The end of POTS?

[Contempra]

Genius!  That's brilliant marketing eh, tell people that their old fashioned phone service is now "unfixable" and upsell!

That sort of thing has been going on for years. Back in 1984, my grandmother's 202 she had had for decades developed a bad cord. Through the years, they had tried unsuccessfully to get her to ditch that phone at every opportunity. This time, they told her they couldn't replace the cord - it was un-fixable, and they gave her a 500 set, breaking her heart. Never mind the truckload of 500 set cords which would have served in a pinch. She truly loved that 202. She passed away one week later.

RIP Nanna!

Dave

I agree Dave

[IIfx]

The thing is, the 2 big telcos ("AT&T*" and Verizon) dont care. They make much more profit over overpriced 4G LTE services rather than traditional hardwired voice and data services.

AT&Ts Copper will keep going under U-Verse for some time. If you did not get Fiber from VZ, the Copper is literally falling off of the poles. They offer pathetic internet speeds maxing out at around 3mbit in most cases over the failing copper. In my town VZ pretty much handed us over to Comcast - Comcast got a nice monopoly being the only provider in town with Internet that qualifies as Broadband. Their "Digital Voice" service still works with pulse dialing,  and they actually spend money on the infrastructure. We got our internet speed increased for free from 25mbit/5mbit to 30/5. Meanwhile, VZ is still offering slow, half-working DSL on lines dating back to Ma Bell.


The worst part of this is how the Telcos stole money from the Government and American People over the past 20 years, promising FTTH buildouts. You can read about the grand heist by the Baby Bells here:
http://www.newnetworks.com/failedfiberstates.htm

Sad thing is that if Uncle Sam had not killed Ma Bell, we probably would have FTTH. Bell Labs knew the copper would not support the future, and Fiber would be the logical replacement of the old landlines network - not wireless. On the AT&T Video Archive site, they posted a 4 part video about the future of the network from 1982...they pulled this video 1 month later for good reason...

Wireless does not have consistent performance for Voice or Data. Wireless is just a hack, good for on-the-go use, but not as a replacement for solid wired communications.

But AT&T and VZ will make TONS more cash charging you $15 a GB of data over their wow 4g lteeee!!!~

:/

Every time I walk down the street I see absolutely ancient telephone plant held together with tape and trash bags. Its amazing that the WECO outdoor plant stuff still functions years and years since it was put in, but its clear its failing due to age and neglect, and VZ does not care to replace anything.

[trainman]

Never should have broke up MA Bell.  People that aren't familliar with the reliability of the landline network just accept wireless for what it is.  I want reliability, so I will keep my landline as long as they let me.

[twocvbloke]

Verizon is never going to be any good for anything, they were formed as a merger between GTE and Vodafone, and it seems that what was left of GTE has gone and it's literally just Vodafone with a different name, they're never honest, decent or reliable and always overcharge for poor quality service, and then charge even more if you inadvertently go over any limits...

I've only just escaped* from Vodatraz on my Samsung Galaxy Tab, as I was paying £31.99 a month for 2GB of data which I couldn't even use as their service is just nonexistant, even stood next to one of their cell towers I got naff-all, so in my case I was lucky that I didn't go over my data limit, cos I could never use more than 100MB in a month owing to the poor signal and permanently being stuck on 2G (yeah, paying for a HSDPA+ service, only receiving 2G!!), so, don't expect anything from Verizon, or Vodafone, whichever name they use, they're just 100% unreliable when you actually need service...


(*ported my number away from their network over to Three, porting is the fastest and most reliable way to end a contract with vodafone, otherwise they just renew contracts without your consent even if you've submitted a notice of cancellation, which just happens to "go missing", even though you send the letter by recorded post and you have proof they received it!!)

[poplar1]

Just to clarify, both at&t and VZ offer wireless (cell), landline (copper) and VOIP. Both companies own ILECs (the original landline companies).

VZ just purchased the remaining shares owned by Vodaphone.

AT&T before Divestiture (1/1/84) was the parent company of Long Lines (long distance network), the Bell operating companies, Western Electric, and Bell Labs.

More recently, there was a cell phone company called Cingular that was jointly owned by SW Bell and Bell South, and at&t was only a long distance company, having sold some years back its cell phone division created after Divestiture.

SW Bell purchased both at&t and BellSouth and kept the at&t name for the combined company.

[Russ Kirk]

Just to clarify, both at&t and VZ offer wireless (cell), landline (copper) and VOIP. Both companies own ILECs (the original landline companies).

VZ just purchased the remaining shares owned by Vodaphone.

AT&T before Divestiture (1/1/84) was the parent company of Long Lines (long distance network), the Bell operating companies, Western Electric, and Bell Labs.

More recently, there was a cell phone company called Cingular that was jointly owned by SW Bell and Bell South, and at&t was only a long distance company, having sold some years back its cell phone division created after Divestiture.

SW Bell purchased both at&t and BellSouth and kept the at&t name for the combined company.

There are many other graphics, but here is as simple as it can get.

[old_stuff_hound]

There are many other graphics, but here is as simple as it can get.

...and if at&t, Verizon, and Qwest get together we'll have come full circle! Somehow I don't think we'll be the better for it though.

[jsowers]

Something unusual happened to my POTS line February 5th and I thought I'd post what happened in case maybe some of you know what caused it or if you think it's a sign of the times. I've had a POTS line since 1985 in my house. Up until about four years ago it was rotary-only until they did away with that and everyone had to have Touch-Tone service and pay more. So I had and still have all rotary phones in my house, with a Touch-Tone I keep close by for navigating menus.

Suddenly out of the blue all my rotary phones stopped working to dial. I just got dial tone and dialing made no difference. A Touch-Tone phone worked fine, however. Another odd thing, I later found out, was my caller ID name went away and it just said "incoming call" on my mom's caller ID. She has phone service through the cable company and caller ID on her TV.

So I grumbled a bit and replaced my two most-used phones with Touch-Tone and decided not to call the phone company and complain, thinking the customer service 800 number people wouldn't know what I was talking about or care. I would periodically check to see if the rotary service returned and it hadn't until today. Now it works again!

My caller ID name returned sometime last week, BTW. I checked my rotary and it still didn't work at that time. So did they have something configured wrong on their switch or something? It sure took them long enough to fix the problem. My telco was an Independent for over 100 years and then they were bought out three years ago by Windstream, who owns it now. I was thinking I had dialed my last dial until today. It's nice to have it back.

[Matilo Telephones]

Perhaps they installed a new exchange and didn´t switch pulse dialing on. After a lot of complaints, they perhaps corrected that.

Why don´t you try and ask them. Even if you may get someone on the line who doesn´t understand the question.

[poplar1]

Ask one of their techs. They're less likely to be reading from a script, and they may actually know what happened.

[twocvbloke]

The problem with not asking is you will never find out, someone may have done something to the wrong line and hoped nobody would find out, or something got replaced but wasn't set up properly, or, they were hoping to cut costs and removed hardware, but ended up reinstating it because of extensive complaints...

[jsowers]

The problem is it's nearly impossible to talk to one of the techs unless you happen to see one on the job somewhere or eatling lunch in a restaurant. All service calls go to Texas or somewhere. I'll never forget talking to the man who used to be in charge of all the techs when the phone company was locally owned. He worked for the school system I worked for after he retired from the phone company. It changed hands after he retired and a few years later he had to place a service call. He got so frustrated, he had to hand the phone to his wife to complete it. That was sad to hear.

I'll see what I can find out. Thanks for the suggestions.

[dsk]

Her you may see how the Norwegian telecom "giant" plays: http://tinyurl.com/18r
Not easy to understand everything, and probably not meant for our eyes.

dsk

edit 24/1-17
The link is dead, as I remember they told us it was not possible to get people with knowledge to maintain the POTS so they installed VOIP adapters in the exchange buildings.   Sorry, I so not remember much more.

dsk

[david@london]

an article from today's 'daily telegraph'...........some interesting comments below the line


edit - the telegraph somtimes has a paywall on it......apologies if this is not viewable in your area

[twocvbloke]

Well, it's the torygraph, they're not really that bright there, second only to the Daily Fail...