There is a book laying on my desk with the names of more customers of the "dying landline industry" in just one city than the total of VoIP customers nation and probably world wide.
Who said anything about VoIP? In many nations cellular users outnumber landline users. VoIP won't kill the landline industry (though it won't help it). Wireless will.
I'm sure they can, but there isn't a published standard for it as far as I'm aware, so they'd be building it from scratch. UMA/GMA has been around for awhile.
AT&T could implement a UMA network pretty easily but I doubt they will, as it would undercut their landline business.
I've never had an issue with cell call quality. Perhaps that's because I live in a suburban/rural area and they don't have to resort to tricks like slashing the codec down to squeeze more people onto limited spectrum. My cell sounds just as good as any landline or VoIP phone that I've ever used.
Where are you that you can detect a noticeable difference when using a cell phone? What provider are you using?
It sounds way better than cellphones so the current generation see it as great
That part I've never understood. My cellphone works just about everywhere. If you are a big talker and can shift some of your calling to nights & weekends (easy to do when all of your friends have cell phones too) then it often winds up costing you $0.015 - $0.03/minute to use a cell phone to make all your calls. Toss in the fact that you can use it just about anywhere and you aren't fighting your neighbors torrent of the Sopranos for bandwidth and I don't see what advantage there is to VoIP.
T-Mobile's UMA offering seems like a good combination of the two, though the non-promotional price of $20 is a little steep. The promotional price of $9.99 seems about right. In any case, I doubt we'll see anybody else roll it out in the US anytime soon. Sprint is probably the only other provider that would offer it (AT&T and Verizon never would because it would undercut their landline business) and they can't because it's based on GSM.
back to having a cell phone as my primary line (which is also not from Verizon or AT&T).
Look at T-Mobile's HotSpot @ Home service. It's basically GSM over IP (voice, data, SMS, etc), with the added advantage that you can do seemless handoffs between IP and GSM, i.e: start a call at home, walk out the door and it switches to GSM. I'm loving it. $39.99 for 1,000 cellular minutes (with nights & weekends), + $9.99 for the HotSpot add-on. I basically have unlimited calls. Plus I can use wi-fi in any area where there isn't a good GSM signal.
T-Mobile doesn't have landline business in the United States so they don't have any reason to undercut their own offerings to keep a dying landline industry alive. And the best part is not giving your money to AT&T or Verizon.
Plus, it's not as if the cable company or telcos offering VOIP service have that much more control over the quality of their service either. They're still stuck with the same problems everyone else is in regard to Internet traffic.
They aren't stuck with any of the same problems if the traffic never leaves their own network. The cable outfit's VoIP packets may never leave the cable network itself, if they designed it so the VoIP->PSTN switch-over happens before their network edge. Ditto for the telcos. And quite a few of the telcos (Verizon and AT&T come to mind) are Tier 1 providers in their own right -- and could easily have end-to-end QoS for their own VoIP traffic.
Note: I'm not defending them or advocating for their service over Vonage or anybody else. Just pointing out the obvious. And for what it's worth, using T-Mo's @Home service (which isn't strictly VoIP, it's closer to GSM over IP), I haven't had any problems with my internet connection.
AT&T has two variations of "Pay As You Go". No contract, no commitment. One is $1.00 per day plus $0.10 per minute. The other is $0.25 per minute.
Yeah, and T-Mobile's is just $0.10/min with no daily fee and the minutes don't expire for 365 days. Gives you about 83 minutes a month for $8.30. They are basically the only one of the big-four that don't cripple their pre-paid option.
I don't consider that "price raping".
I also don't consider it usable for a landline replacement unless you barely talk on the phone. Some of us use our phones pretty frequently and pre-paid isn't cost effective for us.
You need to find more efficient ways to communicate. I don't know if you are spending all that time for business or personal needs, but either way...
So, because my calling patterns don't fall into something that would work with pre-paid service I need to find a more efficient way to communicate? WTF? How does that disprove my point that pre-paid service won't work for everybody?
Yes, perhaps I'm a phone-aholic, but I could have made that example with somebody who only uses 500 minutes a month (16 minutes a day). At ten cents a minute on T-Mobile prepaid (the cheapest one there is) that's still $50 a month. T-Mobile's 600 minute post-paid plan is $39.99 and you get nights and weekends to boot (find me a pre-paid service with nights and weekends). Or you could go with the 300 minute $29.99 plan with free nights and move 200 minutes to nights. Either way, the post-paid option is cheaper.
Either way, pre-paid is basically useless unless you barely use your cell phone. And at that, T-Mobile is the only one that isn't a complete rip-off. 10 cents a minute assuming you buy $100 worth of airtime. That's a fair deal. Everybody else is either 25 cents a minute (or more) or they charge you a daily fee every single time you use the phone.
I have never had to sign a contract for my phone.
*shrug*, with T-Mobile I signed a one year contract when I signed up with them. Got the same deal as I would have with a two year. Now if my phone dies I'll just buy a $30 replacement at Wally World (one of the to-go kits) without touching my contract.
You remind me of people who "cant" ride the bus because they "need" to get to the grocery store on a moment's notice at a random time every day.
You remind me of people who think their lifestyle choices automatically apply to everybody else without even considering the situation of the other person.
Getting a cell phone without signing anything is trivial. I have had prepaid service for a year now
Cool, I want to be cell-phone only so I don't have to deal with two numbers. Since it's my primary line, find me a pre-paid plan that's competitive. Counting nights and weekends I use about 2,500 - 3,000 minutes a month. On a post-paid plan of $39.99 (1k peak minutes/unlim n&w on T-Mobile) that's $0.013 a min for 3,000 minutes. Find me a pre-paid plan that's competitive with that.
Oh, that's right, you can't, because the pre-paid offerings are purposefully crippled to make them useless for anything but light use.
So, if you sign a cell phone contract, with a 14 day return policy, and on day 20 you get your bill and discover that they've overcharged you, you are a coward? Your options are basically:
Cancel and pay the $175-$200 fee. Pay the overcharges or dispute them.
Cancel and refuse to pay the $175-$200 fee. Buckle down for a fight over your credit report that you will probably lose and higher interest rates for the next seven years.
Sue them.
The game is tilted against the consumer in these scenarios. And I'm glad this ruling came down the way it did. It's not right that a contract can force you to give up your legal right to seek relief in court. And before any wise-ass comes back with "then don't sign it", try living with a cell phone, credit card, phone service, bank account, etc, etc, etc. They are all doing it!
Not over SSL, and they must have sent my personal info unencrypted over the internet at least 6 times during the sign up process. Sadly, I didn't notice this until a few weeks later when I was shuffling papers around.
Did it ever occur to you that's an internal webpage that runs on an (encrypted) VPN back to T-Mo's HQ?
Project Mercury Atronauts - Shepherd had to piss in is suit on the launch pad - no catheter, no "adult diapers"...
Gemini Astronauts - baggies with adhesive rims - strap it around your arse and take a dump, then "brown-bag it".
Apollo - baggies in the CM, diapers in the LEM.
Faced with similar reaction in the Russian (then Soviet) cosmonauts, one can only imagine that the answer was along the lines of "You will stick what we tell you to stick where we tell you to stick it, Comrade!"
That's not true. The Soviets provided free choice. You were free to choose which ear the bullet came in, for example;)
(As an aside, I can't believe I made it this far down into the comments and not one In Soviet Russia... joke has appeared yet)
In fact, the FCC ruled that you don't have to allow competitors access to fiber that you roll out
I'm all for allowing them exclusive access to their own network. Just as soon as they stop lobbying against competitors (wireless and cable last mile solutions) and stop buying off Governments (the entire state of Pennsylvania) to outlaw competition. Until then they should be forced to share the damn network.
the FCC has consistently ruled that the cable cos don't have to allow access
Which is bullshit, seeing as how most areas franchise cable companies and specifically disallow competition. Even if you had the money to roll your own cable plant you probably would be barred by law from doing so. A legislated monopoly! I'm in the wrong damn business....
lot of people with POTS are still up a creek because they have cordless phones which don't all work so well when the AC is gone
Yes, but most people with a clue also have a wired phone for backup. So POTS is still valid here.
Also, with the advent of Cell Phones, people don't really need the copper to still work when there's a blackout
Granted, if the cell site that serves your house has batteries or a generator. Most large rural sites do but in many urban areas they lean towards smaller micro and pico cells that may or may not have a provision for backup power. And when the micro and pico cells go down you can count on the macro cells (i.e: the ones large enough to justify generators) being too overloaded to use.
As a healthy person in my 20s I feel that being cell-only isn't that big of a risk. Odds are that if the power goes out (which doesn't happen too often here) my cell service keeps working. If it stops working I can probably drive somewhere with power/service if I really need to make a call. But an older person who might have medical problems should really consider keeping copper based POTS service for extended power outages. You never know.....
* I will agree with the parent that it was, at some time, REALLY REALLY REALLY important that the phone still worked during periods of blackout.
What's sad and annoying is that as technology advances people seem willing to accept less and less quality from it. A properly designed copper POTS system has six nines of reliability. Can you say that about FiOS, VoIP or your cell phone? I wish these new technologies would be held to the same expectations as the old.
Apparently, they then have to bill your credit card
This is probably just a misinformed CSR. I was able to get invoice billing for dry-loop DSL. Don't see why FiOS would be any different. Of course I dropped their DSL and went back to Time Warner after they raised my price $10/mo and informed me that I had to have dial-tone service to get the best deals. Yeah, like I'm going to play for a landline that I'll never use (cell only here) just to save a few bucks on DSL.
Slashdot Mirror
s/pay/blackmail
There, fixed that for you.
Yes, much better to have it ruined by reading the book itself rather then have it ruined by reading a scan of the book ;)
How is that different from British beer now? *duck*
Who said anything about VoIP? In many nations cellular users outnumber landline users. VoIP won't kill the landline industry (though it won't help it). Wireless will.
I'm sure they can, but there isn't a published standard for it as far as I'm aware, so they'd be building it from scratch. UMA/GMA has been around for awhile.
AT&T could implement a UMA network pretty easily but I doubt they will, as it would undercut their landline business.
It won't automatically connect to an open one unless you add it to the list of saved networks. You can use any open hotspot with a DHCP server though.
I've never had an issue with cell call quality. Perhaps that's because I live in a suburban/rural area and they don't have to resort to tricks like slashing the codec down to squeeze more people onto limited spectrum. My cell sounds just as good as any landline or VoIP phone that I've ever used.
Where are you that you can detect a noticeable difference when using a cell phone? What provider are you using?
That part I've never understood. My cellphone works just about everywhere. If you are a big talker and can shift some of your calling to nights & weekends (easy to do when all of your friends have cell phones too) then it often winds up costing you $0.015 - $0.03/minute to use a cell phone to make all your calls. Toss in the fact that you can use it just about anywhere and you aren't fighting your neighbors torrent of the Sopranos for bandwidth and I don't see what advantage there is to VoIP.
T-Mobile's UMA offering seems like a good combination of the two, though the non-promotional price of $20 is a little steep. The promotional price of $9.99 seems about right. In any case, I doubt we'll see anybody else roll it out in the US anytime soon. Sprint is probably the only other provider that would offer it (AT&T and Verizon never would because it would undercut their landline business) and they can't because it's based on GSM.
Look at T-Mobile's HotSpot @ Home service. It's basically GSM over IP (voice, data, SMS, etc), with the added advantage that you can do seemless handoffs between IP and GSM, i.e: start a call at home, walk out the door and it switches to GSM. I'm loving it. $39.99 for 1,000 cellular minutes (with nights & weekends), + $9.99 for the HotSpot add-on. I basically have unlimited calls. Plus I can use wi-fi in any area where there isn't a good GSM signal.
T-Mobile doesn't have landline business in the United States so they don't have any reason to undercut their own offerings to keep a dying landline industry alive. And the best part is not giving your money to AT&T or Verizon.
They aren't stuck with any of the same problems if the traffic never leaves their own network. The cable outfit's VoIP packets may never leave the cable network itself, if they designed it so the VoIP->PSTN switch-over happens before their network edge. Ditto for the telcos. And quite a few of the telcos (Verizon and AT&T come to mind) are Tier 1 providers in their own right -- and could easily have end-to-end QoS for their own VoIP traffic.
Note: I'm not defending them or advocating for their service over Vonage or anybody else. Just pointing out the obvious. And for what it's worth, using T-Mo's @Home service (which isn't strictly VoIP, it's closer to GSM over IP), I haven't had any problems with my internet connection.
Yeah, and T-Mobile's is just $0.10/min with no daily fee and the minutes don't expire for 365 days. Gives you about 83 minutes a month for $8.30. They are basically the only one of the big-four that don't cripple their pre-paid option.
I don't consider that "price raping".I also don't consider it usable for a landline replacement unless you barely talk on the phone. Some of us use our phones pretty frequently and pre-paid isn't cost effective for us.
So, because my calling patterns don't fall into something that would work with pre-paid service I need to find a more efficient way to communicate? WTF? How does that disprove my point that pre-paid service won't work for everybody?
Yes, perhaps I'm a phone-aholic, but I could have made that example with somebody who only uses 500 minutes a month (16 minutes a day). At ten cents a minute on T-Mobile prepaid (the cheapest one there is) that's still $50 a month. T-Mobile's 600 minute post-paid plan is $39.99 and you get nights and weekends to boot (find me a pre-paid service with nights and weekends). Or you could go with the 300 minute $29.99 plan with free nights and move 200 minutes to nights. Either way, the post-paid option is cheaper.
Either way, pre-paid is basically useless unless you barely use your cell phone. And at that, T-Mobile is the only one that isn't a complete rip-off. 10 cents a minute assuming you buy $100 worth of airtime. That's a fair deal. Everybody else is either 25 cents a minute (or more) or they charge you a daily fee every single time you use the phone.
I have never had to sign a contract for my phone.*shrug*, with T-Mobile I signed a one year contract when I signed up with them. Got the same deal as I would have with a two year. Now if my phone dies I'll just buy a $30 replacement at Wally World (one of the to-go kits) without touching my contract.
You remind me of people who "cant" ride the bus because they "need" to get to the grocery store on a moment's notice at a random time every day.You remind me of people who think their lifestyle choices automatically apply to everybody else without even considering the situation of the other person.
Cool, I want to be cell-phone only so I don't have to deal with two numbers. Since it's my primary line, find me a pre-paid plan that's competitive. Counting nights and weekends I use about 2,500 - 3,000 minutes a month. On a post-paid plan of $39.99 (1k peak minutes/unlim n&w on T-Mobile) that's $0.013 a min for 3,000 minutes. Find me a pre-paid plan that's competitive with that.
Oh, that's right, you can't, because the pre-paid offerings are purposefully crippled to make them useless for anything but light use.
try living without. *sigh*
So, if you sign a cell phone contract, with a 14 day return policy, and on day 20 you get your bill and discover that they've overcharged you, you are a coward? Your options are basically:
The game is tilted against the consumer in these scenarios. And I'm glad this ruling came down the way it did. It's not right that a contract can force you to give up your legal right to seek relief in court. And before any wise-ass comes back with "then don't sign it", try living with a cell phone, credit card, phone service, bank account, etc, etc, etc. They are all doing it!
Yeah, they can't catch them all in the screening process ;)
Did it ever occur to you that's an internal webpage that runs on an (encrypted) VPN back to T-Mo's HQ?
Presumably, that's why they encrypt it. It uses IPSec.
In other words, Americans, right? ;)
*duck*, *run*, disclaimer: I am one and can make that joke ;)
You forgot one:
Project Drive-from-Texas-to-Orlando-to-kidnap-a-woman-inte rested-in-your-guy - diapers
That's not true. The Soviets provided free choice. You were free to choose which ear the bullet came in, for example ;)
(As an aside, I can't believe I made it this far down into the comments and not one In Soviet Russia... joke has appeared yet)
I'm all for allowing them exclusive access to their own network. Just as soon as they stop lobbying against competitors (wireless and cable last mile solutions) and stop buying off Governments (the entire state of Pennsylvania) to outlaw competition. Until then they should be forced to share the damn network.
the FCC has consistently ruled that the cable cos don't have to allow accessWhich is bullshit, seeing as how most areas franchise cable companies and specifically disallow competition. Even if you had the money to roll your own cable plant you probably would be barred by law from doing so. A legislated monopoly! I'm in the wrong damn business....
Yes, but most people with a clue also have a wired phone for backup. So POTS is still valid here.
Also, with the advent of Cell Phones, people don't really need the copper to still work when there's a blackoutGranted, if the cell site that serves your house has batteries or a generator. Most large rural sites do but in many urban areas they lean towards smaller micro and pico cells that may or may not have a provision for backup power. And when the micro and pico cells go down you can count on the macro cells (i.e: the ones large enough to justify generators) being too overloaded to use.
As a healthy person in my 20s I feel that being cell-only isn't that big of a risk. Odds are that if the power goes out (which doesn't happen too often here) my cell service keeps working. If it stops working I can probably drive somewhere with power/service if I really need to make a call. But an older person who might have medical problems should really consider keeping copper based POTS service for extended power outages. You never know.....
* I will agree with the parent that it was, at some time, REALLY REALLY REALLY important that the phone still worked during periods of blackout.What's sad and annoying is that as technology advances people seem willing to accept less and less quality from it. A properly designed copper POTS system has six nines of reliability. Can you say that about FiOS, VoIP or your cell phone? I wish these new technologies would be held to the same expectations as the old.
You mean MCI? Verizon doesn't own Sprint....
Apparently, they then have to bill your credit cardThis is probably just a misinformed CSR. I was able to get invoice billing for dry-loop DSL. Don't see why FiOS would be any different. Of course I dropped their DSL and went back to Time Warner after they raised my price $10/mo and informed me that I had to have dial-tone service to get the best deals. Yeah, like I'm going to play for a landline that I'll never use (cell only here) just to save a few bucks on DSL.
Why not? Probably costs about the same and you can actually do it yourself without sending it in to Apple ;)