Ummm.... no tech companies? Let's see... Nortel Networks has their largest Enterprise Voice design center in Belleville. That's where all that nice CallPilot, Meridian and CallServer code comes out of.
By the way, DSL and Cable have been availble for over 2 years.
smithdm3 babbled: Today's phones (aside from cordless) are powered from the CO and hence a power outage in the customer premise doesn't cut off the customer calling for help.
Ironica kindly responded: I assume you meant cellular, not cordless. Cordless phones are the ones that are guaranteed not to work in a power outage, since the base station needs power to transmit to the phone.
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Actually... I did mean cordless, hence the "aside from cordless" from which you should infer that cordless phones aren't powered by the CO (due to their basestation's need for power as you stated)
smithdm3 babbled on: Tell me how it makes sense for any more than say 5-10% of the population (really... what's broadband penetration at?)to go out and plunk down $40-50 US (us Canucks don't pay as much...:P ) then pay someone like Vonage (who serves relatively small pockets of the US thus far (at least if you want your number to be local...) another $40 smackers!
Right.. if I'm grandma, uncle Ted, or mom&dad I'll stick with my $30 Baby Bell line
Ironica wittily replied: $30 huh?
When I actually used my landline, it was routinely $40-50 per month (including long distance, call waiting, etc... which are included in the $40 from Vonage). Currently, we pay around $85/month for our phone line... and $65 of that is "enhanced" DSL. That's $20/month for a phone that we spend more time talking to wrong numbers on than anything else. We'd probably do away with it entirely if my husband's cellular got better reception here. In my old apartment, I didn't even have a handset hooked up, and had the cheapest measured-rate service with no frills available from PacBell (which is cheaper than Verizon, the other big player in the LA residential market). I paid $53 and change per month, and the DSL portion was $39.95. (No, there was NO WAY to get DSL without getting phone service. And I didn't have a TV, so cable modem wouldn't have been cheaper.)
So if I was in the habit of using a landline for my calls, I'd probably jump at $40/month including everything, as would a lot of people... if only to get rid of their phone company (some aren't bad, but some are atrocious).
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So, things are bit different here North of the border. I have a Rogers cable modem (though both ADSL and a cable modem are quite comparable in price) and pay around $45 Cdn (30US) for it, a cell phone with which I have 250 minutes/month domestic (either local or long distance in Canada and the US) from Bell Mobility that runs $60 Cdn (40US) and a Bell land line that costs me around $50 Cdn (33US) + my overseas calling. If I didn't make phone calls overseas I probably wouldn't have the land line, but it's long distance rate is much cheaper than my cell's, plus, we don't have the crazy cell packages yet that you guys do in the US, our competitors have been milking long distance and airtime all they can (even though there are 4 of them!).
Regardless, I feel for you. I work for a telecom vendor and believe me, getting an ILEC to buy something to evolve their network is near impossible. But that's just the way it is - maybe in the next year or so when their DSL margins (caution it's a 400KB pdf) start taking off things will be better.
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Ummm.... no tech companies? Let's see... Nortel Networks has their largest Enterprise Voice design center in Belleville. That's where all that nice CallPilot, Meridian and CallServer code comes out of. By the way, DSL and Cable have been availble for over 2 years.
smithdm3 babbled: Today's phones (aside from cordless) are powered from the CO and hence a power outage in the customer premise doesn't cut off the customer calling for help.
Ironica kindly responded: I assume you meant cellular, not cordless. Cordless phones are the ones that are guaranteed not to work in a power outage, since the base station needs power to transmit to the phone.
----
Actually... I did mean cordless, hence the "aside from cordless" from which you should infer that cordless phones aren't powered by the CO (due to their basestation's need for power as you stated)
smithdm3 babbled on: Tell me how it makes sense for any more than say 5-10% of the population (really... what's broadband penetration at?)to go out and plunk down $40-50 US (us Canucks don't pay as much... :P ) then pay someone like Vonage (who serves relatively small pockets of the US thus far (at least if you want your number to be local...) another $40 smackers!
Right.. if I'm grandma, uncle Ted, or mom&dad I'll stick with my $30 Baby Bell line
Ironica wittily replied: $30 huh?
When I actually used my landline, it was routinely $40-50 per month (including long distance, call waiting, etc... which are included in the $40 from Vonage). Currently, we pay around $85/month for our phone line... and $65 of that is "enhanced" DSL. That's $20/month for a phone that we spend more time talking to wrong numbers on than anything else. We'd probably do away with it entirely if my husband's cellular got better reception here. In my old apartment, I didn't even have a handset hooked up, and had the cheapest measured-rate service with no frills available from PacBell (which is cheaper than Verizon, the other big player in the LA residential market). I paid $53 and change per month, and the DSL portion was $39.95. (No, there was NO WAY to get DSL without getting phone service. And I didn't have a TV, so cable modem wouldn't have been cheaper.)
So if I was in the habit of using a landline for my calls, I'd probably jump at $40/month including everything, as would a lot of people... if only to get rid of their phone company (some aren't bad, but some are atrocious).
----
So, things are bit different here North of the border. I have a Rogers cable modem (though both ADSL and a cable modem are quite comparable in price) and pay around $45 Cdn (30US) for it, a cell phone with which I have 250 minutes/month domestic (either local or long distance in Canada and the US) from Bell Mobility that runs $60 Cdn (40US) and a Bell land line that costs me around $50 Cdn (33US) + my overseas calling. If I didn't make phone calls overseas I probably wouldn't have the land line, but it's long distance rate is much cheaper than my cell's, plus, we don't have the crazy cell packages yet that you guys do in the US, our competitors have been milking long distance and airtime all they can (even though there are 4 of them!).
Regardless, I feel for you. I work for a telecom vendor and believe me, getting an ILEC to buy something to evolve their network is near impossible. But that's just the way it is - maybe in the next year or so when their DSL margins (caution it's a 400KB pdf) start taking off things will be better.