WSJ: Prepare To Hang Up the Phone — Forever

retroworks writes: "Telecom giants AT&T and Verizon Communications are lobbying states, one by one, to hang up the plain, old telephone system, what the industry now calls POTS — the copper-wired landline phone system whose reliability and reach made the U.S. a communications powerhouse for more than 100 years. Is landline obsolete, and should be immune from grandparents-era social protection? The article continues, 'Last week, Michigan joined more than 30 other states that have passed or are considering laws that restrict state-government oversight and eliminate "carrier of last resort" mandates, effectively ending the universal-service guarantee that gives every U.S. resident access to local-exchange wireline telephone service, the POTS. (There are no federal regulations guaranteeing Internet access.) ... In Mantoloking, N.J., Verizon wants to replace the landline system, which Hurricane Sandy wiped out, with its wireless Voice Link. That would make it the first entire town to go landline-less, a move that isn't sitting well with all residents."

Comments

Sure, Just Require Universal Cell Service

[Fulminata]

As soon as they can guarantee reliable cell service to everyone, they can be allowed to cease providing land line service to everyone.

It is the single most reliable piece of tech

[Anonymous Coward]

we use daily. Why throw it away?

Re:It is the single most reliable piece of tech

[arfonrg]

Because it works well (especially in emergencies) but isn't a cash cow.

Re:It is the single most reliable piece of tech

[adolf]

We were without power here for over a week after the Derecho a few years ago...this led to some fun (and very hot) experimentation. Some results:

- Most small-ish generators are loud, a bitch to maintain (a synthetic oil change every 30 hours? if you insist...), loud, expensive to fuel, loud, and difficult to fuel at first until (some) gas stations had proper gensets brought in from out-of-state, and loud.

- Cell service never blinked. Whatever they were doing for backup power, be it regular fuel delivery or natural gas, was working fine.

- That with a cheap (less-than-$20) unregulated solar panel from Lowes and the car charger for my Android phone (which accepts up to 24VDC according to its label), I was able to keep more than one phone going continuously even on a mostly-cloudy day just by putting the solar panel in an unshaded window. They charged normally (ie: in an hour or so), and the charge lasted about as long as it normally would (24 hours or so). (I learned all of this because of generators being loud and sleep being useful.)

- Our VDSL line never dropped. It never even thought about it, according to its accumulated stats. The modem/router/gateway/whatever-widget has a perfectly reasonable battery in its external DC power supply, which would get opportunistically charged whenever the generator was running (usually a just few hours/day to charge batteries for lights and make ice to keep the beer cold, though there was some running of dishwashers and window ACs as well). (Interestingly, the only reason it has its own battery is because we initially ordered it with a VOIP phone line. If we'd ordered just Internet, it would have died as soon as the power did.)

Our provider (Deathstar) had gensets at each VRAD cabinet, humming away quietly 24/7. Most of these were VERY shiny trailer-mounted rigs, but I did spot a couple of smaller portable ones. And I did my part, too, by opening up my AP and renaming it to "Free Wifi for Storm Victims" -- which actually served a fairly big area, since the 2.4GHz spectrum was remarkably interference-free. ;)

By extension of all of this, I can quite safely assume that if I still had POTS, I'd have had a functional dialtone during that entire time: The CO plainly had power (and was built to withstand a war), and the VRAD cabinets (which also terminate some POTS lines these days) had power, and everything was proven to have connectivity....despite most of the telephone pairs and backbone fiber being overhead in these parts, and -lots- of trees down everywhere.

I got through that storm with multiple forms of uninterrupted communication just fine, just by using crap that I had laying around. I'd have done it just as well without a generator (which itself was just a lucky break), between the cheap solar panel and multiple vehicles and an inverter and charged SLAs and CFL lights that can run from them directly, full-conversion sinewave UPSs, and other stuff that I've accumulated just because I'm a geek.

And that, I guess, is the point: Even if one form of communication failed (multiple cell tower failure, OR VDSL failure), I'd still have been a happy camper without power. Me. Just me.

I have thus demonstrated that I, myself, don't need POTS. In my neighborhood.

But then, this is /., and I am therefore not normal. I also live in in a small city in mostly-rural Ohio where I have a fair variety of communication options and just enough density that a little bit of work on a provider's part will light up hundreds/thousands of people instead of dozens...or 1.

A 15-minute drive will take me to areas that are not so-blessed, and these folks still need POTS: The local loops are tens-of-miles long and can't support *DSL, there is no cable, cellular service (while normally quite good) is often served by a singular tower with redundant zero overlap, and any notion of "bandwidth" comes from an 802.11-based WISP which also has zero redundancy.

These folks a

Re:Fine, get rid of POTS, give us Net Neutrality

[artor3]

So we give up something we've had for years, and in exchange we get to keep something we've had for years? And what happens when they come back in five years saying Net Neutrality is just too much of a burden? What do we give up in ransom next?

Re:Wow, that was so full of stupid...

[dryeo]

I REAL capitalism, when you screw over your customers, they leave you and go to the competition. In fake capoitalism (read government controlled), you're pretty much the only game in town and have a protected monopoly and can screw your customers with impunity.... Kinda like the current utilities system we have.

In real capitalism, you make sure there is no competition left before you screw over your customers. Being good capitalists does mean using any means to destroy your competition and government is a good tool, fairly cheap and well armed.

Re:Fine, get rid of POTS, give us Net Neutrality

[Mashiki]

You guys in the US have had net neutrality for years? News to me. I thought you had this watered down thing where the ISP's along with major peers were giving the thin veneer of that, while saying they're not shaping traffic while slapping in sandvine boxes all the while. I know that it's what Rogers, Bell and Telus were doing in Canada for quite awhile until the CRTC, Industry Canada and the Feds smacked them around.

Re: Wow, that was so full of stupid...

[Simon Brooke]

In real capitalism, where the government doesn't prevent the development of monopolies, there is no competition to go to when you get fucked over.