future I expected for fiber, but only slightly, as fiber is usually the backhaul for those technologies as well.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Timothy,
Learn how to post "ask slashdot" stories to the Ask Slashdot section so that filters work correctly. Otherwise what is the point in having the ability to set a filter.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
In the Solomon Islands, we're happy to have two soup cans joined by a piece of string. Fibre and wireless are becoming more dominant though.
Outsourcing saved Dell, and it saved HP. Were it not possible, we would be importing our computers from China just as we do our TVs, radios, set top boxes, microwaves, etc.
Because you haven't really substantiated your contention; I am more inclined to believe Forbes' detailed analysis on this topic, then some Slashdot AC's unsupported claims.. please see How HP and Dell destroyed their PC advantage piece by piece.
The outsourcing "fad" has just begun. Even H-1Bs are extremely attractive. Think one can pay a USAian with a CCIE $30k/year? Won't happen, but you can easily get H-1Bs for that pay and qualifications with just a couple forms.
The CCIE is an expensive and difficult certificate to obtain regardless of nationality; people who hold this are valuable, regardless of nationality. I don't believe there are many Indians holding this level of qualification. There aren't very US people holding this qualification either. This is definitely not a helpdesk worker certificate.
I will agree that H-1Bs are attractive. Especially for menial programming jobs. Outsourcing is extremely attractive for programming jobs and manufacturing.
But outsourcing falls apart when there is work that is tied to a physical location; such as at an ISP or Telco, where you have a wire plant.
Until robots are invented that can be operated from overseaas, and the speed of light is broken, so that latency can be reduced to an acceptable level -- there is not much fear of offshoring technicians that do some mechanical work which involves physically touching misbehaving equipment in order to troubleshoot.
DSL is fast enough for the applicaitons which are imagined in the next few years. DSL is using twisted copper wire. If something is "good enough" end the investment to replace it is huge, it will stay. Exceptions may be extremly dense metropilitan areas (e.g Tokyo) where the cost of rewiring is lower.
I work with a company that is switching back from carrier VOIP to T1. The pricing isn't very different and they've had a dozen incidents over the past few years where VOIP traffic would have problems, the carrier would point their finger at the company's internal network, and then after much tracing and wiresharking, we'd send them a pcap saying, "no, look, it's your fault." They'd get it fixed a few hours later.
Never does this come up with T1. It works or it's their problem. For this company that's more than worth the small difference in price. If there's a VOIP company with a similar SLA they might get a shot at the contract, but so far they're not apparent in this area.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In my experience: ....e.g. get much of a months bill refunded if service is down for an extended period. Unfortunately, bonded t-1's are becoming somewhat less reliable as customer centric t-1 companies like speakeasy are being purchased by the telecoms and then sucked into crappy business practices that companies like megapath offer.
- For business and critical home office connections, reliability is the single most important aspect when evaluating internet connectivity options
- Due to the telecom deregulation bill in the 90's, the major phone companies have essentially killed off all competition for DSL and relegated DSL as a consumer technology where the emphasis is high bandwidth, low cost....reliability has plummeted, phone company can arbitrarily take down DSL for 24-48hrs to do upgrades/maintenance and there is nothing you can do about it other than get a pittance level SLA refunds later. Promised repair times are meaningless for DSL.
- Cable Internet Connections are even worse, they are shared and latency can vary by time of day....if you are lucky, you can upgrade to a business cable connection...but you are unlilkey to get a high uplink speed and cable companies were really not designed to provide good customer service. Some cable companies also offer fiber or gigE services which are not shared and provide real advantages...but this is hit or miss based on your location. And, until recently -- too expensive. We've just reached the point where they are a better deal than cheap bonded t-1.
- Bonded T-1 historically been the best solution for those needing 4.5Mbps or less, 2-3 seperate dedicated lines and the routers automatically adjust if one or several lines go up/down...packets fragments are reordered and checksummed on each end, there are good built in diagnostics, and phone companies are usually exceptionally diligent about fixing most T-1 issues within 4hrs. Bonded T-1's are one of the few areas where you can find reasonable SLA's
So, bonded t1 is OK for the time being, but I expect most customers are in process or planning a switch to fiber/gigE once they can get the SLA's and availability at the locations of interest.
Twisted pair is here to stay because it can be repaired in the field with little to no tools. Just twist the copper together and it's up. Sure, there are better methods to repair it, and you'll increase latency on that link a whole lot, but that's why we have TCP and it will work. From a military perspective or for people working in hazardous environments this is incredibly useful. Fibre, while fast, cheap and light, just can't be repaired the same way. It you lose a metre section out of the middle of a run, you'll need to either use a specialised tool kit to splice the pairs together which requires a trained tech, or you lay another run. Probably a bit out of the corporate context in which it was meant, but I'm sure there are plenty of industries out there for which a move to fibre would be ill-advised, there are certainly plenty of developing countries that are buying up cheap DSL and ISDN technology to complement existing copper infrastructure and can't afford the price jump to fibre. So there will always be a need for help desk staff and trained operators. The real question is, are you willing to move where the jobs are?
DSL is twisted copper. I'm using it right now, through 40 year old phone cables under the ground to my local exchange.
It's only 12mbit though. 20 at the last house I lived in. 100+mbps fibre is 2 - 3 years away for me.
90% of tech support is troubleshooting skills and communication with the customer. Learning to apply those same skills to a different technology isn't that big of a deal.
When interviewing for tech people, I ask how they would go about fixing something - anything. I can train a good car mechanic to fix networks a lot easier than I can train someone who knows all about networking but nothing about troubleshooting.
Call me when you can successfully run any kind of reliable low latency service off wireless that doesn't cost you more then deploying same service over a landline. Until then, all you can really do is cite advertisement and PR material of wireless operators.
Those wireless operators, and their landline corporate companions, do not represent the stable edge of what can be done technically and economically.
They manage protected franchises limited to competition among themselves.
Stomping on the implementation of wireless technologies that could put them into permanent obsolescence has been their main source of income for decades now.
MCI once stood for Microwave Communications Incorporate, but it only got to play in (the real) AT&T's game after going through enough bankruptcies to put fund managers in charge and becoming a price-weapon for the newly-regional twisted-pair monopolies.
Marty Cooper, who can be fairly credited with turning wireless communications an aspect of global infrastructure, has tried to get the world to appreciate how antenna technologies and associated spectrum-splitting devices could bypass the requirement for any physical conductor for a wide range of uses.
The companies that have run telecommunications networks alternately brag about then weep over their investments in buried strings and ten-years-too-late-switches and in this and that overdetermined long-delayed technical standard and in coveys of towers and satellites, but where they actually spend the money is on keeping the field to themselves -- seizing exclusive government-granted franchises, erecting barriers to obsolescence, and researching and developing untrustworthy pricing and billing operations.
Since none of this seems about to change, your point is well taken.
never heard of ISDN lines until today. had to look up the acronym ISDN too. Integrated Services Digital Network
does the Private Branch Exchange run using ISDN?
oh yeah, i never heard of copper pair technology. i learn something new every day.
I work for a major carrier. T1's are nothing more than HDSL these days. T1's arent going away anytime soon as sad as it is. great for voice, thats about it.
On top of that, we regularly suffer multi-hour outages from our upstream provider, and they refuse to fix the problem.
How the hell is VoIP going to be reliable, if your upstream provider regularly fails?You think their uptime and service reliability will be better with internet service?
Either service can be unreliable with a bad service provider. POTS is easier to get right; although indeed more expensive, and not completely impossible to incompetently install, design, maintain, or manage.
POTS is a federally regulated service, and standards of reliability are applicable. If your provider refuses to fix, you may have a complaint to take to the FCC public service commission.
Before you start extolling the virtues of POTS, keep in mind that everything is not always flowers and sunshine. We have 20 line POTS to the building I'm in, and the up-time is atrocious. The patchboard alone is a nightmare no one wants to touch.
This is more an equipment/implementation issue.
I would tend to say, get rid of the 20 POTS lines, and get an ISDN PRI; or a fractional T1 and a channel bank.
Get rid of the expensive proprietary PBX, and get an IP-based PBX with ISDN PRI as the upstream.
In other words: a mixture of VOIP and POTS technology.
VOIP to connect phones to an inexpensive PBX or SIP proxy (less than $5000)
PBX to connect to the upstream phone network.
ISDN PRI or fractional voice T1 is easily moved to a VoIP service provider at any time, for all or some outgoing or incoming calls
So you can have a mixture of VoIP and POTS as required.
Meaning; you could use VoIP as a failover in case POTS is down; or POTS as a failover in case internet is down, in some cases.
And mix use of service when it makes sense
1. Can the copper industry be retooled or saved?
2. What can my Dad do to stay employed?
The copper industry has value in two realms; (a) Geo-location.. that it exists at all means there is a physical path possible.. and it can be used like a "Guide" wire to pull Fiber to replace it. Reclamation of the Copper would be a bonus if taken seriously, but its a dirty job and low margin, more likely certifying the cleanup would pay more. (b) If it isn't replaced it can be used as a backup circuit or a time synchronization device. But this has limited use over time, it will fade and presenting the business case will fade as wireless is used as a backup path, but better to proceed with (a)
Dad, the problem here is retraining and confidence building. Probably he'll hang on as long as he can, but if shows no interest in even going through the motions of "Re-training" his perceived value will be less and accelerate his departure. Rather than bemoan the changes he has two options (a) seriously start retraining, even if its on his own dollar (b) map out and scout other regions and companies that will pay him for his experience.. and probably put it to use removing the old copper, or marginally maintaining a while longer. Some combination of both and putting away as many funds as possible would be the best way to go, depends on his situation. Buried in debt.. he may have to liquidate some assets or sell them off to family members or even down size his living accommodations if the kids are out of the house. Worst thing he can do is sit still and do nothing, he should build an aura of confidence and moving forward to the next thing. Fifteen years is a long time, enough time for an entire new life. He should get started on and don't let the present hold him back.
Let me start by saying "Adapt or die". That said, as a Cisco instructor, I still teach a ton of T1/E1 and Frame Relay.
The reason is simple. Power and resiliency. When you're a government agency who is deploying massive numbers of sensors for weather and earth quake monitoring, it is often cheaper to install and maintain equipment based on a cheap pair of copper wire capable of carrying power and signal over long distances. Thanks to T1/ISDN having been designed to function over long distances when all network switching for a telephone company was centralized instead of ASDL which is last mile only, T1 is a far more attractive tech.
Others here might say "What about solar cells and batteries?" Even the most reliable batteries won't last more than 4 years in "the wild". T1 lines can run for a dozen years or more without sending out a helicopter into the mountains for repairs.
So, while I believe that T1 is dead in business unless it's in deep rural areas, it is still rapidly growing in weather, radar and earth quake monitoring.
Around here, if you want a five 9s guarantee, your only option is VOIP.
Basically you are out of options then, as you sre as hel lwon't be getting 99.999% uptime from VOIP. From POTS it's possible, and actually happening in many places.
And it will be 'the future' for the next 20.
Wired will always be faster and more reliable. Physics just isn't on your side.
Just think, Wireless has come from 2MB/s to 108MB/s in the last 10 years... Soon it will be 1GB/s
But in the same period Copper has come from 10Mb/s to 1,000Mb on the LAN and from 1200 bps to 24,000,000 bps in telco.
T1, T3, ISDN still have a place for the next couple of years in regional and remote. Copper (ADSL etc.) still has a life of at least 10 years in regional and remote.
I'm sorry, where were you for the last 3 decades? We ( the consumers and taxpayers) already paid for this!
I've just been through the experience of getting Internet connectivity to an office outside the regions covered by DSL and Cable Internet (by a half mile). I had a choice to spend megabucks to have ISDN/T1/T3 run out, or choose a wireless solution. While, I'd certainly prefer DSL or Cable Internet, and then T1/T3, and only fall back to ISDN if the only other choice was dial-up. True ISDN could be coupled to get higher bandwidth, in fact you can bundle ISDN up to T1 speeds, but that's not basic ISDN.
I choose to pick up an aircard and a wireless router with a USB port for aircards (ebay and amazon under $50). The office is in a region with 4G covereage, and actually has higher throughput than the local Cable and DSL providers offer. Of course it means paying for connectivity by the inch, or rather the GB ($80 for 10). So the solution is more expensive than local Cable or DSL, but less to install and less monthly than ISDN or bundled ISDN. T1 one would be nice, but not cost effective. But even 3G speeds would beat basic ISDN, and would be cheaper. Cost is a concrern for all businesses. Size of a company and bandwidth are the determining points. This is a small office for a small company. ISDN/T1/T3 are for large offices with a need for large pipes. But fiber will eventually replace all that, it's happening now. If the ISDN/T1/T3 business doesn't adapt it will die.
Wireless and fiber are the future. Eventually enterprising people with T1s will offer wireless access and drive the prices down, and everyone will begin billing by the GB. It will all level out in the end. Without any provable collusion between the providers at all.
Copper is dead. Long live copper ... and fiber.
I work in radio broadcast engineering. As much as most of the folks in the industry would like to move forward with other more "modern" communications for real-time audio, the solutions for audio over IP in terms of using the public internet and high-speed wireless carriers leave much to be desired. Sadly, it's no fault of the manufacturers as far as I can tell. For real-time traffic, the public internet is a very hostile place. A T1 or ISDN line (especially PtP installations) is old school and expensive for bulk data, but is sometimes the only solution when you need the rock-solid reliability required for broadcast applications. 4G comes close for wireless (nice quick pings compared to 3G), but sadly it falls on its face when a big crowd is around like major sports events, etc. Walk into any tech center in a large stadium, and you'll find all sorts of copper connections. They exist solely for the broadcasters, because we can't afford to let them go. With more and more providers abandoning the technology, many of us are forced to use circuits that are already in place. The cost of installation has increased significantly, and in many cases is no longer available depending on the market. Definitely a problem for small specialized industries like mine.
The decision will be made on commercial grounds. Copper is already there in many parts of the world and it's cheap - for the time being. It won't be replaced with copper so when maintenance costs increase it will be replaced with fibre, also where copper can't meet increasing demand then fibre overlays will be put in and gradually take over. Bandwidth demand will continue to increase for some customers but not all so we'll have a mix of technologies for the forseeable future. Wireless technologies will play their part but as bandwidth demand increases so cell size will reduce, which means some new fibre and piggy-backing on existing copper - there's a fair chance that your home router will be managing some traffic for your SP - mine does, but then again when I'm travelling I'm using someone else's. ISDN will of course disappear, but it's hanging in there longer than anyone thought it would, mainly because of the end user refusing to change what they know and love.
You have explained why those frequency bands were given over to telecommunications. The maximum effective antenna is small for higher frequencies, and the smaller the antenna, the less energy it gathers from the signal. Longer wavelengths are warehoused and grandfathered or preserved as parkland to protect the delicate sensitivities of nearby radio and television transmitters.
How the hell is VoIP going to be reliable, if your upstream provider regularly fails?You think their uptime and service reliability will be better with internet service?
There are more than a dozen ISPs in our area, buts only one provider left that will do enterprise level POTS. If we were to go VOIP, there would be many different vendors to choose from...
Not only that, but we actually already have redundant ISPs, so fail over would be a complete non-issue. POTS is effectively dying. We should let it die already.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Around here, if you want a five 9s guarantee, your only option is VOIP.
Basically you are out of options then, as you sre as hel lwon't be getting 99.999% uptime from VOIP. From POTS it's possible, and actually happening in many places.
Why not? I use skype at home, and have not had a noticable outage in 5 years, even when we lost power, I was still able to use skype (once I got the generator started). Its not unreasonable to believe that enterprise level reliability would be better than my residential service.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
There are more than a dozen ISPs in our area, buts only one provider left that will do enterprise level POTS.
What provider do you think the ISP will use to provision a circuit to your enterprise?
In most areas it's probably going to be a HDSL 4-wire or 2-wire order, or a bunch of copper pairs, from your local phone company to deliver a bonded service -- the same as the phone company that would be installing the POTS lines. :)