Are U.S. Phone Landlines in Danger of Being Disconnected?

The first objective is to send the enemy's communication into disarray by cutting it off and eliminating it.

One way to accomplish this is by getting rid of old analogue systems and replacing it with a digital IPv4/6 system that is significantly more vulnerable to attack via security exploits, hackers, and EMP atmosphere nukes.

Once communications are down, then go in for the strike while the enemy is in chaos, confusion, and without operational chain of command.
 
Does this mean that phone companies will no longer own the right-of-way where poles are located and I can cut down that ugly fucker in front of my house? :D

But seriously.. wtf getting rid of analog to go with something like VoIP?
 
Traditional land lines are still switched by digital switches at the central office. Any analog non-electronic switches are mostly long gone. The digital switches are vulnerable to EMPs unless the phone company has hardened their equipment against EMPs.

Most so-called telephone poles actually belong to the power company so, no, poles are not generally going away if land lines go away. DSL is still delivered over the same copper network anyhow.
 
My cousin does work on pos systems and he told me that he needed a completely analog land line (no digital switch) because a digital line was causing too many errors. That's a pretty specific case and I don't know if it applies to all atm/credit card transactions.
 
belfert said:
Traditional land lines are still switched by digital switches at the central office. Any analog non-electronic switches are mostly long gone. The digital switches are vulnerable to EMPs unless the phone company has hardened their equipment against EMPs.

Most so-called telephone poles actually belong to the power company so, no, poles are not generally going away if land lines go away. DSL is still delivered over the same copper network anyhow.
Click to expand...
At work we still use modem to modem contact. Sometimes I need to call the phone company and have them reroute our traffic as a switch has updated.
 
I work for a medium size Phone/ISP company and I can tell you that is bullshit if you really understand who still uses it and the technology involved.
 
pcjunkie said:
I work for a medium size Phone/ISP company and I can tell you that is bullshit if you really understand who still uses it and the technology involved.
Click to expand...
I hope you are right because we have a large number of our customers still on dialup. Some customers were forced into using our highspeed option as the phone lines (modem to modem) were so unreliable.
 
Copper does have the advantage that it is a fully self contained system in the sense that the end point does not require any power, or anything all that complicated for that matter. An analog phone is a rather simple device and does not require any power. During a time of crisis, cells will be down or overloaded, fibre ONT batteries will eventually run out, and only copper will work. COs will do everything it takes to ensure generator power during even the most critical situations. They will even get police escorted generators if required. ex: if a highway is closed.

But guess you have to ask how often these situations actually happen. For new installs imo it makes more sense to run fibre to the home. 1 strand per customer, just like copper. It's very easy to change the equipment at both ends so fibre does not mean it has to be super high end connection right off the bat. Fibre is also not susceptible to water or interference. A full copper network means you don't need any air dryers running. Those arn't cheap to run.
 
Cerulean said:
The first objective is to send the enemy's communication into disarray by cutting it off and eliminating it.

One way to accomplish this is by getting rid of old analogue systems and replacing it with a digital IPv4/6 system that is significantly more vulnerable to attack via security exploits, hackers, and EMP atmosphere nukes.

Once communications are down, then go in for the strike while the enemy is in chaos, confusion, and without operational chain of command.
Click to expand...

I was looking for the like button, then I realized I was on [H]

:(
 
pcjunkie said:
I work for a medium size Phone/ISP company and I can tell you that is bullshit if you really understand who still uses it and the technology involved.
Click to expand...

Yeah I don't see copper going away any time soon. Interestingly there is not much tech out there to replace the DMS that can do what it can, and do it as reliably. Our DMS was installed over 30 years ago and has never gone down since. Nortel/Northern Telecom really made solid stuff.
 
Will this happen in 4 years? No way. 10 is a more likely number. The principal driving factor is cost and the push to go wireless to avoid tower, lines and distribution branches. The old 4E and 5E switches that power the old POTS or PSTN system have system boards that require extensive low level tech knowledge to repair as they are not made anymore. VoIP is vastly lower cost and many companies are moving to it for that reason even with the lesser voice quality and far worse reliability standard. The enhanced feature set of the digital world is a driving force as well.
 
Cerulean said:
The first objective is to send the enemy's communication into disarray by cutting it off and eliminating it.

One way to accomplish this is by getting rid of old analogue systems and replacing it with a digital IPv4/6 system that is significantly more vulnerable to attack via security exploits, hackers, and EMP atmosphere nukes.

Once communications are down, then go in for the strike while the enemy is in chaos, confusion, and without operational chain of command.
Click to expand...

oh calm yourself, you still have RF, get your ham license :)

Red Squirrel said:
Copper does have the advantage that it is a fully self contained system in the sense that the end point does not require any power, or anything all that complicated for that matter. An analog phone is a rather simple device and does not require any power. During a time of crisis, cells will be down or overloaded, fibre ONT batteries will eventually run out, and only copper will work. COs will do everything it takes to ensure generator power during even the most critical situations. They will even get police escorted generators if required. ex: if a highway is closed.

But guess you have to ask how often these situations actually happen. For new installs imo it makes more sense to run fibre to the home. 1 strand per customer, just like copper. It's very easy to change the equipment at both ends so fibre does not mean it has to be super high end connection right off the bat. Fibre is also not susceptible to water or interference. A full copper network means you don't need any air dryers running. Those arn't cheap to run.
Click to expand...

I guess you have never heard of an RT? down here in south florida (where we get some small storms called hurricanes) almost everything is on RTs with only a couple hours of power at best... cell phones are more reliable than land lines at that point since most cell sites down here have gensets
 
I just dont see copper going away, in full, for a very long time.

There are way too many legacy dial-up and dsl customers using the copper network in rural areas. Sure in a city or metro area fiber is, or soon will be in place, fiber just isnt going to be installed everywhere - ever. There are still people in the US (much less the rest of the world) who dont have copper service to their home yet.

I work for dsl tech support. I regularly hear from customers unhappy with 768k that they would switch *IF* anything else could be available. Only being able to get 768k means you are miles many from the CO/RT. If copper support is that thin why would any company pay to send fiber there?

That said, I live in Reno and I regularly see the ATT folks putting in new fiber in the streets around town.

ATT is phasing out DSL where fiber is available, even then with Uverse, the last 1000 feet (or so) still use the old copper wires.

My thoughts anyways

*EB*
 
They don't want to do away with analog because of cost... at least, that's not the only reason, just the scapegoat reason. They want everything digital so it can all be much more easily spied on and mined for data.
 
Phoenix333 said:
They don't want to do away with analog because of cost... at least, that's not the only reason, just the scapegoat reason. They want everything digital so it can all be much more easily spied on and mined for data.
Click to expand...

Thank goodness they will not swap out just because.
But no one will replace an old system with an old system, they will upgrade.
 
[That said, I live in Reno and I regularly see the ATT folks putting in new fiber in the streets around town.

ATT is phasing out DSL where fiber is available, even then with Uverse, the last 1000 feet (or so) still use the old copper wires.

My thoughts anyways

*EB*[/QUOTE]

Yeah I'm one of those DSL users... And yes i have Charter as well. One of these days I'll get U-VERSE, the only problem everytime i screw with my AT&T bill it takes 3 or 4 months to get everything fixed. Call me cheap but I'm trying to get a free modem out of it. Besides running radio stations take up bandwdith.

BTW Don't ever move/live in Reno. God I despise this fucking town. Best Buy's, Walmarts, crappy man made lake and Whore Houses... That's it kiddies.

That reminds me if land lines will go, how will fax machines work? Tried faxing on VOIP no go... even at 1200 it sucks. Yeah i know there are services out there but nothing beats a good old fax machine.

-ACiD
 
Most of the "Central Offices" of the hone companies are in buildings hardened against anything but a direct hit. My local office... Verizon in the city next door... is hardened and has 4 diesel generators and 2 Jet Engine generators on the 4th floor, with a 3 month fuel supply on site. Plus a retracted backup antenna system on the roof in case the current satellite microwave and cell antenna's get fried by a nuke or knocked out by a hurricane or tornado.
 
Why are we going digital on everything. I love my old copper lines. Cheap and effective. I don`t see anything digital thats foolproof, secure or as economical.
 
pcjunkie said:
I work for a medium size Phone/ISP company and I can tell you that is bullshit if you really understand who still uses it and the technology involved.
Click to expand...

I also work for a small Telco / ISP (around 10K customers)

That said I can see a new transition taking place, one that we ourselves are in the process of also. We do understand that land lines are dead. And we have been working to migration from legacy switches (EWSD) over to a IP based soft switch. So that back end is turning 100% IP, however going to the home, we still have copper lines in most places. And having been in training here recently for the soft switch, I have meet many others from small / medium companies in the same position. So I will say that to a point what the article state is true, they aren't making the old switches for this any more. What you get now is an IP Softswitch that just happens to be able to connect to devices that can do analog phone service. And the part about these people retiring is also true from what I can see. Even at my work, the person in charge of the old Legacy EWSD is close to retiring, I was moved out of IT to take on the role of switch administrator as it is a bunch of servers. I am also in charge of our DSL and FTTH equipment. Gone are the copper drops out to boxes and now you have fiber rings with everything being IP based. Even in an analog network you are switching to digital at some point and sending your voice as IP packets. So I don't think it will be 4 years, but I do think that in the near future you will see most phone companies switching to a pure IP based backend for their network, even if they are doing copper out to the customer. And you will see more and more people offering some type of IP voice solution.

The mindset that we have had for the last year is that land lines are dead, in the near future (5 - 10 years) we will be a data provider only with phone service of any type just being an addon service. People get internet and maybe they also get a phone number also. Which with our new soft switch that number might be on a phone plugged into a jack in their house, it might be on their computer, it might be an IAD they connect to a data port somewhere, it might be a app on their smartphone / tablet. Doesn't matter how we give them that phone service we just know that people won't be using land lines to their home for much longer. Our customer count shows that. When I started 9 years ago we had over 13000 land line customers, we are now down to around 9700 I think. Every month we watch a few more drop off as they are either switching to just cell phones or to bundle with their cable.

They have been saying for a short while now that the taxes and fees currently tied to phone lines (FUSC, and the rest) are going to be removed and instead data connections are gong to be taxed and have fees. Recovery of funds will switch from being done via land lines to being done via data.

Looking at the POTS network from 10 years ago and comparing it to the one 10 years into the future, I do think there will be massive changes to it. We everyone be moved to fiber to the home, no not at all. Will most phone switches be IP softswitches, probably. Will a good part of your phone service be transmitted over a IP system from an RT to the CO. Probably.
 
My wireless phone is Voip on wifi. I use republicwireless.
It uses Sprint as a back up for when I am not at the house or work.
 
Sorry do not see an edit.
My home phone as been VOIP (first cable then OOMA for the last 8 years).
Please do not make fun of me for having a home phone. :)
 
Cerulean said:
The first objective is to send the enemy's communication into disarray by cutting it off and eliminating it.

One way to accomplish this is by getting rid of old analogue systems and replacing it with a digital IPv4/6 system that is significantly more vulnerable to attack via security exploits, hackers, and EMP atmosphere nukes.

Once communications are down, then go in for the strike while the enemy is in chaos, confusion, and without operational chain of command.
Click to expand...

QFT
 
belfert said:
Traditional land lines are still switched by digital switches at the central office. Any analog non-electronic switches are mostly long gone. The digital switches are vulnerable to EMPs unless the phone company has hardened their equipment against EMPs.

Most so-called telephone poles actually belong to the power company so, no, poles are not generally going away if land lines go away. DSL is still delivered over the same copper network anyhow.
Click to expand...

Even small local phone companies in places like Podunk got rid of their crossbars a long time ago. Even they use digital now (usually they get T1s from a larger phone company).
 
acidrain97 said:
[That said, I live in Reno and I regularly see the ATT folks putting in new fiber in the streets around town.

ATT is phasing out DSL where fiber is available, even then with Uverse, the last 1000 feet (or so) still use the old copper wires.
Click to expand...

Around here AT& merged their DSL under the UVerse trademark, and they're marketing everything they sell as Uverse even though it's still DSL from the CO, and not from some fiber somewhere.
 
Digital transfer is obviously gonna happen, but at what cost. Alot of home electronics run off the traditional analog landlines. The switch to digital would need to be subsidized, from regular old landlines, to alarm systems. In addition if VOIP is gonna be used, the prices of basic DSL would be increasing slowly but steadily. Alot of people in the budget-conscious crowd are gonna be in for a rude awaking.
If Voip is the main alternative the bandwidth required would be far greater than whats currently offered (speaking only about the <3mbps).

So:
Discontinue analog
subsidize digital transfer
keep DSL lines alive (which run on the old copper wire)
Transfer home phone serivce to VOIP or alternatives
DSL prices increase
end-customer foots the bill....
 
Whatever happens here, the only surety we can count on is that it won't be the FCC making the changes...;)
 
Red Squirrel said:
Yeah I don't see copper going away any time soon. Interestingly there is not much tech out there to replace the DMS that can do what it can, and do it as reliably. Our DMS was installed over 30 years ago and has never gone down since. Nortel/Northern Telecom really made solid stuff.
Click to expand...
most of our newer DMS's installed within the last 3-4 years have been Voip (Media Gateway)based switches.
 
samm said:
Digital transfer is obviously gonna happen, but at what cost. Alot of home electronics run off the traditional analog landlines. The switch to digital would need to be subsidized, from regular old landlines, to alarm systems. In addition if VOIP is gonna be used, the prices of basic DSL would be increasing slowly but steadily. Alot of people in the budget-conscious crowd are gonna be in for a rude awaking.
If Voip is the main alternative the bandwidth required would be far greater than whats currently offered (speaking only about the <3mbps).

So:
Discontinue analog
subsidize digital transfer
keep DSL lines alive (which run on the old copper wire)
Transfer home phone serivce to VOIP or alternatives
DSL prices increase
end-customer foots the bill....
Click to expand...

Yes and no. if talking about a network setup where voice is separated and given correct priority over everything else, you only need 64K for voice for a single line. Take into consideration 3 way calling and you would need to assume probably at least 128K.

For telephone companies they are subsized in a way. They do get recovery on what they purchase. May not be in full, but for stuff like a telephone switch and other stuff like that they get some recovery. How it works is that there is a group called NECA (National Exchange Carrier Association) telephone companies become part of this group and they send money to them. So they say like for every dialup customer you have you pay them X amount, for every DSL customer up to 4Mbps you pay them this amount... and then when you buy stuff you tell them I spent this much money and they give you so much back over time. This was started years ago as a way to keep AT&T and the rest of the larger companies from buying new stuff all the time and keeping the smaller guys from being able to keep up. So now they have to get larger purchases like telephone switches approved and for the smaller guys they are given help to ensure they can keep up with everyone.

and while it isn't taking effect everywhere, there is the push for higher data speeds. In order to refer to a connection as broadband right now that is 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up. This next year that is supposed to change to 6/2. Which yes, still isn't a huge amount, but that would be more than enough for a single phone line.

ninehunid said:
I've even seen a few of these being deployed out in the wild http://www.genband.com/products/continuum/g6-universal-gateway
Click to expand...

Genband or Metaswitch. Those are going to be your two larger soft switches being deployed from how it sounds to me. We had a Taqua, and the day that I got to wipe the data off of it and power it down was one of the happiest days of this year for me :)
 
of course the main thing about the genbands are that when they are installed ( at my company) an Alcatel 7342 FTTU usually accompanies it :)
 
acidrain97 said:
That reminds me if land lines will go, how will fax machines work? Tried faxing on VOIP no go... even at 1200 it sucks. Yeah i know there are services out there but nothing beats a good old fax machine.

-ACiD
Click to expand...

We have the same problem at work. In some areas of our network we support faxing over VoIP as a best effort service. In other words if it works consider yourself lucky. If it doesn't then tough shit.

The rest of our network we use T.38 which works pretty damn well.

xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
Most of the "Central Offices" of the hone companies are in buildings hardened against anything but a direct hit. My local office... Verizon in the city next door... is hardened and has 4 diesel generators and 2 Jet Engine generators on the 4th floor, with a 3 month fuel supply on site. Plus a retracted backup antenna system on the roof in case the current satellite microwave and cell antenna's get fried by a nuke or knocked out by a hurricane or tornado.
Click to expand...

Don't know why but hearing about stuff like this gets me "excited".
 
Cerulean said:
The first objective is to send the enemy's communication into disarray by cutting it off and eliminating it.

One way to accomplish this is by getting rid of old analogue systems and replacing it with a digital IPv4/6 system that is significantly more vulnerable to attack via security exploits, hackers, and EMP atmosphere nukes.

Once communications are down, then go in for the strike while the enemy is in chaos, confusion, and without operational chain of command.
Click to expand...

Which is funny since fiber is easier to protect from those, and is able to do line-encryption. Not to mention it's more reliable, cheaper to maintain, and orders of magnitude faster in real-world applications.

If you somehow think copper pairs are secure and reliable, you're completely out of touch with the world. Copper is literally holding our nation back when it comes to telecommunications.

It's embarrassing how a tech site like this has people who don't grasp these concepts. We should change our name to [A]mish|Forum.
 
And yet somehow they will still find a way to justify exorbitant prices for broadband.
 
Great. Now all our phone calls can sound like frickin' Cell Phones.
 
Although I never use landlines, I would plan on buying a conventional phone service for when I have a kid, especially due to the self power option for an old phone.
 
samm said:
Digital transfer is obviously gonna happen, but at what cost. Alot of home electronics run off the traditional analog landlines. The switch to digital would need to be subsidized, from regular old landlines, to alarm systems. In addition if VOIP is gonna be used, the prices of basic DSL would be increasing slowly but steadily. Alot of people in the budget-conscious crowd are gonna be in for a rude awaking.
If Voip is the main alternative the bandwidth required would be far greater than whats currently offered (speaking only about the <3mbps).

So:
Discontinue analog
subsidize digital transfer
keep DSL lines alive (which run on the old copper wire)
Transfer home phone serivce to VOIP or alternatives
DSL prices increase
end-customer foots the bill....
Click to expand...

The "digital transfer", for the most part, has already happened. A call on an analog landline is generally converted to digital as soon as possible, sometimes as soon as your neighborhood if they have fiber running there, but, at an absolute maximum, no later than the central office.

In addition, most businesses who get traditional telephone service these days either get telephone service over a T1-CAS (which basically trunks up to 24 analog telephone lines over a digital connection) or a T1-PRI (which is 100% digital and provides up to 23 trunks; a trunk being different from a line in that it doesn't have a fixed phone number associated with it).

Finally, it is important to understand that in the telephony world, digital != VoIP. Digital, in the telephony world, refers to circuit-switched systems that first came out in the early 80s (usually time-division multiplex or TDM) that operate similar to analog phone lines (in that you have a dedicated pathway for the phone call) but that use digital, rather than analog, signals. The sound is converted to a digital signal and then compressed using something like G.711 but the routing is very much similar to an analog phone line in that each phone call has a dedicated circuit (with the benefits of reliability and the downside of capacity).

ninehunid said:
most of our newer DMS's installed within the last 3-4 years have been Voip (Media Gateway)based switches.
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware they still made DMSs. Did someone buy them out?
 
damicatz said:
The "digital transfer", for the most part, has already happened. A call on an analog landline is generally converted to digital as soon as possible, sometimes as soon as your neighborhood if they have fiber running there, but, at an absolute maximum, no later than the central office.

In addition, most businesses who get traditional telephone service these days either get telephone service over a T1-CAS (which basically trunks up to 24 analog telephone lines over a digital connection) or a T1-PRI (which is 100% digital and provides up to 23 trunks; a trunk being different from a line in that it doesn't have a fixed phone number associated with it).

Finally, it is important to understand that in the telephony world, digital != VoIP. Digital, in the telephony world, refers to circuit-switched systems that first came out in the early 80s (usually time-division multiplex or TDM) that operate similar to analog phone lines (in that you have a dedicated pathway for the phone call) but that use digital, rather than analog, signals. The sound is converted to a digital signal and then compressed using something like G.711 but the routing is very much similar to an analog phone line in that each phone call has a dedicated circuit (with the benefits of reliability and the downside of capacity).



I wasn't aware they still made DMSs. Did someone buy them out?
Click to expand...

Genband
 
Red Squirrel said:
Copper does have the advantage that it is a fully self contained system in the sense that the end point does not require any power, or anything all that complicated for that matter. An analog phone is a rather simple device and does not require any power. During a time of crisis, cells will be down or overloaded, fibre ONT batteries will eventually run out, and only copper will work. COs will do everything it takes to ensure generator power during even the most critical situations. They will even get police escorted generators if required. ex: if a highway is closed.

But guess you have to ask how often these situations actually happen.
Click to expand...

Here on Long Island, once every few weeks. LIPA is horrid at times when it comes to keeping the lights on.

Seriously, how do you tell the power company the power went out when the phones stop working?
 
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