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Grandma's Phone, DSL, and the Copper They Share (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: DSL is high-speed Internet that uses the same twisted pair of copper wire that still works with your Grandmother's wall-mounted telephone. How is that possible? The short answer is that the telephone company is cheating. But the long answer delves into the work of Claude Shannon, who figured out how much data could be reliably transferred using a given medium. His work, combined with that of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley (pioneers of channel capacity and the role noise plays in these systems), brings the Internet Age to many homes on an infrastructure that has been in use for more than a hundred years.
Did I accidentally wake up in 1999?
It's not a judgement on your method of communication, but a recognition that a telephone from 80 years ago will still work on the same system. Remarkable.
Would have been nice if DSL never existed, dial-up would be the norm and websites would not be bloated, no social media or other bullshit.
Instead companies keep profiting while not investing anything into upgrading the rotting copper.
Not everyone lives in a city.
I live in Chicago, in a GOOD neighborhood, and our options are cable and DSL. This "fiber" you speak of has not yet found its way to our particular back water.
Actually it won't. Not unless your grandmas phone was touch tone and 80 years ago it certainly wasn't.
I still keep a landline for emergency, it's never failed in 40 years.
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I mean this history lesson is fascinating, but really, I think most of /. knows how DSL works alongside voice on POTS.
Looks like the new owners of Slashdot are also failing to combat the biggest problem faced by the site for the last few years.
Junk making the front page that talks to me like I don't already work in IT or understand how common household technologies work.
Actually it won't. Not unless your grandmas phone was touch tone and 80 years ago it certainly wasn't.
You may not be able to place calls with a rotary phone any more, but you certainly can receive them. The system still works, its just the dialing methods have changed.
Cable is still copper and some areas have old plants that some of the big guys like Comcast are not really upgrading that much.
You may not be able to place calls with a rotary phone any more, but you certainly can receive them. The system still works, its just the dialing methods have changed.
Actually you can, atleast in the UK. Pulse dialling is still supported by the national phone provider.
Claude Shannon was truly one of the unrecognized geniuses of his time.
He was an amazingly brilliant man who got very little of the recognition he deserved. Virtually ALL modern-day communication depends directly on the algorithms and information theory practices he invented. He's quite rightly known as the "founding father of electronic communications age".
He was still alive when I was in tech school, quite literally a "living legend".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Not quite. Pulse dialing still works where I live.. and in fact there's an old rotary phone tucked away on a wall in one of the buildings at the university I work at and it still dials just fine. I'm guessing it's hooked into the old copper and not tied into the VoIP setup, but I thought they had moved all things to the VoIP network and cut the copper...
Either way, it works.
You actually can place calls with a rotary phone, you just use an electronic contact book that produced the tone sounds (or impulsions). These were common in the 90s, I guess nowadays you can find smartphone applications doing the same.
Let's not forget that there was also the option of running high speed internet over the power lines. It does mess with Ham operators signals, though, so is not widely adopted. But in areas where it is adopted, people seem pretty satisfied.
You could still play DTMF tones through the handset to dial the call, so it's just an extra tool required to place calls.
Forget twisted pair. I have hundreds of cable channels and a 25 Mbps internet all brought into my home with a single coaxial wire.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
You can in France too.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
And even if the local loop stayed up, I guarantee that long distance trunks have filled up or dropped plenty of times without you being aware
Even if the long distance trunks did drop, how is that the fault of the OP's landline? After Hurricane Wilma, when cell phone towers were either down or overwhelmed or had no power, my landline was still working. A lot of my neighbors had to borrow my phone. I even gave my next door neighbor an old handset to use at his house - he had DSL and his landline worked, but he didn't have a plain old telephone.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Actually it won't. Not unless your grandmas phone was touch tone and 80 years ago it certainly wasn't.
As long as grandma's phone didn't predate direct dialing, plenty of phone systems still support pulse dialing.
Many *MANY* years ago I was working as a software engineer at Philips Research in the early 1980's when they were looking into ISDN systems somewhat like DSL for the UK market - the business of sending anything over twisted pair copper is a nightmare. I wasn't directly working on the electronics (I was doing software) - but I shared an office with people who did...and they had a heck of a time characterizing the wires that their signals had to go down.
As I recall, the problems mostly come where one wire is spliced into another. Much of this infrastructure was put in the 1900's and it's horrible. Sometimes wires are just twisted together and capped, sometimes twisted and taped, sometimes twisted and just left open to the elements, sometimes they are soldered. Sometimes the places where the wires are joined gets wet when it rains. Sometimes the tightness of the twisted wire connection depends on the ambient temperature. The amount of cross-talk between wires is all over the map as different kinds of insulation was used (and much of it has degraded over the years). At the subscriber end, there were all kinds of phones being used - plus ugly stuff like "Party lines" (where two houses share a phone line!) that had been abandoned leaving extra wires in the ground that were still connected to the network.
All of those things affect the ability to get a decent amount of bandwidth down a wire that was never designed to do it. So the electronics has to be smart about the signal being reflected at each splice down the line and causing 'echoes', and designing affordable circuitry to detect and cancel those echoes was a nightmare. The amount of attenuation you'll get is all over the map - everything has to self- adjust and monitor to give it any chance of working.
So, as poor as DSL can be - it's a miracle it works at all over crappy old telephone wires.
-- Steve
www.sjbaker.org
For an 80 year old phone it half works, for a 20 year old phone it completely works, but there isn't any particular reason we'd want it to still work.
I guarantee the US can, too, as it's all computers now.
My dad refused to give up his rotary (a phone company rental bakelite black, at that) because the phone company continued to want to charge extra for "premium" touch tone service, even long after it was actually a drag on them.
Last time I had a land line, around 2010, it was rotary-only, so whenever I had to use a menu, as to pay a bill, after dialing I would switch the phone to touch tone.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
These days in my country at least the router/modem provided by the ISP has a connector to plug an old (or new) land phone in, but it goes over VoIP. You have an RJ11 to phone plug adapter if needed.
"Real" POTS is something you would have to look for, likely from the former monopoly ("historical") operator. Or maybe in a few areas left where things still have to go through the historical operator even when your ISP is something else.
BTW grandma has had a DECT cordless for a while. Also, a permanently seated laptop (where there used to be a videotex terminal) that still feels new even though it's perhaps eight/nine year old. Grandma seems to keep stuff in amazing working order and cleanliness (e.g. a vacuum from the 70s) not necessarily clinging to old stuff. Why throw away something that isn't even 20-year-old?, lol.
Interesting, not sure where the UK or France come into it but still interesting trivia.
Then you neighbor wasn't aware of VOIP or the evils of net neutrality have kicked and the telco is making voip services suck. If you have functional internet you should have voice communication, including the option of termination to phone #. If that fails in a truly epic disaster, that's why we all have radios.
I still keep a landline for emergency, it's never failed in 40 years.
Of course, the flip side of that is that you're likely paying a significant monthly bill to keep that reliable land line active.
My building's two front-door call boxes were each using a land line for their call-up function, and they were costing the HOA $65/month each. I switched them over to VOIP, now they cost the HOA about 25 cents per month each (not including the $23/month DSL service, since we had that set up anyway for unrelated reasons).
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
We have to dial 1 to make a long distance call and have to dial the area code even for local calls but pulse dialing still works here in oklahoma.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Yes but lets be clear, there is no technical or practical barrier to keeping you that fiber. Fiber links span the globe are work over ridiculously long range. There isn't even a practical or technical barrier keeping it from most places called the last mile. The true last mile is nowhere in the continental US it's the arctic and at sea even there nothing is actually blocking long flying fleets of blimps delivering wireless that can provide much lower latency links than Sat connections.
The problems aren't technical, they aren't even financial, the problems are major providers splitting the nation in such a way that there are only two at most in any particular place competing as minimally as possible and with as little overlap as possible because there is a higher profit in splitting the map than a race to max service for bottom pricing. Why upgrade infrastructure when people have no choice but to buy what you are selling for what has become an essential commodity?
To add to what others have said you can still make calls. I have two rotaries at home that can still dial out. :)
We both had DSL. Neither of us had "functional internet". POTS still worked, but my neighbor didn't realize he could use the phone line even if the internet didn't work.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Pulse dialing still works here with Verizon FiOS Digital Voice.
My grandmas are dead, you insensitive clod.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Not unless your grandmas phone was touch tone
Pulse dialing still works nearly everywhere. Indeed, some people are skilled enough to do pulse dialing by flashing the hook the required number of times.
Like me.
Get on my level.
--
BMO
HOWTO: http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/...
In many places in the U.S., pulse dialing still works.
I don't think "the last mile" means what you think it means.
And I stopped reading bullshit article right there...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That's a neat trick since those words weren't used in the article.
Twisted? Luxury!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No, but it was used in the original post reporting the article...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I disagree.
Not everyone here studied this stuff. Some of us are self taught, or are experienced in other fields (software, systems admin) ...etc.
So, having stuff like this is enriching to some here, and relevant to the site ...
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I don't know where you live, but here in Canada me and my father tried a 30 years old rotary phone on his landline a month ago and it worked perfectly, to our amazement.
But I have serious doubts it would work on my "land" line, since it's really just a cell base station with a SIM card.
Try it! Library of Babel
Indeed, some people are skilled enough to do pulse dialing by flashing the hook the required number of times.
Yes, I used to do this 40 years ago when UK phone charges were sky high and parental dial locks were common. Didn't really take much skill, just a little practice and guessing that zero was ten taps.
I use your grandma's phone
The speed's incredible
I'm downloading Game Of Thrones
From that copper in the wall
It was a great trick for getting a call out from the occasional phone in a semi-public location intended for answer-only with no dialing mechanism.
Read the article. It's explained, there.
Does 6mbps actually qualify as high-speed anymore ? I thought Congress/FCC decided it had to be like 50 mbps to be called high speed ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The phrase is sort of used in two ways. As I used above, to refer to connectivity to less populated areas and to refer to the final leg to the premise... Obviously there is nothing prohibiting running fiber directly to the premise, there is fiber terminating on premise at my home right now.
Generally speaking, when people are talking about limits on broadband in the US we are talking about later as applied to the former. There isn't even a beginning to a valid excuse for a Telco not having fiber on "the last mile" in every residence in a densely populated area.
Verizon firmly established that it was easily accomplished with FIOS the map splitting I mentioned above is why everyone else hasn't needed to do the same to be competitive. While FIOS provides a low latency and stable connection up to 500mbps. In the same token, the reason 500mbps is so expensive from Verizon is also that same map splitting (combined with Verizon polymorphing between being a phone company and ISP depending on what regulations suit them). Instead of multiple providers competing on that fiber infrastructure driving the prices down and the speeds up (500 is an arbitrary cap) Verizon simply has to beat one competitor at most in any given area.
The phone lines are also broadband in a sense. The DSL doesn't have to travel far, just up to the closest phone company station. So they don't have to stay within the narrower band used by voice but can use most of the bandwidth of the twisted pair. Thus it's "broad" band, or at least "broader" band relative to POTS. Of course you have to worry about other problems as well than just the band width, the old telephone wires have lots of junctions and branches even within a house and so it has to deal with reflections. And sometimes there may not be twisted pair inside the home but parallel wires instead.
Today many people define broadband in terms of speed and because basic ADSL is so much slower than high end ISP offerings it's possible to forget that it's also broadband. Such as how many people interchangeably use "bandwidth" to mean end-to-end speed even though that's not accurate. Of course what "broad" means can vary.
But literally the *same* wires inside the house have been used for pre-rotary dialing as well as DSL. Though of course DSL speeds depend a lot on quality of wires outside the home.
Most modern phones require external power now. Even the cordless phones will have a base station that needs to be plugged in. If you really want back up service in an outtage it might be handy to have an older phone in storage.
This is pure history.
There is a town in Maine that, not too many years ago, still had a human operator that did worked at a switchboard. It was a bit of a modernized board but it was kept around for quite a while just to for the historical aspect. It has since been eliminated, it was a tiny tourist town with something like 30 full-time residents. There was a bit of fanfare when it closed as it was the last one in the world.
That said, I've mentioned this before, I have DSL. I paid to get the lines put in and for them to add a CO so that the signal would reach. It also enabled my neighbors to get online and the folks past me chipped in a bit to repay me for paying for the last mile's wire to their house. The telco gave me a pretty good deal on it and I only had to pay for the materials. I've since looked and it looks like I paid about the right amount for the parts.
Anyhow, I elected to use DSL for a reason. For close to the same amount of money, I could have have had the cable company run cable out. They'll do it if you pay them the installation fee. They were right around the same price. However, I still went with DSL and I'm usually *really* happy that I made that choice. As it's over the phone line, it has some added legal protections and the PUC has some teeth. Maine's PUC isn't all that bad, actually.
I've had regular speed increases though I think I'm at a limit right now. I've never paid an increased rate. I have three, physically distinct, business class lines but pay the residential rate. They give me hardware but I never use it - even though they make repeated requests and offer to send an installer out to help me out. I get 14-15 down and 1.5 up. I'm not home but I've used some ~250 GB of bandwidth on one line. I've one that does nothing but run torrents. The normal monthly usage for the first one mentioned? That's often up in the TB range. It is sometimes higher.
If my ISP bugs me, I can call and get a new one tomorrow. They have to provide service, pretty much a little bit above cost, to any company that is willing to "service" my area. I've tested this and used an out of State ISP before. I can have multiple ISPs at one time - I've done so by accident. If I switch, my service switches seamlessly. As it is the phone line, they're obligated to best effort repairs. I've had trees knock my lines down - on the ground, multiple times, and I still have reasonable throughput.
I torrent all day, every day, to some pretty insane levels of traffic. They've never said a word - if they did, I'd boot them to the curb. I can get an ISP in Hong Kong (really) if I want, so long as they're willing to provide my support and pay a part of their payment to the telephone company. I'm not home but I'm still torrenting everything - sometimes I stream it to my current location. I keep a documentary streaming nearly 24/7. I have three static IP addresses that I don't pay for - they'll give me three more and I can have multiple IP addresses pointing at the same line. At the same time, I can change my IP address manually and get a new one almost instantly.
I've tried a few different ISPs but the results are much the same. I stick with Fairpoint as they give me the business class for residential pricing as I'm the line owner, so to speak. At least I understand that's the reasoning. However, I've gotten pissed at 'em before and kicked them to the curb, putting them in the penalty box for a year seems to really improve customer service. It's a small area but I don't just have a local billing office - I have a fully authorized service agent who's also an engineer and does on-site stuff if I need something (I don't). However, I have his office phone number and he's in there M-F from 8-5 (hour lunch). Sometimes there's someone else in his office, physically. He has all the power but he's a level 2 tech. I know both of their names and go in and see them at the office. I bring them coffee and donuts and they've both been to my house while not on company time.
I could go on... But, yeah... When I read the Comcast, AT
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That's kind of amusing. My home's 24 miles from the village and like 60-something from a town. But the village is getting fiber which means they'll be coming partway down the highway leading to my house. It's not a certainty, yet... But, I'm told there's a "good chance" that I'll have fiber available by this autumn. They're not removing the copper so (and I know this may sound odd) I'll probably just keep the DSL.
When a tree falls on copper, it usually still works. That's not true with fiber and they're running it on the poles. I've learned a few things since I retired to the area. One of them is the appreciation of reliability. So long as copper is an option, I'll probably keep it. Now, I may keep just one DSL hookup and switch to fiber but I think I'll keep my DSL for as long as I am able to.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It doesn't matter if there is no practical barrier to fiber. Profiteering ISPs are just as much a barrier as physical distance, since at the end of the day, you still don't have fiber to your home. And without major changes to the regulatory landscape, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
Actually it will, and does. My very old rotary phone, pulse code and all, metal dial and all, works fine incoming and outgoing. So too the DSL, Netflix, Prime, torrents etc...even my Republic Moto X, with automatic wi-fi offloading of cell voice, text, SMS and data all via that ballsy little POTS line that's been supporting squirrels since my parents were kids.
If it weren't for the greediness of cable companies, I'd jump right onto that. I'll never forgive one for continuing to bill more 3 months after I canceled service, and dinged my credit for 7 years because I refused to pay for their billing error.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
LOL. Is there an app for that? I was always amazed by those modems that you put the handset onto some microphone thing? (Slightly before my time, so I only saw them in the movies, I started with a 2400 baud ISA modem...)
Audacity (the audio editor) even has a built in tone generator that will do DTMF.
"HUH? In context, here, in this thread, on this discussion, it's OBVIOUSLY being used in the "from the provider's building to my house" way! Why are you trying to muddle the conversation? And, I haven't even HEARD of your other "way" of use."
Ummm... the great grand father post this entire conversation thread is under...
"Not everyone lives in a city. Even places that have "broadband" have pockets where DSL is the only option.
Just because you live in Seattle and have gigabit fiber doesn't mean the rest of the world does."
I'm sorry, believe me I realize how easy it is in Slashdot land to lose track, but I do believe in this case you are the one who has lost track.
Replying to your other points as a separate post here because while disputing the overall theme of the thread and the meaning of "the last mile" your comments are targeted at what I'm referring to, specifically the termination to premise (with the implication of the infrastructure to back it) in less densely populated areas.
"Until you have actually worked in this industry, you should probably keep your opinions to yourself, as they are showing your ignorance."
Currently, I work at the major enterprise level in datacenters. I don't actually run cable anymore although I do oversee such projects. Earlier in my career I worked in the trenches trucking around a tiny town of 12,000 pop in rural Illinois and the 150 mile radius around it of towns and "cities" with populations of 50 and up.
"Do you have any fucking idea how expensive it is to start putting infrastructure into the ground? Any idea AT ALL?"
Really expensive. Which is why telcos have been given tens of billions of dollars in tax funds to enable them to do it for free. Money they pocketed rather than invested in infrastructure.
"Here's a valid excuse: the copper in these areas is still in good shape and is providing a service that is obviously popular enough to continue as is. There isn't a mass exodus and loss of customers forcing the company in question to replace what is working with something better."
Exactly, just as I said, they are milking everything they can out of existing infrastructure. The service is popular because they are the only game in town. Either they claim to be an internet provider (cable company) and aren't required to allow competitors to provide service on their infrastructure or they are a telco and are required to do exactly that. Some companies like Verizon switch hats at will, using the advantages of being a telco to run lines without having to negotiate with property owners and/or cut the red tape in cities while putting on the ISP hat to prevent others from using the infrastructure they installed while wearing the telco hat.
Even for a company that is not doing what Verizon is, there is active collusion among the major telcos and providers to divide up the map to minimize actual competition. Basically the target is to have most of the map covered by two providers so they can't be called a monopoly, although especially in rural areas you can in many cases get away with only one offering service or the other to a specific address/zipcode/etc while claiming there are two providers in the larger general area and therefore competition. Other than this, no active collusion is needed, it is not in the interest of any of the major providers to actively race to the bottom providing minimum oversubscription, net neutrality, and the maximum possible bandwidth at the lowest profitable price point. It is in their interest to adopt an "if it aint broke don't fix it" model and discounts on modem rentals, contract discounts, etc.
Of course the service is popular, internet is an essential commodity to be competitive in the modern world and when your choice is between nothing and inferior out of date model, people choose the inferior out of date model. Hell, in a very rural area where you don't know that money to update everything has been provided time and time again to these services and enjoyed a service which is dramatically better many people might even believe what they have is good.
"It's not like AT&T and Verizon execs have lunch and divide up the suburbs of Atlanta. That's quite the conspiracy theory you're living under."
Actually that is exactly what happens. They divide up and trade around territory with the deliberate end of "avoiding anti-competition" laws and the FCC helps them do so. They are given tax money to build and maintain the most modern delivery infrastructure possible and competitors are supposed to be able to purchase transport at the telcos own wholesale cost to provide competing service over that same tax payer purchased infrastructure.
I really
That isn't really a common thing. It's as likely to happen out as at home and since everyone else also has a phone I can just use one of theirs during the 15min it takes to get mine back to operational.
But for the sake of argument lets say I live alone, there are no backup phones or batteries. I still don't see why I'd rely on an old school POTS line to my home rather than VOIP. Even if I want to use an old phone I can toss up a free PBX like Asterix which will create the illusion of using POTS but will just turn around and run my call out through a VOIP system. It's a fuzzy grey layer where POTS ends but I think it is fair to say you don't have POTs anymore when the POTS device converts to digital before leaving the premise.
Exactly, here we are, on this USian website, developed by USians, primarily populated by USians, run by a US company, paid for with US targeted advertising.
I for one am extremely glad this site has attracted attention and has regular followers and users from international communities and wouldn't have it any other way. But the fact remains this is a US site and therefore it is perfectly valid and correct to an unqualified generalization can and should be assumed to refer to the US.
Such as, "We have the right to free speech and bear arms, the Constitution protects it!" Because of the context, the comment being made on a US site, a poster making such a comment is perfectly correct in omitting that he is referring to the US and a reader would be incorrect in suggesting otherwise.
All stories, commentary, discussion of policy, legal matters, etc are by default referring to the same in the US unless someone indicates otherwise. It's really no different than reading an article in the Guardian. Unless they've specified otherwise, when they say something like "Obviously you aren't allowed to go walking about he streets with a firearm" we can safely assume they are referring to in the UK and have no need to clarify this sweeping statement does not necessarily apply elsewhere..
So in short, while it is interesting to know the state of things in France and the UK and an informative contract to point out, when someone says "pulse dialing is no longer supported" They are correctly referring to support in the US not making a generalization about the support elsewhere in the world.
My point is The Guardian is a UK site, Al Jazherra is an arab site, and Slashdot is a US site. All enjoy and benefit from an international audience and their viewpoints. But by default, unless otherwise qualified, all gerneral and unqualified states should be assumed to refer to the place where the site is hosted and the primary target audience. When not intended in this way the poster should actually then qualify Correcting the speaker puts you in the wrong, not them.
Sorry if any of that is incoherent babbling, I'm dozing at the keys.
Cool. Most phone networks in the US have dropped support for pulse dialing so you are the exception.
That's cool though. I miss impressing girls by dialing to order a pizza using the hang-up button on the phone.
Nice, you have your own personal trolls.
Anyway, confirmed this feature in Audacity, good to know. Of course, it's been awhile since I've seen a landline to dial through but I suppose it likely works to dial #'s and join a meeting using a smartphone's speaker system.
That is how it should be with all internet service. The issue is that the lines run out to your house should be fiber because tax dollars have already paid the telcos to run those lines, you shouldn't have had to pay a cent individually. The telcos just take the money and keep it rather than upgrading infrastructure.
What has begun to happen is that they use their monopoly/duopoloy granted status to enjoy immunity on state and local levels, letting them run their cables over/under private property whether the owner likes it or not. And of course to get all those tax dollars for upgrading infrastructure (which don't come with strings requiring them to actually use said dollars to perform those upgrades or time table requirements). Once the infrastructure is in place, as a telco they'd be required to let other companies use that infrastructure and offer service at the same wholesale price they charge to their own provider arm. So they take off their telco hats, put on their ISP hats and ISPs are NOT required to let other companies utilize the infrastructure. A lot of the old DSL like yours comes from before they learned this trick so there are competing providers although the telcos come up with schemes providing volume discounts and the like to do their best to avoid those providers actually getting the service at the same cost their provider arm does.
It seems simple to me. Tax payers pay for the FIBER lines to the premise, the telcos are basically contractors hired to implement and maintain said lines. They should be selling that capacity at the same rate to their provider arm, me, you, or any other business who wants to compete in the ISP game. The performance should be a race to the top with the price being a race to the bottom. I somehow think you'd quickly find a reliable net neutral 1g up/down service for $20-50/mo fairly quickly in that world of how it is supposed to work.
Did this all the time. In truth I remember the announcement that carriers were going to remove pulse dialing but maybe there was public backlash against it. I'm not sure when the last time I saw an regular telephone was so I can't say I've tried it.
Hell, there used to be some payphones that combinations of tricks with the operator and the ability to pulse dial allow you to get free calls. It was also a handy trick in situations were you were only allowed one phone call for awhile.
I understand that taxes went to pay for them to upgrade. However, I'm not sure that it'd be reasonable for me to expect that to include my location. Asking it to include every American citizen would be a bit crazy, don't you think? I'm sure I'm close to the edge of what is reasonable and what is not reasonable.
I am not as remote as a loner in Alaska that flew in to his camp/house six years ago and has only been able to get back to civilization twice since then (though that does have a certain level of appeal for me). I am, on the other hand, on the side of a mountain in Maine. I am about 24 miles from the village and it's gotta be something like another 45 miles to a real town. It's a lot further to a city.
If I weren't likely to be getting fiber, I'd probably just shrug. I'm not really sure where I am on the "reasonable scale."
Oh, ha! I just double checked. I didn't add that in my earlier post. I'm actually probably going to get fiber at my house before this next winter. No, I can't tell you who told me that. ;-) However, it's a 'high probability.'
At any rate, I probably am getting access to fiber. It's going to be strung along the telephone poles so it's going to go down. Oh, that's not a question. It's going to go down - and probably frequently. I've had fiber access before - just not at my home in Maine. Fiber doesn't like being bent like it's going to be bent when the trees fall on it - and it's a certainty that trees are going to fall on it. They'll trim them as much as they reasonably can.
Err... I'll not give you exact directions but use Google maps to look around 24 miles from Rangeley, Maine. In some areas, we do have a wide berth for our utility lines. It's not quite enough, a tree hits it every year. That doesn't happen so much up near my way - it happens closer to town where they're less able to cut a giant swath of trees out without people frowning on it.
So, I'll be keeping DSL. I already have three disparate DSL connections. I'll probably run some of my own fiber, set up a trunk, and connect to that with a DSL failover automated in hardware. I'll probably drop one of the lines, maybe two.
But, what's reasonable? I mean, should I expect them to bring fiber to my particular house because they got some money (I think they got to keep a tax that was paid on phone/internet service?) at no additional cost to me? How about if I'm that guy out in Alaska with zero infrastructure at all? I'm not sure where I fit - it's already pretty much established that I'll have access to fiber soon but, if I didn't, should I be obligated to it? I'm kinda far out in the middle of nowhere. There are six residencies in my "neighborhood" (spanning many miles) and only four of them want 'net access. They've got DSL and I'm pretty sure zero of them will upgrade to fiber when it is an option. There are two who want nothing at all - one doesn't have a phone and isn't interested in the 'net and the other one doesn't have power or even running water and they're both by choice.
There's about three miles out of the village that might get some users and then there's pretty much nothing until until you get to my "neighborhood." Oh, I've paid some serious taxes. I've paid more in taxes than many people will earn in their lifetime. But, what's reasonable? Where is that line drawn?
I ask because I don't really know. Buggered if I know. I'm sure there's a reasonable and unreasonable point (fiber is expensive and it's really expensive to maintain it up here) and I'm not quite sure if I'm past the unreasonable point or not. I am not even the most remote. There are people, in my State, who are more remote than I am with *miles* of phone line that may have not been really touched in 50 years except to do repairs. What does unreasonable look like?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
"Oh, I've paid some serious taxes. I've paid more in taxes than many people will earn in their lifetime. But, what's reasonable? Where is that line drawn?
I ask because I don't really know. Buggered if I know. I'm sure there's a reasonable and unreasonable point (fiber is expensive and it's really expensive to maintain it up here) and I'm not quite sure if I'm past the unreasonable point or not. I am not even the most remote. There are people, in my State, who are more remote than I am with *miles* of phone line that may have not been really touched in 50 years except to do repairs. What does unreasonable look like?"
There IS a point where unreasonable does become a thing and it sounds like you are taking about a location where people have moved because they don't want to be connected to the world. Internet has reached the point where it is essentially a utility. If you don't have fast access you don't access to a full compliment of education resources for your children. When you ask questions about the world you just continue not knowing the answers. When politicians rile people up about issues only the uneducated and uninformed could possibly believe people don't have access to information and remain uninformed when they vote for those people. In the modern age there is no excuse for people who might well vote getting their information from blatantly misleading and bias sources like CNN and Fox News.
Like it or not internet is a utility. I agree there is a reasonable line, some parts of Maine and most certain other remote mountain areas are likely unreasonable for any sort of "wired" connection. But fiber isn't more expensive than copper, it's actually less expensive. Copper is a semi-precious metal worth too much to make pennies from and all the copper pulled down can be recycled. Fiber is made from the second most common element in the earths crust. Fiber doesn't suffer from electromagnetic interference so no "noisy" lines and it be put in runs up to 1500 miles whereas copper requests powered junctions on the order of yards. Fiber is much cheaper than copper and much cheaper to maintain. The cost is just putting it in to begin with. And will be the medium for future technologies for the foreseeable future, trying to squeeze something more out of copper a magical dance that has been impressive but is definitely at it's end. So, if it is reasonable to run any sort of utility line out to you, I see no reason it isn't reasonable to run fiber lines. Especially when you and other americans have already paid for it. I'd say so long as there is a place we've already paid them to run fiber to that they haven't run it, then it's more reasonable to run that fiber than for them to pocket the money. And no, it's not just tax cuts on profits from phone bills, the telcos were given over twenty billion dollars in tax credits not just deductions.
There are places where even that isn't reasonable. At that point yes there are sat links, they suck but they work. But there are also designs for tough blimps that are a little closer to earth and efficient enough to float for 6 months at a time. A good sized network of those flying all over the place and they get crazy line of sight.