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FCC Wants To Trial Shift From Analog Phone Networks To Digital
An anonymous reader sends word that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has given the go-ahead for telecommunications companies to start experimenting with an IP-based telephone protocol. From the article:
"The experiments approved by the FCC would not test the new technology - it is already being used - and would not determine law and policy regulating it, FCC staff said. The trials would seek to establish, among other things, how consumers welcome the change and how new technology performs in emergency situations, including in remote locations. 'What we're doing here is a big deal. This is an important moment,' FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said. 'We today invite service providers to propose voluntary experiments for all-IP networks.' The move in part grants the application by AT&T to conduct IP transition tests as companies that offer landline phone services seek to ultimately replace their old copper wires with newer technology like fiber or wireless."
Aren't a lot of people already using digital phone service?
(at home we have phone service via Charter cable)
My POTS line works great, works in power outages, and sounds way better than any other phone service I've had the misfortune of being exposed to. Of course the FCC wants to screw it up.
I'm not at all saying that the FCC is pushing towards surveillance with this, but I question whether or not this makes it easier, more difficult, or the same. I'm under the impression that it would become easier to spy on the content of calls (the so called "metadata" wouldn't see any change, of course).
More delays that make conversations frustrating! Woohoo!
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
AT&T and Verizon are pushing this. Why? Digital services aren't currently unregulated. Digital services are non-unionized. Digital services don't currently require universal service. Digital services are not required to be repaired in a timely basis. Unless the FCC declares digital services to be common carriers instead of information providers, we are going to get screwed and hard!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Switched to VOIP at work. Immediately I lost the cues I use in lieu of body language, and cutting into a conversation went from a graceful maneuver to a bludgeoning due to a tiny extra delay.
Was this a poor implementation, or par for the course? Can we expect better clarity from VoIP or more muffled sounds as I heard? Loss of dynamic range, audio compression, transmission, and some form of noise gate or raised floor made me half as effective as I should have been, and I worked remotely so I needed that edge I lost.
Are things different now?
Just what the phone company needs to charge us even more money ... a new-fangled phone system.
And, of course, while they're robbing us blind for something which should already be cheap and ubiquitous (but now newly gets to be the new expensive hotness), Big Brother should have an even easier time tracking everybody.
Why the fuck does the future always have to seem like bleak-cyberpunk?
Because there is no way we don't end up spending twice as much for essentially the same service.
Which will be great for the big telcos (which are oddly now all the cable companies who keep merging so there's no actual competition). For the rest of us, not so much.
And, if it's good for big business, you can bet the FCC will approve it -- because that's what they're paid to do.
And, of course, the marketing weenies will call it "HD-Phone", or "Phone 3.0", or some equal bullshit.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
needs a law saying no forced rent fees / must buy our hardware only from us or per phone outlet fees
I don't think there have been any analog phone networks in any developed countries for many years. Nice Reuters. You should know better.
I believe they mean to change from a switched (digital) telephone network to an IP network. The telephones in your office are probably IP phones.
Of course! Anybody not using POTS is already VOIP. Of course, even POTS customers are VOIP if they call beyond their local exchange, probably.
On the plus side, if done right (HA!!) POTS would still be POTS but from the neighborhood Uverse/FIOS/etc box rather than from the central office - think many neighborhood exchanges rather than one or 2 per town. Or maybe each neighborhood on a phone co. PBX. The concept goes downhill from there ...
And if that works they can get rid of some central offices which are often on valuable real estate near the middle of town.
Really, because my POTS line goes down every couple of months, sometimes mis-routes calls, only supports in-band DTMF signaling, and often has lower quality audio than my VoIP line.
It's almost like the underlying signaling technology is not the sole determining factor in quality of service, and there are a number of ways to meet (or fail to meet) desired service goals. But I know that's a silly idea -- we know from history that older == more robust, just like older cars start better in cold weather and older flashlights need fewer batteries.
In North America almost all trunking is VoIP already.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Exactly, just like we know new washing machines last longer than old ones. Oops.
Well as for working when the power is out we have power over Ethernet already.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
It works this well because it is /mandated/ that the resources required to /make it reliable/ are /spent/ to make it so.
If wireless networks were provisioned with the battery backup/generators necessary and the redundancy of overlapping coverage to account for faults in towers (or some random drunk plowing in to one) then they too would be this 'reliable' (though the software in the stack would be in question; having multiple brands/models of phones would help).
My POTS line works great, works in power outages, and sounds way better than any other phone service I've had the misfortune of being exposed to. Of course the FCC wants to screw it up.
I was home for the holidays over Christmas and the power went out at my parents place during an ice storm. The battery backup for the IP phone started beeping. They asked what it was for and I had to explain to them that they had signed up for VoIP service and that it needed power to the internet router to keep the phones working. The battery lasted about 8 hours.
So, while VoIP works quite well, POTS has the advantage of pretty much always having a dial tone, even when the power is out.
If they do decide to get rid of analog lines and go to VoIP, then they are going to have to figure out how to keep it powered. Of course, POE has been around for a long while. I'm guessing, though, that the phone companies can't just hook up the VoIP phones to the analog battery banks due to differences in power requirements.
Analogue telephone networks were phased out starting in the 1980s when digital transmission lines became affordable.
The only part where you still can get an "analogue line" is the last mile. However even there the first thing that gets done is a conversion to digital.
What the FCC is talking about is turning traditional digital TDM networks to VoIP networks. This has nothing to do with analogue or digital. With the proper adapters you can connect your dial phone to both, and your phone company can still charge you extra for touch dialling.
And phone companies want to dump the copper wires! They won't even give me fiber for FIOS. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This is great if a transformer blows. For many people their pstn wire is on the same poles as their power and if the lines are down, the lines are down.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They DAMN well better make digital service providers common carriers and subject them to all the same regulations as PSTN.
Otherwise, we are truly fucked.
I have a POTS line I use for DSL. I do not get DSL service from AT&T because I have a static IP and run my own servers. So the only way to get third-party DSL is by keeping a POTS line alive. It is nice to have a backup though. That's not to say my POTS line survives power outages. The StarMux I'm on is close to my house and if it looses power the batteries only last so long.
But: If they turn off the copper will I be forced to use AT&T DSL? I won't subscribe to it. They block port 25 and I still run my own mail server at home and will continue to do so. I don't know what other options I would have. The FCC needs to do a better job of not letting these companies just walk all over people. Fine if you want to take down my copper. But give me a sensible alternative that isn't just mean for another content consumer. I don't care if I can stream video (my current DSL is too slow to do this). I don't care about TV at all (don't ever watch it). But I want to SSH into my servers at home when I am out on the job. This seems to be a very difficult thing to get.
If I can't sing along with my friends on a phone call the connection is too laggy and the delay is going to adversely affect my conversation. I fear that this news will lead to the end of my sing-alongs, which means awkward, interruption-filled conversations (as mentioned by others).
I call bullshit. If POTS was to 'mis-route' a call, then things would catch fire.
only supports in-band DTMF signaling
No shit. I bet you blame auto manufacturers when you accidentally dump some diesel into your gas tank.
Currently with POTS the phone company provides power to the line entering your home.
Is there a way that you can provide VOIP or other digital means without having to power a home device locally?
A few years ago we had a massive ice storm in MA and we had no power for 3 days. My "emergency" $10 phone from walmart worked like a champ.
I supported ISDN back in the 90s... while I know that ATT/Verizon aren't considering ISDN, the thought of troubleshooting premises equipment again gives me chills.
POTS is simple and much more resilient than VOIP so, let's get rid of it. VOIP is a MESS, way to go FCC!
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
While that is entirely possible, you must consider what they could be worse AT.
For example, with so many people in a union, it is entirely likely that the majority of the members are far worse at painting than Hitler. A select few may be much greater than Hitler was, however. Some may be much worse public speakers than Hitler, but, again, it's possible perhaps one of them somewhere has more charisma.
I, for one, have no clue whether or not Hitler was good at figure-skating, but I can guarantee that Unions, in the general reference to the majority of their members, would be much better than Hitler at Snowboarding.
It works this well because it is /mandated/ that the resources required to /make it reliable/ are /spent/ to make it so.
The commission report states their standard of reliability...They are holding the new technology to a lower standard of reliability.
24 hours of backup power after a power outage
During winter storms and other similar events; I have experienced 3 to 5 day outages on occasion: POTS lines never went down, so emergency calls could still be made, even when there was no cell service...
though, that the phone companies can't just hook up the VoIP phones to the analog battery banks due to differences in power requirements.
During an extended outage; I can power the bloody VoIP devices myself, via a local generator. MY concern is, that even if I power up the VoIP phone, and all my on-premises equipment, the network link will be dead, because the phone company's nearest repeater's battery has died --- I.E. the remote unit somewhere in their infrastructure that lights up a fiber, and converts it to Ethernet over copper, before feeding it into my building.
I am content if the FCC just requires them to provide continuous power up to the consumer household; with a minimum of 72 hours of onsite backup power for any network elements such as remote pedestals -- to be replenished prior to exhaustion, and a hookup for the homeowner to provide a battery and additional sources of emergency power at their location ---- such as a solar panel and charge controller to help charge the battery, when power is down for an extended period.
This is great if a transformer blows. For many people their pstn wire is on the same poles as their power and if the lines are down, the lines are down.
That is possible, but usually what happens is the electricity gets switched off due to a fault / short-circuit, or transformer blowing... like you said.
One fault in the electrical system, and the circuit breakers gets thrown on a very large number of people.
Your telephone line is a private circuit. Chances are, if someone's phone line got a short circuit -- the other circuits are intact -- it's not everybody elses.
Also... often the telephone cabling may be completely underground; all the way from the served location to the central office. Whereas, the electrical transmission need be overhead.
The distribution networks look entirely different, so there is a fair chance your phone line might not be near your power line much of the way.
My cell phone works when the power goes out too. Not only that, it also works when someone plows into a telephone pole, tearing the phone cables free from the line.
The whole power outage thing has always seemed like a red herring. If the power goes out, my phone is going to get a couple of hours worth of calling before it dies. It will sit for two days ready to go if I am not making calls. If all that fails, I can go start my car and charge it there and that is only if I don't have a back up battery for my phone.
On the other hand, if a branch falls on the phone line, there is no phone. Plus, power and phone are generally put on the same poles, so if a pole goes down, you lose it all anyway.
My POTS line went dead one day, and while waiting on hold for over thirty minutes on my cellphone trying to reach the phone company I signed up for VOIP from my ISP (ADSL over the same wire still worked fine). I would claim that I switched out of spite but it was really out of boredom waiting for tech support.
Yep. And to make matters worse, a VoIP network is not capable of delivering the same services that a TDM network can.
Devices using sensitive timing of dtmf signals such as fire alarms and other communication devices, as well as devices such as fax machines and modems do not operate well over VoIP networks.
There are a tons of devices like these out there and if they cannot operate reliably over a VoIP based network then they will either have to be replaced or migrated to either cellular or IP based communication methods.
VoIP is great for voice, but voice isn't the only thing that the telephone system is being used for. The industries that are relying on the "quality" of a TDM based telephone phone will soon have a lot of upgrading to do.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
Yes, those are some of the unsolved problems with it.
However we are talking about the US telephone network. It's not particularly well known for quality anyhow.
My POTS line works great, works in power outages, and sounds way better than any other phone service I've had the misfortune of being exposed to. Of course the FCC wants to screw it up.
You think POTS sounds good, wait till you hear VoIP.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The users at DSLReports Forum or your ISP's subforum there should know. (If not, staff in my ISP's subforum will.) If U-verse is the brand name for AT&T's digital package, it might be useful to read the answer my ISP's COOgave when somebody asked recently whether we can get DSLthrough a third-party ISP when our area is upgraded to U-verse.
I feel the same way you do regarding ISPs, except maybe a bit more extreme, as I don't want to use the phone *or* cable companies. Ifind it worth the speed sacrifice of sticking with 6Mbps/768k to have an old-school ISP that allows servers (even on port 25), includes Usenet access, doesn't cap data or speed-throttle, and so forth.
So does this mean that telemarketers will no longer be limited by the number of voice trunks they or their voip provider have access to? Anyone with a cable modem can automate calls to thousands of physical phones per second with the right protocols in place? Sign me up!
I've experienced two different kinds of call mis-routing on POTS. The first is where my phone rings, but there are actually two other parties connected to the call, and no one can hear me. This is almost certainly a signaling failure at the electrical level, which doesn't have an equivalent failure mode under VoIP. (VoIP *has* failure modes related to electrical misconnection, but they don't cause the same error). To the best of my knowledge, no fire was related to this failure (certainly nothing at my end caught fire).
The other failure mode is almost certainly related to the in-band command signaling I was complaining about and you were defending, wherein the number I dial is not the endpoint to which I am connected. I don't mean "I misdialed" or even "the computer at the remote end of my call failed to decode my in-call DTMF signaling" I mean "my auto-dialer sent DTMF and I got connected to a different number than the one represented by the tones I played on the line".
And the failure of DTMF in-call is also in issue with POTS, whether you believe it or not. I agree, it's not something POTS was designed to deal with, but it is something that is actually used in the real world that POTS does not handle cleanly and has no capability to improve its reliability. If you want to convince end users around the world that they should not require the use of DTMF signaling because it's unreliable over POTS be my guest, but arguing that it's not useful just because POTS wasn't designed for it is like arguing that electricity is not useful just because steam locomotives were not designed for it.
That's unrelated to analog vs digital or circuit vs packet. The phone company can put power on a digital line just as easily as they can put power on an analog line
Modems and fax work fine over VoIP if you set their speed (bandwidth) lower than the bandwidth setting of the voip. If you set the voip channel to 48Kbps and set the fax to 56Kps that doesn't work well - you're trying to 56K of data through a 48K channel.
Instead, set the VoIP to 64 and the fax to 34. 34K through a 64K channel works fine.
My understanding of this is that there are many government imposed limitations on the phone companies that benefit the average person, and if we switch to digital the TELCOs will no longer be bound to those regulations and will be free to become our new overlords.
http://interserver.net/
The cell tower your phone talks to will last 24 hours at best. After that, it doesn't matter if your cellphone is charged. I have seen a few multi-day power outages but the phone has always worked.
If you set the VoIP to low bandwidth requirements (sometimes erroneously marked as low quality), it'll be almost exactly like a POTS line -low latency and low fidelity. If you use a high bandwidth setting, you'll get high fidelity, but more short drop outs and latency. Personally, I much prefer the low bandwidth setting.
Similarly you can choose different codecs. This is voice , not music, so you don't want hi-fi. A restricted frequency range actually makes voice much MORE intelligible because 95% of the intelligibility is in a narrow frequency range. The high and low frequencies are where the unwanted noise is.
This article is describing how phone service is ultimately delivered to the user. Calls are still routed across the network like they were before.
The NSA has co-location presence at international phone exchanges (i.e. the infamous Folsom Street central office that Mark Klein spilled the beans on NSA's spying) and phone providers are still required to maintain the same call detail records for law enforcement that they have before. So this doesn't help or hinder the NSA.
I work in telecom and I have a reasonably clear picture of telecom trends.
Subscriptions to traditional POTS service is on a steady and steep downward trend. People are ditching their landlines in favor of cell phones to save money (you have your cell phone with you all the time, and it's fairly cheap, so why pay for two services when one will do?). To a lesser extent, cable company phone service, Skype, and etc. are also driving this.
There is a lot of fixed cost associated with managing POTS service that doesn't scale down when subscribers go away. With hardly anyone using POTS, it becomes a question of how to cost-effectively provide phone service to a rapidly dwindling user base.
Sure, some of this is just cynical cost cutting (i.e appeasing shareholders), but much of it is just intelligently responding to evolving usage trends. The 40+ year old POTS network is going to change.
True. Theses devices are modems, and they power things like fax'es and EFTPOS terminals.
You know what? Modems are what we use to send digital over an analogue line. They don't work over some VOIP, but ye gods if you are kludging a digital line over VOIP emulating a analogue signal over a digital signal which is sent using an analogue PYH using a high speed modem - maybe it is time for a layer or two to die.
In other words, complaining that about VOIP making life difficult for modems is like a teamster complaining how the hard the asphalt is on the horse's hooves.
In a fit of pique at Comcast bricking my Motorola modem I signed up for ATT Uverse including digital voice. Overall I've been pleased with the speed and reliability of the internet and can't say I've noticed much decreased call quality but now none of my fax equipment works and caller ID is hit and miss. Not that fax is a big deal, scan and email is much better, but some institutions require that I accept a fax. I really miss the caller ID. Both are known issues ATT seems to have no interest in fixing. maybe if everyone was last mile digital folks would finally stop faxing, or less likely, the telcos would fix it. Up time has been as reliable as POTS, much better than Comcast whose "qualified technicians" were always in need.
The telcos are shifting from POTS to IP for the same reason you don't use a 56Kb modem anymore.
Emergency cell phone chargers aren't that uncommon. If your cell is your only phone it's as useful to have as a battery-powered radio and flashlight.
You know what? Modems are what we use to send digital over an analogue line. They don't work over some VOIP, but ye gods if you are kludging a digital line over VOIP emulating a analogue signal over a digital signal which is sent using an analogue PYH using a high speed modem - maybe it is time for a layer or two to die.
Implantable cardio defibrillator devices are another category of items out there which cannot operate over a VoIP phone. That "layer" you're saying should "die" is a person you're volunteering for literal death.
I, for one, can't wait until we have the actual possibility of 4chan being able to kill people via DDOS attacks on their phones when those people need to call 911.
One might wonder why the FCC is pushing a complicated and easily exploited protocol like SIP...
Copper has been on the skids for a while, but I wonder if the MBA whiz kids have started doing the math on the long-term salvage value of copper.
At some point, I can see them just start deciding they're just not in the analog business enough to start demo-ing all that copper they have for its metal value.
Until people start complaining again. How do you think we got those regulations in the first place? Magic? They're well understood problems in the voice calling industry, and have been mostly "solved" for a long while. If they suddenly crop up again, I'm sure the FCC will come down hard and fast since they already have prior experience.
Don't underestimate a bunch of 50+ year old people complaining en masse.
One possible benefit to this happening would be that it would almost FORCE the FCC to classify ISPs as Title II Common Carriers (just like current telephone companies,) which in turn would provide the legal underpinnings they need to enforce net neutrality.
Your telephone line is a private circuit. Chances are, if someone's phone line got a short circuit -- the other circuits are intact -- it's not everybody elses.
That may be true if you're a rural customer and/or have DSL. However, if you live in a (sub)urban location and don't have DSL, chance are you're provisioned from a SLC-96. If so, your line is only private between your residence and the SLC-96 cabinet. From that point on to the central office, you're sharing a circuit with 23 other customers (a SLC-96 cabinet has 4 active DS1 circuits, with 1 spare; 4 x 24 = 96, hence the name).
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
You mean long-distance phone lines aren't strung across those massive electrical transmission towers?
Or, alternatively, my last mile isn't the same as the last mile of every other person connected to the same substation?
*boggle* </sarcasm>
What I do is buy a VPS for about $6/month and run OpenVPN which I connect to from my home server. The VPS is configured to forward port 25 to my home server over the VPN. On my home server I used policy based routing to send any outbound port 25 traffic back out over the VPN, where it get's nat'd to the VPS's IP. Granted, it is a bit complicated but it is about $40 /month cheaper for Fios triple play + the VPS than for Cable, phone, DSL with a static IP. It also gives me a 15/5 connection instead of the 1.5/768 Kbps I had with DSL.
Obviously, you could also just run the mail server on the VPS if you don't mind storing your email outside of your home. Personally, I do mind. It isn't "abandoned" after six months if it is on *my* computer in *my* home. Stupid ECPA...
I've also configured port forwards for SSH, and DNS. As for my website, I still host that at home, but for improved performance I've configured a reverse web proxy on the VPS so that it caches content locally rather than needing to pull everything over the 5mb uplink from my home.
I've got a cable company provided VoIP service in an area prone to power outages. I also have my POTS service as well that I refuse to discontinue, much top the chagrin of the cable provider AND the POTS provider.
I have extensive UPS and the ability to run some devices without power for as much as a couple of days. But, it's utterly pointless with the cable provider because, apparently, the intermediate nodes every mile or so between me and the CO/headend are battery backed. But, their batteries die after a couple of hours. So, no matter what I do, the VoIP service(and the internet service) die after two hours.
Now, let's not kid ourselves, the POTS CO also uses a battery bank too. But, that battery bank can run the CO for half a day, after that, a generator cranks up and runs the POP for five days, minimum, before needing to be refueled. The POTS essentially never goes down.
POTS provides 99.999% (five nines) reliability (that's 5.26 minutes of down time per annum) whereas, despite outlandish claims that are bald faced lies, the cable provider's VoIP service is more akin to 99.9% (three nines) reliability (that's 525 minutes, 8.75 HOURS, downtime per annum). I suffer numerous VoIP outages for short and long period every year. If it wasn't for my ability to make international calls for a tiny fraction of the price, I would abandon VoIP completely.
Oh, and don't get me started on unreliable call qu-a---l-it---y... quality, DTMF detection, number spoofing with no ability to trace...
But, here's the KICKER. I sell, install, and maintain VoIP PBX networks. Behind all their SIP trunks, they all have POTS backups, ever at the ready. How's that for irony?
Can't VoIP detect a fax/modem signal and avoid treating it like voice? For instance, the codec hears a fax handshake and then stops using lossy audio compression, or at least, lossy compression that doesn't destroy all data.
I see there's a standard, T.38 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.38). I wonder if it's already implemented in VoIP services, and if it isn't, why they don't do it.
"The experiments approved by the FCC would not test the new technology - it is already being used - and would not determine law and policy regulating it, FCC staff said.
Meaning, we aren't going to allow the "common carrier" rules to get in the way, so don't come crying to us.
This will bring all communications under a single NSA/FBI umbrella and point of monitoring/control.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There's really nothing to it.
I worked for two carriers that have been doing it (POTS over SIP using the straight Internet).
Apart from TDD (which we never had to deal with), it just works as long as the customer is using the carrier's ip network (mainly if the customer needs to do FAX or data calls), voice works using third party networks well too.
This is the typical case of slowing down the process, just migrate it already.
At the same time, there are millions of phone lines running over triple play boxes (typically HFC fiber-coax networks from CATV providers) for at least a decade, the only difference is in that case you're 100% stuck with using the provider's network, but it's IP as well (typically MGCP).
This looks like a case of pretending it isn't done already...
Just deploy SIP over a dedicated VLAN plus endpoint isolation, so you can't even ping the ATAs from the internet, nor between on another.
Switched circuit calling is not fundamentally more resilient than statistical packet switching. In fact it's the other way around.
A company that charges you $10 for a single call and you still haven't switched to Vonage at $25 / month, or Vitelity (cents per hour) or any of the other companies that treat you as a customer rather than a victim?!
My business has used Vonage for years and we're very happy with it. Only when we first got it we had it set to high bandwidth, which our modem wouldn't carry without stuttering. Since we set it to medium or low bandwidth ten years ago we've had no trouble. If you've used something like Magic Jack $10 / year?) and you thought that all VoIP was like that I can understand. It's not, though. If you're willing to pay a few dollars per month there are several very good VoIP providers who will provide you with good service.
An analog line in the US currently has to supply 5 REN, which is about 300 milliamps. A typical Cisco phone uses 125 milliamps. So they are ALREADY providing enough power to run two VoIP phones. If you also want internet service from the phone company on the same line, you can plug your router into the other side of the Cisco. Offices are commonly wired that way. The phone plugs into the network and the PC ethernet plugs into the phone.
In other words, you don't have to power the customer's network, their network is DOWNstream of the phone. It can also be completely separate - you could have internet from a different company than the one who provides phone service.
Think of it this way. What if your phone had a modem chip in it and every time you made a call that modem chip digitized the audio on it's way to the phone line outside. How would that effect the operation of your phone? It wouldn't. They could already be doing that and you wouldn't even know.
It sounds great when it is VOIP from end to end, and if all the packets manage to make it through.
people's internet connections are more reliable than their POTS service? on what planet?
Just what we need, to let the emergency services (POTS-line based) have to rely on Cisco and its army of CCNIdiots for communications.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
No it doesn't. Yes, I'm calling you a liar.
It also works well because we've spent a century plus working out the technology and growing the infrastructure right alongside the growth of the town and density increases in the countryside.
Only if you lived somewhere that's nice flat plain or a relatively dense urban core. Though who live in hillier terrain and less dense areas won't be so lucky. Those of us who live in hilly terrain that's low density and *also* a deeply indented coastline... well, it's unlikely we'll ever see cellular reaching POTS level of reliability. Because of topography, there's simply too many blind spots with too few residents to make redundant cellular coverage reasonable.
And I haven't even mentioned the people that live in sparsely populated areas, let along very hilly sparsely populated areas.
The issue isn't analog v. digital - it's holding the new system to the octuple nines level of reliability demonstrated by the old system. The various service providers very badly don't want to be held to such standards, it cuts sharply into their profits.
What are you talking about? VoIP sounds like shit. It's high quality analog to the ATA, where it gets shitified, transmitted into a stuttering, turn-around-time lagfest, then converted back into analog that's nothing like what it began as.
Leaving a signal alone is how to avoid distorting it.
This is only a formality. Carriers have been pushing for digital for a very long time. Digital phone service is not regulated as analog is. Carriers are not forced to resell their services to other carriers below cost. The only thing surprising here is that the FCC is pushing for it. Unless they plan on enacting regulations on digital service, they're going to eliminate a large part of what they regulate today.
I know that in the Florida region it was a major driver in Verizon rolling out fiber to the premise.
In any event, I'm sure phone companies will be quick to implement any changes that still must be made.
Huh?
Its packetized direct from your microphone in your handset in the highest quality your connection can handle, sent by either UDP or TCP, and arrives at the other handset where it is played as analog.
Worst case, it shifts to a lower quality codec to match that in use on the other end (and it the other end is a POTS gateway, its always lower).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If you set the VoIP to low bandwidth requirements (sometimes erroneously marked as low quality), it'll be almost exactly like a POTS line -low latency and low fidelity.
Don't confuse VoIP over the Internet with VoIP over a managed network. You can run G.722 and have high fidelity, and run with 10ms packets and have low latency.
This is voice , not music, so you don't want hi-fi. A restricted frequency range actually makes voice much MORE intelligible because 95% of the intelligibility is in a narrow frequency range. The high and low frequencies are where the unwanted noise is.
Incorrect. High bandwidth audio makes many parts of speech more intelligible. For example, over quality VoIP, I can clearly hear the difference between M and N, where over POTS it can be much harder.
Plus, using the POTS range means your only hearing the harmonics of the real voice. I can't get where you think this would be better than hearing the full voice.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Goody, I can look forward to another round of converter boxes and government coupons. Sounds like fun.
I do wonder if things like text messages will finally work with home phones...Then I realize the real motivation: AT&T and others are looking at an opportunity to sell more hardware and services. Oh, and a chance to crack open existing regulations and insert cracks and wedges for them to cut service and/or make more money of existing stuff.
Adding value is not an option.
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
TL;DR
Until data providers (both land line ISPs and cellular ISPs) actually take responsibility for upgrading our infrastructure instead of blaming us for the overhead issues and capping bandwidth and data use, VOIP will NOT be reliable. Especially in rural areas. So now the FCC has trapped them into demonstrating that their networks are shit.
I normally hate the FCC but if I could give some suit a high-five for this one, I would.
-I cut the cord a few years ago when Google Voice came around. Ever since Voice hit I've been using it as my front end and routing traffic to the most affordable, most hackle androids I can find.
In Q1, 2012 with LTE tablets dropping everywhere, I took the experiment a step further.
From April of 2012 to December of 2013 I utilized a tablet data connection and apps like Talkatone to capture my Google Voice traffic without an actual cellphone number to route the calls out to. Exclusively. The tablet I tested was on VZW's Denver LTE network. Up until September of 2012 there was a consistent and reliable 20-22mb down no matter where I was and my VoIP traffic was excellent. Then the iPhone 5 came out and single handedly raped VZW's networks in Denver's Capitol Hill and Lodo areas. Centennial, Cherry Creek, and Highlands Ranch also immediately went to shit. All of which are areas I consult in frequently. I still can't get better than an average of 7 down around here. Go to any of our burbs or more rural regions and it just gets worse and worse.
Since then it has never been the same. I ended up picking up another Virgin Mobile Android device (Samsung Galaxy Victory) and I route my business Google Voice calls to it. (We love multiple GV phone numbers.) I still let my personal calls and texts ring out over data because I generally don't need to answer them immediately and let them go to voicemail. The transcripts are usually good enough for me to not even need to bother listening. Although for some reason Google's transcribe likes to turn "Hey Aaron" into "Honey." Always has. Don't think they intend to fix it...heh.
And yet, a branch isn't going to take out the cell phone, while it can easily take out your POTS lines. Yes, the cell system has a different set of failure points than the POTS system, but there are plenty of failure points on the POTS system. I have lived in homes that had frequent power outages, but I have also lived in areas with rock solid power but flaky POTS.
They just want to go IP-based.
Some states, such as Conneticut, require that "lifeline" POTS must have better than 0.99999 availability. Think of the need to call 911 during a blackout. They key to achieving that has always been the electric power supply. POTS networks did that by supplying an average of 2 watts per subscriber via the copper wires, independent of the power grid.
In a VOIP network, you could still have copper wires for the last mile, and I guess still use less than 2 watts per user. But the digital circuit design to pass the power through coulda be tricky. 2 watts per user, 2 KW per 1000 users, 2 MW per million users. It isn't impossible, just damn difficult.
I don't believe that the FCC has the authority to override these state requirements.
Does anyone know what their plans are for availability?
My POTS line is buried.
It actually takes a lot more than a branch to take an aerial POTS line down. When trees and branches fall on the lines, they rarely break all the wires (if any). The power goes out because the lines short and trip the circuit. That doesn't happen to phone lines. The power lines are always on top for safety reasons.
IF (and it's a big if) someone is actually thinking in DC, they'll require the telcos to assure that the new technology is at least as reliable by design and implementation as the old technology (which is reliable because regulations forced the issue).
You may not "get it" is to why emphasizing the frequencies that contain the intelligibility helps, but that fact has been known since the 1940s or so. See any of the Navy Signal Corp or Bell Labs research. The deep harmonics of a male voice sound nice, and they make the speech harder to understand. Room reverberations sometimes make a BIG difference, because they effectively amplify one low frequency, the resonant frequency.
I have many hours of CDs from recording people making speeches. A notch filter always makes it easier to understand what they are saying. Sometimes. it makes a BIG difference.
It is probably orders of magnitude easier to intercept and store digital.
POTS is pre-80's monopoly crap and always has been. I'm getting sick and tired of worn out tape recorded messages of "You do not need to dial 910" or "You must first dial ". PSTN circuits are STUPID. Paying more than $20 a month (or even more than that) for crappy audio connections to someone else's voice mail (another example of retro-stupdity) or answering machine or (no I'm not kidding) a slow-as-shit fax machine is a particularly senile form of stupidity that only the FCC is capable of taking seriously much less still mandating. Cell phone minutes are getting dirt cheap by now. And yes, the "it works even when the power's off" is a pathetic argument.
The only good thing to say about POTS is it isn't nearly as asinine as the FCC....or the FAA, TSA, IRS. Three letter government agencies will be the slow but sure death of this country.
Cell towers can be powered by the same super-advanced technology that runs those super-reliable telephone switches. Lost your phone line? Try your cell phone. When a switch goes down, they have to repair and/or replace it. If a cell tower goes down, the cell phone company can deploy a temporary one. What, you mean you can still call people over a cell phone when a hurricane has taken down the lines going to your house? How is that possible?
A) yes. Pavarotti's voice is very pleasing. The richness of his voice, the multi-frequency sound, is much like he's singing harmony with himself. Reverb in the room makes it even more pleasing. All that extra sound makes it much harder to understand the words.
Think about this - which has a more pleasing sound, the Vienna Boys Choir or "you've got mail"? Which has a greater frequency range? Which is easier to understand? Counter-intuitively, the choir would be easier to understand if you REMOVED all voices except one. Extra timbre sounds pleasing, just as calligraphy looks pleasing. Removing all the extra swirls and stuff from calligraphy, leaving a simple typed font, makes it easier to read. Voices are the same way.
B) being in the same room with the speaker isn't an option, and that matters, but STILL yes. In a large room, with reverb, a speaker may be very hard to understand. Especially so if you're listening from 1/4 or 3/4 of the way toward the back of the room. A filtered recording can be much, much better, especially for certain room sizes. I'll show you why.
Gently blow a little air out of your mouth. You'll notice if makes a very faint sound. Then, imagine a flutist. The flutist is gently blowing out, which makes a sound. The flute is resonant at a certain frequency, so it amplifies that tone by 100X, making the sound loud rather than extremely faint. Rooms are resonant too. They greatly amplify sound at their resonant frequency and your brain filters that out. Specifically, larger rooms tend to resonate between 40-200Hz, which is deep bass. That resonantly amplified sound is "extra" sound that the speaker didn't intend to make, and it's often loud enough to make it hard to hear the words. The brain tries to filter it out, so you don't consciously notice it most of the time, but it's there, and it gets in the way. Electronically gating that sound below 500Hz allows you to hear the sounds the speaker intends you to hear.
Sinuses, the mouth, and the desk all resonate too. None of that is the frequency that the vocal cords are trying to make, so it's all "noise", which you can think of as "static", and it gets in the way.
Seriously, instead of arguing that your first thought must be right, look at any of the research. From at least the 1940s until the present day people have been researching to find the right balance between intelligibility (from narrow frequency range) vs the warm sound of a broader frequency range. From the early days of radio to today's voice codecs, specialists have been tuning for the best balance for a given use case. FM broadcast radio has different requirements than air traffic control radio, but anyone who has studied the subject for an hour knows that the basic trade-off is intelligibility / warmth / bandwidth. Warmer sound is harder to understand and takes more bandwidth.
That wasn't your first guess. That's cool. You're not stupid, though, so you're not going to refuse to learn anything, insisting that there isn't anything you didn't already know, are you?
Sure, they CAN be powered by a diesel backup, but they aren't.
That is probably the big reason the telcos are on the new technology kick, they can slip out from under public safety regulations requiring them to spend for reliability.
Twice the power has gone out in NYC since we had modern telephone stuff, once for Sandy and once in 2003. Celfones worked almost not at all, and they showed weaker signal strength so I speculate many towers went down rather than just a flood of calls. I don't think CATV internet worked, either. POTS phones of course worked perfectly without exception.
FTTH serves very large neighborhoods with unpowered passive equipment only. I think the fiber hut can serve almost as large an area as a small telephone exchange, but with far fewer wires entering it and chaos within it, because 32 - 256 houses are combined onto a single fiber through a combination of TDMA (PON) and FDMA (CWDM) using unpowered prisms and splitters. Perhaps the fiber hut can be powered as reliably as exchanges are currently powered since few of them cover such a large area. In sparsely-populated areas, the unpowered part of FTTH also has an insane reach, like >50km, which is much further than unpowered copper telephone wire.
CATV and FTTN are the same thing, just using different wire to enter your house. Most of the CATV network is fiber. That means the "node" has to be powered. In CATV it's a "head-end", and in FTTN it's a VDSL modem. Since these are almost as numerous as the passive splitters and prisms in CWDM/PON, and they all need power, the backup power isn't going to be as reliable. They'll probably pull it from the power grid and maybe throw in a battery if you're lucky. You can see the power supplies for CATV hanging on the poles, in my neighborhood large grey boxes marked "ANTEC" that connect to both power grid and cable.
tl;dr Australia fucked itself when they switched from FTTH to FTTN. If you can power the stuff inside your home somehow, FTTH is probably as reliable as grandpa's phone, but FTTN and CATV are not.
Why are they talking about this nonsense when we don't even have adequate internet service.
This country no longer has any great aspirations.