" Is basic American telephone service in a death spiral? " 1

[lvNortel]

Interesting article, I was just talking about this with someone.

What do you guys think about the future of POTS in America?

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=443

"A phone is a phone and not a computer workstation".

 

[phoneguy610]

its not about whether the consumer wants pots.

copper is too expensive for the Telco companies to maintain. in the new York area pots lines are a thing of the past. A lot of people think they are getting pots lines, but they are actually just sip trunks converted to pots.


pots lines will soon be something more comparable to 8 track players and cassette tapes, then radio and television

ddcommllc.com
Avaya/Toshiba/SyntelSolutions

ACIS

"Will work for stars

 

[Westi]

as long as there are DSL lines used for high speed internet there will be POTs lines available. If they find something that works without a wire they might go that route but I can't see it in a foreseeable future as there is no technology out there that will replace DSL as well as POTs lines for now.
I will also have a POTs line for as long as I can have one, in addition to my 3 SIP lines that I have in my house

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)

http://convergednetworks.ca

Give a tech a solution and he will be back tomorrow to ask you the next question, teach a tech how to read the manual and he will be able to solve the problems for a life time.

 

[phoneguy610]

I guess we are spoiled out here.... Haven't seen dal in at least 2 years

ddcommllc.com
Avaya/Toshiba/SyntelSolutions

ACIS

"Will work for stars

 

[lvNortel]

Dial tone is dial tone in my book. I will choose the most reliable carrier for my clients with the least cost and most features. Right now Cox is the BIG leader in my book but only for commercial accounts. They stink at residential. But I am only licensed as a commercial low voltage anyway.

I am wondering when the telephone number is be a thing of the past. Why do we actually need a numeric address instead of just a name? Since I use my cell for everything I have all of my contact listed not by number but by name. I see "telephone numbers" being a thing of the past at some point as well. Maybe we use a bar code in the future. It would allow for a universal method of contacting people around the globe much easier and uniformed. Why there is not a universal number plan for the entire globe is beyond me in this day of age. Is there a reason why the other countries do no cooperate with a master number place like Canada does?

"A phone is a phone and not a computer workstation".

 

[Westi]

I can tell you that Europe has their own little brew of numbering and they don't want anything to do with our system even though much superior and simpler.
My parents live in Germany and they have a 4 digit phone number with a 4 digit area code, other places have a 3 digit area code and a 7 digit number and even my parents fax number is 6 digits but the same area code. Some places have a 2 digit area code and 8 digit phone number. To try and consolidate all that would cost billions because all businesses would need to change their websites and business cards and so on. I think the time to do that was in the 70's when it was not that big but now it will have to stay that way until we go all over to SIP (or whatever comes after that) and use whatever number on an IP address. I hope I am retired by then but seeing that I work on my freedom 95 plan I have only 49 more years to go and probably will see that happen, LOL.

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)

http://convergednetworks.ca

Give a tech a solution and he will be back tomorrow to ask you the next question, teach a tech how to read the manual and he will be able to solve the problems for a life time.

 

[budbyrd]

As long as there are people willing to pay for a service, someone will be willing to sell it to them.

Until those 20% of people still using a POTS line die, or are willing to accept the lower voice quality and less reliability of VoIP or cell service, there will be POTS.

I have a copper line in my home. I know when I pick up the phone it is going to work. When I dial 911, the police will know where to find me. When the power has been out for a week, and all of my UPS's have long since died, my cell phone battery is exhausted, I know my house phone will still work.(so I can call 'one more time' to complain to the power company.

My only other thought would be that POTS may die when they learn to downgrade it to a point that it has as poor a QOS as the IP alternative.

A genius doesn't solve problems, he prevents them~~!!~~

 

[phoneguy610]

What?

After demanding your copper you should put in a request for 8 track players and a black and white tv

ddcommllc.com
Avaya/Toshiba/SyntelSolutions

ACIS

"Will work for stars

 

[crumthwacket]

Sometimes you don't get to choose:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/05/verizon_going_wireless_in_mant.html

 

[Sympology]

Westi, think you are generalising somewhat about Europe.
Not sure where this "simpler" Amercian model comes from but it's not in the many European countries I deal with.
e.164 format works fine. I think the issue is not the phone system but how people work.
For decades it used to be area code + exchange code + phone, but that's pretty much long gone. Now you no longer have exchange codes as such, they tend to be part of the number, so yes this does lead to variable lengths, but as most of Europe ditched long distance prefix requirement a long time ago, dialling a "full" number to a "short" number is exactly the same cost.
So an example,
+44 1234 456789
01234 456789
would work throughout the country,
where as 456789 would only work locally.
This is not a exchange / country issue, but a personal issue. A pet hate of mine is any business that advertise themselves as something like "New Town 456789" not "01234 56789", so then you have to work out the darn code.
There are still exceptions to this, but usually the exception rather than the rule.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[trvlr1]

To answer the original question " Is basic American telephone service in a death spiral?" I would say no. Like most other living organisms it is merely evolving, as it already has, to get to the stage of reliable POTS service, and will continue on until we are all wired at birth for all the communications we will ever need. We are still in the infancy of many types of service out there, Cellular, Fiber, "mega" bandwidth data connections etc. These will evolve and improve as basic POTS did, as well as fiber, wireless and other forms of voice/data connectivity. This is basically an updated arguement along the lines of "the world is flat" etc. Knowledge will increase and evolve and provide us all with the new reliable constant that will replace POTS service eventually.

 

[gm85]

At my work, we just converted our 6 POTS lines over to SIP trunks. The primary reasoning behind it was cost. We've been paying $67/month for "Local Loop" (a centrex-type) line, and the price increased in February to $75 for each line. We had enough. Even a basic POTS line is $58/month, which also increased in price as well.

It's hard to justify that price when there are alternatives for a fraction of the price.

Telephone Reliability has always been a prioritiy for us. I went to our telephone provider first and asked about SIP lines. Obviously if they can provide relaible POTS service, I'd expect the same for SIP. They essentially told us that "Their SIP Service isn't oriented for small business. Unless we're converting multiple T1 lines, we won't find a cost savings with converting to SIP". I was shocked to hear this.

So I went to our ISP. We have a fiber + standby DSL connection to our ISP. They are also the LEC for about 15 rural towns. We were able to get SIP service from them for $20/month/line!

We have redundancy in place (fiber + standby data DSL + standby voice DSL), it's been just as reliable as our POTS lines. In addition, the calls are clearer, and we've been able to save $5300 a year by converting. Plus, since our voice and data are handled by the same ISP, our SIP traffic stays locally within the ISP's network.


I think the major telephone providers (up here in canada at least) are killing the POTS phone service simply by how much they charge. Why does an analog line cost $32, PLUS $8 for Caller ID (something the line cards probably already have in place whether it's enabled or not), PLUS another $2.50 for "touch-tone" service?

Up here, they're in the process of converting all POTS lines to be VDSL ready, as well as moving to fiber for all new builds. However, I really think they need to evaluate their basic POTS service and realize their competitors are KILLING them in the price. I bet a lot more people would stay if basic telephone service could be priced in the $10-15 range. I know it would never happen though.

 

[Sympology]

My only other thought would be that POTS may die when they learn to downgrade it to a point that it has as poor a QOS as the IP alternative"
I find it ironic that so many people complain about IP being poor, whereas copper is better, blissfully unaware most calls (certainly Europe and definitely the UK) these days run over IP at some point.
And if done properly IP is BETTER quality.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk