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The end of POTS?

Started by Phonesrfun, March 20, 2011, 12:51:45 PM

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Phonesrfun

I started a new topic based on another discussion where Sargeguy has had some trouble with a buyer of a phone that got it and said it didn't work.  Later, he has another customer, and he is fearful of having problems again.  The trouble seemed to be that the first buyer had a phone service that would not work with a legacy phone such as a 554!

The world of telephone lines is changing right under our noses.  20 years ago, there was generally only one kind of phone line available and it was provided by the phone company.  A short time later, along came T1, ISDN and other services, mostly available to businesses, and so the term "POTS" became a term, standing for Plain Old Telephone Service, which was what a business would order for an analog line use if their PBX only worked on analog service, and for fax machines and dial-up modems.

That was 20 or so years ago.

Fast forward to today.

Traditional copper based telephone service is a costly thing for any telephone company to install and maintain.  With an old-fashioned copper line, the DC path with copper cables runs all the way from the central office to the residence or business.  Very bulky and there are many old cables out there that have been there forever, running under streets, up on poles and so forth, all needing maintenance.

So, now fiber cables are replacing the longer parts of the cable between the central office and the residence or business.  That means in order to provide POTS service, there needs to be a converter box in the street to convert the digitalized fiber-optical signal into copper and provide the DC battery and ringing current to the end-point.  The "last mile" as it is called.  That still provides POTS service, but it is digital right up until that last little bit of copper.

That should not be a problem for a buyer of an old phone, but I fear it, too is going to go by the wayside.

Some telcos are abandoning copper altogether and installing fiber right up to the house.  Verizon's FIOS, for example.

So many cable companies are now getting involved in providing "phone service" by putting a special router after the cable modem called an Analog Terminal Adapter (ATA)  This little box provides the DC battery, ringing current, and converts tone dialing and often rotary dialing into the digital information that is sent out on the cable to put the call through.  Some routers have the capability to deal with rotary, and some do not.  My Vonage service does, fortunately, work just fine.

Yet another solution is Magic Jack.  It is fine for most people that have a phone with a tone dial and a chirpy electronic ringer, but it does not deal with rotary pulses, nor does it have the ringing power to ring a standard non-electronic phone.

Yet a third option is a Bluetooth adapter that one can  plug a phone into, and it will "connect" the phone to your cell phone and place and receive calls over the cell phone.  Some of these do take rotary, and some do not.

There will likely be more and more of these alternative ways to get phone service as time goes on.  Unfortunately, the telecommunications industry is not motivated to keep the old technology in place, and I fear that someday there will just simply no longer be a POTS alternative.  Some day all rotary phones will probably need to go through a local converter to work.

In a way, this is similar to the demise of the old local battery magneto phones of the late 19th century and the early 20th century.  They just slowly went away, and common battery phones replaced them.  While they are built on the same electrical basics, the local battery phones either need to be modified to work today, or they need to go through a converter circuit as was described a few weeks ago.

This is going to present more and more challenges to people who want to buy rotary phones and do not have the knowledge or inclination to hook them up on the ever-changing modern systems.  Particularly since the modern systems are evolving and there are no generally accepted standards.  It is also going to make it harder and harder for sellers of antique rotary phones to service the sale after the fact, since a seller has no idea of what the customer uses for a land line.  To make matters even worse, even the customer's dial-tone provider may not immediately be able to know what is happening when a service call comes into their ill-equipped call centers.  The legacy telcos are best equipped to handle these issues in the field, but one needs to somehow get through "customer service" to even get a technician to come out and then it might wind up costing more money.

Kind of a catch-22.

Comments?
-Bill G

Owain

I asked BT (British Telecommunications) whether their 21st Century Network would support older telephones (asking about some specific models) and they wanted to know where they could obtain some for testing purposes.

Their own museum, if they hadn't closed it and dispersed the collections. Growl.


Greg G.

I still have a POTS via Qwest, but I didn't know it was only copper from the street to the building.  That doesn't matter to me, I wanted the "old fashioned" land line that will still work when power goes out.  Unlike some claims for rotary phones I see, it's not the phone that still works when the power goes out.  If it's hooked up to a cable phone modem, it will NOT work when the power goes out.

I imagine the techies will come up with a solution to be able to use rotary pulse dials on modern phone lines no matter what they do.  I tried the Bluetooth option with the XLink as you know, it works after a fashion, but the quality needs improving.  But it's ease of use and setup makes me think that would be the route I would go, provided they improve the quality.
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

dsk

The alarm company has always claimed: You need a POTS and no VOIP.
Now they try to get us installing a cellphone into the alarm. So they are probably aware of the systems changing.

They have probably given up this too, because the try to sell smoke detector connecting to the WLAN.

dsk

Owain

Quote from: Brinybay on March 20, 2011, 04:23:24 PM


I imagine the techies will come up with a solution to be able to use rotary pulse dials on modern phone lines no matter what they do. 

Yes, because the circuitry to detect loop disconnect dialling is the same as that required to detect on/off hook and time break recall (hookflash).

so it's a question of inclination not ability.

Eman

Up until 3 months ago, my parents phoneline was a standard bell canada line. They switched providers after the bill finally got too excessive ($95/month, no features).

Now, they're on a third party phone provider (primus), but are still serviced by bell canada - strangely the line will ring properly, hookflash works, but pulse dialing no longer does.

The company (primus) had an outage last week. During the outage, the line still had proper voltage, but no dialtone. Their dsl still worked, however when calling their number from another line on the same switch, you'd get a reorder. Calling from anywhere else, you'd get repeating SIT tones with no message. Quite strange.

Phonesrfun

Quote from: Brinybay on March 20, 2011, 04:23:24 PM
I still have a POTS via Qwest, but I didn't know it was only copper from the street to the building.  

Knowing where you live, I know it is a fairly established part of the city, and you may have it going all the way to the CO, but I don't know how Seattle has its CO's laid out.

But, the point is that things are a changin'.

-Bill G

Sargeguy

I had to insist that Verizon let me keep my POTS line when I installed FIOS.  They really wanted me to go with VOIP instead.
Greg Sargeant
Providence, RI
TCI /ATCA #4409

GG



Ultimately this is a public safety issue on a massive scale:

VOIP is vulnerable to cyberwar attack that can take the switch down.  This I know because I've had clients who opted for "flex PRI" that's not real ISDN, it's VOIP with an ISDN converter at the end.  On more than one occasion there were DOS attacks against the service provider's switch, that took down the switch altogether.  In one case IT PREVENTED A MEDICAL CLINIC FROM CALLING 911 FOR A PATIENT THAT NEEDED AN AMBULANCE.

Services that depend on ATAs (analog terminal adaptors) or routers on the customer's premises, are basically "local battery telephone" all over again but worse.  They're "neo local battery" in the same sense that "neo-liberals" (Clinton) aren't really liberals (FDR) and "neo-conservatives" (Gingrich) aren't really conservatives (Goldwater).  Real oldschool local battery telephones didn't drain the battery when the phone was on the hook.  The phone could be idle for days and it would still work.  Neo local battery uses ATAs and routers that are draining battery constantly, whether you are using the phone or not.  Like all the other neo's, it's not the real thing, it's worse. 

Let's say there's a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or other major natural disaster, terrorist attack, etc. 

Well-designed "POTS" with underground cable would continue to work indefinitely.  The central office can run on its own huge backup batteries ("the battery room" in the basement) for three days and it can run on its diesel generator for a month during which time the National Guard will do everything humanly possible to keep it supplied with fuel.  If you have an analog phone (500, 2500, or equivalent) plugged in, it will keep working as reliably as ever. 

These IP-based services and cable-TV-based services that are "neo local battery" will FAIL.  Even if you have a standard telephone plugged in, the ATA or router consumes power even when the phone is not being used.   And the "service agreement" makes you responsible for replacing the backup battery, which most people will ignore and forget about since their phone service never needed a battery like that before. 

So now you have tens of thousands of these things that are failing because the power has been out for more than an hour or two and the backup battery has run down. 

In the midst of all this, you have the usual range of emergencies for police, fire, and ambulance.  And you have even more such emergencies due to fires, floods, looting, tree branches down, people being injured or at risk of dying due to one or another aspect of whatever disaster it is.

Now they try their neo local battery landline and the phone is dead. 

And they try their cellphone but the backup battery on the tower ran down and/or the cellphone battery itself has run down, so that doesn't work either.

So they die.  In large numbers.  Hundreds of preventable deaths.  Because the darn phone doesn't work the way it should and the way it used to.   (And people think nuclear power is dangerous?!  Telephone-via-cable-TV and telephone-via-DSL etc., will end up killing more people in each natural disaster, than have died from nuclear accidents since the beginning of commercial nuclear power!)

SO we have to go to WAR over this issue.

CENTRAL BATTERY is the ONLY acceptable way to provide residential telephone service.  Power coming from the telco central office, which is backed up with batteries lasting three days, and with a diesel generator with a month's supply of fuel on hand at all times.   Telephones that will work in ANY disaster that doesn't sever the physical wires.  Telephones you can count on to save your life. 

Someone complained about me getting political a few days ago.  I'm going to get political about this one right here and now:

WE are the experts on this subject.  WE need to FLOOD our elected officials with phone calls and email about this issue.  This isn't about whether a handful of hobbyists can keep using ancient equipment, because we'll build adaptors and so on to suit ourselves.  This is about disaster preparedness, public, safety, and in the event of terrorist attack or cyberwar attack, it's about national security.  It's about whether we are going to, as a nation, preserve our vital infrastructure in a manner that is robust, reliable, and resilient against attacks and disasters, or whether we're going to cave in to financial expedience and allow progress to roll backward at the expense of innocent lives. 

SO:  Look up your state and federal elected officials online, from your rep to the state legislature, to President Obama.  Email them n-o-w about this.  Call their offices or public comment lines on Monday.  Make it clear what's at stake.   Don't sit back and expect someone else to do it for you.  Every voice counts, just as every vote counts. 

We can fight this one and we can WIN if we inform the public, so while your'e at it, bug your local newspaper if you have one, and your local radio and TV stations if they still exist.  Bug your neighbors, your coworkers, etc.   Go to the other places you hang out on line and post comments about it there.  Tell people about disaster preparedness and the need for reliable phone service.  Get them onboard.  Get them to write and call their elected officials. 

Central battery, analog dial tone, power from the telco central office.  Those are the keys to robust and reliable and resilient phone service that works in disasters and saves lives.  A telephone is not a sub-species of computer or television, any more than a fire extinguisher is a subspecies of a toaster or a pinball game.  Enough is enough!



marty

Hi All;
I just got a qwest landline and I am able to use my CandleStick on it for Now... Works fine with my 584 (??) Subset... And it rings too..
THANK YOU Marty

Greg G.

Quote from: GG on March 20, 2011, 09:41:23 PM

SO we have to go to WAR over this issue.

CENTRAL BATTERY is the ONLY acceptable way to provide residential telephone service.  Power coming from the telco central office, which is backed up with batteries lasting three days, and with a diesel generator with a month's supply of fuel on hand at all times.   Telephones that will work in ANY disaster that doesn't sever the physical wires.  Telephones you can count on to save your life. 

Someone complained about me getting political a few days ago.  I'm going to get political about this one right here and now:

Central battery, analog dial tone, power from the telco central office.  Those are the keys to robust and reliable and resilient phone service that works in disasters and saves lives.  A telephone is not a sub-species of computer or television, any more than a fire extinguisher is a subspecies of a toaster or a pinball game.  Enough is enough!

I'm with you on all that, and we HAD all that when Ma Bell was alive.  I've read The Rape of Ma Bell.  Required reading for every collector.  They're the whole reason we have this hobby.
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

Greg G.

Quote from: Phonesrfun on March 20, 2011, 07:48:26 PM
Quote from: Brinybay on March 20, 2011, 04:23:24 PM
I still have a POTS via Qwest, but I didn't know it was only copper from the street to the building.  

Knowing where you live, I know it is a fairly established part of the city, and you may have it going all the way to the CO, but I don't know how Seattle has its CO's laid out.

But, the point is that things are a changin'.

So if it is only copper from the street to the building, then I could still lose phone service if power goes out?
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

GG



Brinybay: you're the only other person I know who has a copy of that book.  To paraphrase: "....and all this so that consumers could have a phone shaped like a duck, that quacks when it rings..."  Actually, all that so that various other players could move in and carve out a slice of a very lucrative pie for themselves.

Re. copper from street to house: if the fiber goes from the CO to a telco cabinet in the street, then there will be a demultiplexer in that cabinet to break out the copper pairs, and there will be power to that demultiplexer.  If the power is DC carried on dedicated copper from the CO to the cabinet, all's well.  If the power is local mains power backed up by local batteries, not so good. 


Wallphone

I have a hard cover copy of that book and it is very good. For those of you that don't have it, here is a full E-version of the book. The link is just below the picture.
> http://www.porticus.org/bell/rapeofmabell.htm <
Another good book is "Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric" You can get that one used from Amazon real cheap. > http://amzn.to/ehu5e8 <
Doug Pav

old_stuff_hound

#14
I spoke to the AT&T repairman who was fixing my phone-goes-out-when-it-rains problem. I asked him why, when I called about the phone, they always asked whether my DSL worked -- seemed like they were more concerned about my DSL than they were about my phone. He said that's correct. Repair priority is:
T1
U-Verse
DSL
POTS

He said that if he's on a POTS repair call and a U-Verse call comes in, he's instructed to drop the POTS repair and fix the U-Verse. U-Verse complaints are supposed to be resolved in 4 hours or less; he's seen POTS problems go 10 days before they're fixed. I'm really surprised at this -- I thought POTS was legally required to maintain five 9s (99.999%) reliability.

He also told me that there's a DSLAM in the cabinet about a mile from my house that serves me -- fibre to the DSLAM, copper subtended off that. So my POTS line isn't powered by huge batteries at the CO, it's by little batteries in the remote cabinet....

How do you get POTS out of a DSLAM?