Classic Rotary Phones Forum

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?

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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!

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

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.

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?

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. 

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

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?

POTS and DSl are carried on the same line.  Phone guy who came out to fix my static couldn't stress that point enough. So, if you got no DSL problems, they may be asking that to try and pinpoint it to the line, or your phone.

Agreed, knowing if the DSL is working when your phone goes out helps to isolate an otherwise tough to locate intermittent trouble.

In most if not all cases where a DSLAM cabinet feeds the DSL for the "last mile", the dial tone is still coming from the CO or possibly a remote closer to the CO. The DSL gets to the DSLAM on fibre and joins up with your CO line (dial tone) at the cabinet for the final leg of the journey to your house.

Terry

I was just surprised that POTS was the lowest priority for them. That tells me that they'd be happy switch everybody to U-Verse if they could, so I know where they're making more money.

AE_collector, that makes sense about the POTS and DSL. I was beginning to wonder if my "POTS" line was really VoIP (VoATM?) terminating at the DSLAM....

Cheers!

Quote from: old_stuff_hound on July 06, 2011, 06:43:30 AM
I was just surprised that POTS was the lowest priority for them. That tells me that they'd be happy switch everybody to U-Verse if they could, so I know where they're making more money.

I think you've got it right...they are running a business. I've seen similar although not quite as blatant behavior from the Telco here.

Terry

Do I understand correctly that if you buy the BTTN version of the XLink Bluetooth Gateway that you can have your cell signal powering all the POTS line in your house?

I saw one post where somebody was using three phones on a Bluetooth Gateway, but it's not clear that he's using his cell to power the whole house.  (He might've been using the signal to a splitter or something.)

Quote from: Sargeguy on March 20, 2011, 08:55:22 PM
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.

Last week, the ATT.com website showed "U-Verse Voice" when you "shopped" for residential  home phone service.  At the bottom, there was a link


http://localization.att.com/loc/controller?prod-snip=res_homephone_services


---which showed "standard home  phone service" (land lines). They were  even offering free installation of land lines (normally $49) for online orders only.

I wonder whether at some point POTS will be grandfathered, and, after that, new customers will be forced to use VOIP (Uverse voice). At some point they would then discontinue traditional land lines and rip out the copper plant.

Quote from: George Knighton on December 26, 2012, 07:39:02 PM
Do I understand correctly that if you buy the BTTN version of the XLink Bluetooth Gateway that you can have your cell signal powering all the POTS line in your house?

I saw one post where somebody was using three phones on a Bluetooth Gateway, but it's not clear that he's using his cell to power the whole house.  (He might've been using the signal to a splitter or something.)

The limitation would be the number of active ringers.  You can have a thousand phones with no ringers connected, and as long as you use one at a time you would be ok.  I have never owned an X Link, so I don't know how many ringers it will handle.  other than ringers, you should be able to hook up the whole house.

Quote from: XLink Manual.Using House Wiring:

Find a spot in your house/office etc where you get good cell phone reception.

Plug XLink into a wall power outlet.

Disconnect your home wiring from your local telephone company. This can be done at the demarcation point where your telephone service enters your house. Consult a professional if you are unsure of how to do this.

Use a regular telephone cord and plug the telephone jack on XLink into a nearby telephone jack.
Pair and connect your bluetooth cell phone to XLink.

All phones plugged into telephone jacks throughout you house will now become cell phone extension sets.

Well, well, well. 

Something else to think about.

0_o

It is important to disconnect the line coming in from the central office to keep any interferance out.  Then the Xlink can be connected to back-feed the house.

You wouldn't believe the number of times that I find customers dial tone feeding down the street back to the CO and in many cases there is still CO battery on the line as well. Some people (and even cable TV - phone installers) don't have a clue!

Terry

Wow, thats amazing.  I wonder if they dialed a number if it would connect from two separate services.  i guess it would.  They would hear both ringing and a busy.

Wouldn't the CO line have to be disconnected (or at least have a number change) when the phone number was ported to the cell phone or VOIP line? In that case, there might still be battery coming from the CO but no dial tone since that port in the CO switch was no longer programmed.

Quote from: poplar1 on December 26, 2012, 10:08:27 PM
Wouldn't the CO line have to be disconnected (or at least have a number change) when the phone number was ported to the cell phone or VOIP line? In that case, there might still be battery coming from the CO but no dial tone since that port in the CO switch was no longer programmed.

Not everyone ports, and some places I have seen leave dial tone on a line after having it disconnected, but about all you can call is 911 or the phone company to reconnect.

The only times I have heard both dial tones is when the facilities from the CO were finally reused for someone else in the area so a line gets connected to the cable pair and it is on top of dial tone from feeding from the customer until we get out there to change the connections routing the new number to the new destination.

Most often it is either a dead cable apir back to the CO or a line with battery from the CO line card but no dial tone that is fighting with sial tone from out in the field.

I have also seen where someone had a second line in their house but discontinued it and then someone decides they know how to get the remaining phone line at the house working on all jacks. They lift everything off of the now dead prot and put them onto the existing live prot.....including the drop wire that used to feed the now discontinued line. Thus, dial tone once again feeding back to the CO from the field. At least in this instance the dial tone is feeding back to where it originates from!

Terry

I can't help it...I've gotta give this XLink BTTN thing a try.  :-)

Just can't help experimenting with things.

I doubt I'll be fully satisfied with cellular network glitches and delays for the house, but I'd like to try it.  Maybe I'll forego the PBX-like function at some point and then it'll at least be of use making it possible to use a rotary phone in a room where there's no connection and little likelihood of a connection.

At some point in the future, I'll likely end up with Comcast Digital Voice + PBX the way that a few others of you seem to be doing, but this'll make an interesting sideline experiment and precursor to the PBX Era out here in the Home Shires.  :-)

Quote from: GG on March 22, 2011, 05:42:38 PM
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.

Actually, I have about 4 or 5 copies of that book.  I give them to people I come in contact with who are interested in reading how greed and ignorance destroyed the best telephone system in the world.  They can be found on Amazon. You may even get a "free prize" in a used copy: http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=5791.0 (http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=5791.0).  

Here is an article someone posted to one of the other forums on this topic:


http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/telecom/internet/the-end-of-the-public-phone-network/

Well, that article is disturbing. Why does everyone think old is outdated. Soemtimes old works better, or should beleft alone as a redundant means of communication.

Better restore your old phones now.

They only talked about VOIP. What about cellular? oh, that's a different network.

Service to my house is fiber from the CO to the house. I'm served by a small mostly rural co-op company. The fiber connects to a battery box and charger installed by the telco in the basement. I have not explored it's functions but it seems to perform all the expected functions usually supplied by the CO of battery, ringing current generation and rotary dial translation. During a recent area wide power failure the POTS line served by it worked with no problems. Not sure what the battery life might be during a power failure if you stayed continuously off hook. The fiber also provides my internet service which continued to work. Computers all shut down but the router on my own UPS service continued to work with battery powered computers. POTS service is required here as cell phones all read "no Service." Seems like failure of POTS service on fiber may be related to attempting to keep profits up.

Our POTS line just got a one year "renewal" on it's life. Prices went up and got out of hand. Called in and they switched some things around to get my price (before federal access charge and the 1 billion other taxes) down from 39 to 31 a month. (one year pricing)

Originally called in to have the multi ring number converted to it's own line so I could port the main line to Vonage or some other reputable VOIP provider and this happened instead. Total bill should be about the same, approx 64 dollars.

On top of this were gonna have a second POTS line again! (for now)

The end of POTS?

Well, I cant see the end, but we are close to the middle just here  ;D

How deep should the cable be buried?

My guess is 2 inch, or 5 cm before it rains.

dsk

Nah, that's nothing, back in the town we used to live in, there was a small road to which alongside ran a load of phonelines, and for some reason, BT decided it was a brilliant idea to leave the joints, consisting of rather old looking jelly crimps, fully exposed, sticking out of the ground, all the individual wires exposed to the elements, and animals, and copper thieves..... :D

I was going to try and show it on google maps, but unfortunately the cameras they use couldn't focus on the area where they wires were... ::)

Once again I had to call out AT&T service guy out to find another twisted pair back to the CO to get rid of the static.  We do this dance every year or two now.  There's a big service box in the neighbors front yard, and the techs go in there and find a clean pair of wires and hook us up to it.

The techs have all said that hardly anyone is using the POTS copper anymore, so they have lots of wires to choose from. 

They also say that AT&T has no interest in repairing the copper, and wants it to go away. 

It's cheap service though, $18.25 a month. 

My son up in Montana uses the Magicjack dealio, it works well for him and he's got it connected to a vintage phone, so that's hopeful.   :)

With us moving this weekend, we have to have the phoneline moved over to the new house, I've mentioned it before, but I'll do it again, it's a really easy job for the BT man, all they have to do is swap the connections from the old house to the new house, cos it's just across the street and on the same telegraph pole, about a 5 minute job all in all, but because it's an account with Primus and not BT, apparently it'll take three weeks to accomplish, to do a 5 minute job...... ::)

I could probably do it myself if I had them tone generator things and a tracer probe, especially while I have access to both houses... ::)

At least it gives me a few weeks to install extensions round the house, seeing as it lacks any for whatever reason (there were no signs of there ever being any extensions before the landlords started working on fixing the place up), that'll be a fun job I'm sure... :D

In some areas the copper are still the only way to get internet, so  ??? ??? ??? They have desided to phase out POTS, but keep on delivering ADSL. How this is business are to not understandable from my point of view. 

dsk

Not far from my house on a country road, there is a phone company pedestal where the underground cable comes up to a junction box, then goes right back down into the ground.  The thing is only maybe 3 feet tall and about a foot square around.  Green steel cabinet.  About a year ago someone hit the thing with their car and took out the cover of the cabinet.  Probably smashed it to smithereens.  The phone company dutifully tied a plastic trash bag over the top of it to keep the rain and weather out, but instead of putting a new replacement cover on it, they have replaced the bag a couple times when the plastic gets all torn up.

Things just aint what they used to be.

At least they replace the bag occasionally, around here they seldom replace the bags.
Jim

Quote from: dsk on June 12, 2013, 01:34:07 AM
In some areas the copper are still the only way to get internet, so  ??? ??? ??? They have desided to phase out POTS, but keep on delivering ADSL. How this is business are to not understandable from my point of view. 

dsk

Personally I don't understand it either, if they're using the lines for ADSL, then they can use them for voice too, as happens in a lot of countries, if you rely on the ADSL to run a VOIP device, and said ADSL cuts out due to a bad line or a fault, then you have no voice service, whereas a line with both, the ADSL can go down, but the voice tends to keep working, maybe with a bit of static, but still works nonetheless... :-\

And the sad thing is, over here, with BT "Infinity" fibreoptic broadband, it's not even fibre to your house, it's fibre to a point, and hey presto, it gets converted to copper a few streets away, so, you still need a copper line to your house to get the fibreoptic broadband, which isn't fibreoptic... :o

I can understand why they want to ditch something that requires investment of time and money, it's cos the shareholders want the money for themselves, and if they get all the money, there's none left to maintain the network, and so they say that they're cutting it back to reduce costs, but forget to mention they're maximising profits too, so all in all, it's profit driven, people want to make money, and other people have to suffer losing a  service that works because someone else wants to buy a shiny new Mercedes... ::)

The plans are no P.O.T.S. in Norway by the end of 2017. The first municipality started august 31.
All customers are "guaranteed" a replacement by fiber or mobile network for internet and telephony. Alarms and other safety equipment are not covered.

dsk

Quote from: McHeath on June 12, 2013, 12:20:53 AM
Once again I had to call out AT&T service guy out to find another twisted pair back to the CO to get rid of the static.  We do this dance every year or two now.  There's a big service box in the neighbors front yard, and the techs go in there and find a clean pair of wires and hook us up to it.

The techs have all said that hardly anyone is using the POTS copper anymore, so they have lots of wires to choose from. 

They also say that AT&T has no interest in repairing the copper, and wants it to go away. 

It's cheap service though, $18.25 a month. 

My son up in Montana uses the Magicjack dealio, it works well for him and he's got it connected to a vintage phone, so that's hopeful.   :)

Our line for the first time ever now hums like crazy whenever it rains. I scheduled an appt last thursday when it started raining, but never heard from anyone. Everything was dry and quiet by monday so I just cancelled it. Usually they respond next day.

What's more sad to me is that there won't be any equally as reliable replacement (I would gladly accept FTTH though but that seems like a far off dream)

I ordered a POTS line for my mom's business since we're now moving to real VOIP (moving away from Comcast digital voice), and we need a line for back up. I'm curious how that's gonna play out since the lines there have always been problematic, and I  think mostly abandoned by now.  Everyone on this block is on Comcast. 

When internet are out, the voice over internet solutions are out, quite easy to understand.
When the power are out, and comes back, internet may need quite long time to come up. (Not that easy to understand)
If the POTS are bad, hopefully mobile works. Here (in Norway) mobile network works at least 4 hours after power goes down. Some kind of a mobile to regular phone adapter may solve it, but remember the adapter needs battery backup to work when the power are gone.

All this makes it more difficult for the common man, and you may always blame some others.

dsk

By the way, way Comcast, I have surfed a little around and Callcentric seems to be a better choice for me, Actually the pay pr call solution is so good that I use it for calls to POTS phones here in Norway! And I got a New York number for free!  This even made it possible to put up a Google voice account forwarded to this number, and free calls to US/Canada.  (Even when $0.0198 are so close to 0 so its nearly no point to use G.V.)

dsk

Got an AT&T tech out today. Found the issue in the F1, swapped it out and our line is quiet as a mouse again!
One thing I love is that we have a very good set of I&R techs around here.

F1 = Field 1 or first pair of cable leaving the CO. The circuit usually or at least frequently will go through two or more cables between terminals thus the possibility of F2, F3 cable pairs enroute to its final destination.

Here we never used that terminology referring to cables as the CO cable and FX cable. When on occasion there were more than two different cables then things fell apart with us referring to second or even third FX pairs.

Terry

POTS is dying. Article in todays Ney York Times. Verizon refused to replace the landline to an area affected by Sandy. Replaced with some wireless service Residents used to the reliability of the landline are complaining. I don't fault them.

Quote from: trainman on October 18, 2013, 01:42:04 AM
POTS is dying. Article in todays Ney York Times. Verizon refused to replace the landline to an area affected by Sandy. Replaced with some wireless service Residents used to the reliability of the landline are complaining. I don't fault them.

Apparently the complaints were loud enough to make them back down:  http://tinyurl.com/kgx268g (http://tinyurl.com/kgx268g)  I miss the old Bell System.

QuoteVerizon Backing Off Plans for Wireless Home Phones
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
Published: September 12, 2013


After facing numerous complaints from residents of Fire Island, Verizon has backed away from its plan to use a wireless device to replace traditional phone service in areas where it would rather not repair its old copper wires.

After Hurricane Sandy, Verizon asked state regulators in New York for permission to substitute Voice Link, a home phone service that carries calls on a cellular network, for what it refers to as "plain old telephone service." The first place in the state it tried broad use of Voice Link was on the west end of Fire Island, a resort community on the Atlantic Ocean that incurred heavy damage in the late October storm.

Verizon had hoped to use Fire Island as an example of how Voice Link could be installed in other areas of the state where its network of copper wires was damaged by storms or deemed too costly to repair or maintain. The regulators said they would monitor the results and decide later this year.

But Verizon did not wait for the final results. It conceded defeat this week and said it would start laying fiber-optic cable that would restore home phone service and Internet access.

Edward P. Romaine, the supervisor of the town of Brookhaven, said he was "delighted" that Verizon had been "forced into" offering an alternative to Voice Link. "I dare say there are very few residents of Fire Island that would prefer Voice Link," he said.

The company also withdrew its request to the state Public Service Commission for permission to use Voice Link as a permanent substitute for traditional home phone service elsewhere in the state.

"What we're basically telling the commission is we're not going to pursue the stuff that we were pursuing," said Tom Maguire, Verizon's senior vice president for national operations support. "We're going to go back to the day before Sandy."

The Voice Link experiment was watched closely by consumer advocates because it was seen as a test of the obligations that traditional phone-service providers have to their customers. The advocates fear that acceptance of Voice Link will give Verizon an incentive to neglect its copper lines, which are expensive to maintain.

Verizon and AT&T have told federal and state regulators that the demise of "plain old" phone service is inevitable, as more Americans rely on cellphones and demand faster Internet connections than copper wires can provide.

Indeed, Verizon is not abandoning Voice Link. The company intends to continue offering it as a substitute for traditional service in Mantoloking, N.J., and other communities that have been hit hard by storms.

Some Mantoloking residents have complained about Verizon's decision not to restore their old phone lines after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc there. But the company said that people in Mantoloking, unlike the residents of Fire Island, have an alternative: they can get phone service and Internet access from Comcast, the local cable provider.

That answer did not satisfy Stefanie A. Brand, the director for the Division of Rate Counsel in New Jersey. A representative of utility consumers, Ms. Brand said Mantoloking residents should not have to buy a bundled service from the cable company to get home phone service that is not wireless.

"Verizon is the provider of last resort in New Jersey," Ms. Brand said, "so they have to offer customers a basic telephone service option, and there is no telephone service option available to the customers in Mantoloking."

AARP has called on the Federal Communications Commission and New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities to investigate Verizon's use of Voice Link in Mantoloking. The organization argued that dependable, regulated phone service is a "lifeline" for residents, especially older ones, when a storm like Hurricane Sandy hits.

Jim Dieterle, the state director for AARP in New Jersey, called Voice Link a "third-rate" alternative. He said state officials should not accept less than what Verizon is doing on Fire Island. "Why would they do one thing in New York and then not in New Jersey? We're not second-class citizens," he said. "I don't think our governor would appreciate being treated in a less admirable way."

A version of this article appears in print on September 13, 2013, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Verizon Backing Off Plans For Wireless Home Phones.

t would be nice if someone else could purchase all the nations landline system and run it. That way it wouldn't be a burden to all the  providers.

Tell me why we need competion in the utility business? Their sole job is to provide a reliable service. We don't need funny laws and schemes to buy the same services and have company x offer it for 10% less than company Y when they provide the same product.

Quote from: trainman on October 19, 2013, 09:53:58 PM
t would be nice if someone else could purchase all the nations landline system and run it. That way it wouldn't be a burden to all the  providers.

Tell me why we need competion in the utility business? Their sole job is to provide a reliable service. We don't need funny laws and schemes to buy the same services and have company x offer it for 10% less than company Y when they provide the same product.

The "why" is pretty much why a lot of things aren't as they should be, greed and ignorance.  In this case, greed on the part of equipment manufacturers and service providers who wanted a slice of the Bell System's lucrative pie and would do anything to get it.  Ignorance on the part of Supreme Court rulings that helped them get it.

Get a copy of The Rape of Ma Bell, you can find it on Amazon for cheap.

Seems BT have inadvertently ended our POTS today, cos the phoneline is dead as a doornail, no dial tone, no incoming calls, no power to even make tones or turn on the Monitor function on that BT Relate 200 I got several weeks back (at about the same time as my AE80), just completely dead, there was some work going on at the pole just up the street, so I think they have moved some wires in the spaghetti bundle which has inadvertently disconnected ours, leaving the house without phone or ADSL (I'm using mobile broadband at the moment)... ::)

Can't report the fault to BT directly cos we're with Primus, and I can't report it to Primus cos they apparently aren't aware of the 24 hour society that we live in today, and they're gone for the night, with no 24hr faults reporting line available... ::)

Shame I don't have a tone generator, a probe, one of them distance to the end of the pairs things, and a key to open up the junction box, I could have fixed it myself by now... :D

Well, our line got fixed yesterday, turned out the fault was basically a snapped wire, the copper had snapped inside the sheathing in the junction box just up the street, presumably from being pulled out and pushed back so many times that it just fractured and ultimately let go, but the Openreach engineer (as technically, BT themselves don't operate the lines now, it's Openreach who do, even though they're a BT business!!!) traced the fault with his line fault tracer (fancy piece of kit that, I want one!!) and re-terminated the wires... :)

He said that he didn't like the way it's all wired up round here, it's all jelly crimps and zip ties, where in the more modern installs, they use Krone IDC strips in the junctions, making it easier to connect up, trace, repair and rewire, without interfering with other lines, wouldn't be hard to retrofit either, but, it's cost-saving measures that prevent repairs and upgrades like that...  :-\

Quote from: trainman on October 19, 2013, 09:53:58 PM

Tell me why we need [competition] in the utility business?

We no longer have the stomach or the tax dollars necessary to regulate what amounts to a Crown corporation.

Hey, George is back! Good to hear from you again.

Terry

Our line is all messed up again  >:( now humming worse then I've ever heard! The answering machine has given me a idea of when it started. A message was left at 2:18 PM and it was clear, then another message after that reveals the raucous ground hum that we all know so well. Unfortunately it was deleted before I caught the time.

I love that AT&T allows you to open a trouble report online for Home Phone. Wish they'd do this for Uverse too! Guess having them spend money on script readers in India is cheaper then people filling out a lot of false alarm tickets...  ::)
Wish comcast would allow you to open tickets online too...

Quote from: GusHerb on October 17, 2013, 02:55:52 PM
Got an AT&T tech out today. Found the issue in the F1, swapped it out and our line is quiet as a mouse again!

Quote from: AE_Collector on October 17, 2013, 07:14:55 PM
F1 = Field 1 or first pair of cable leaving the CO.

Terry

Here I thought the friendly phone company tech fixed your F1 handset!  Silly me!

My pet peeve with AT&T repair is that they will wait until the outside cables have dried out before dispatching a tech. So the trouble appears to have cleared on its own. If the line is working when he gets there, then the customer is billed about $75 for a FOK (Found OK)  even if the tech does nothing.

Of course, if you pay an extra $8 per month for Inside wire maintenance/trouble isolation then you aren't charged for the visit. Not that they fix the problem.

Some providers offer this plan.. yes David.. I have it. I mean a maintenance/trouble plan Inside the house..

I am my own inside wire technician.

The best deal I was ever offered on inside wiring maint. was $.01 a month. I turned it down because I had wired all the jacks and It would be to much work to move boxes of phones for "workman access" if there was ever a problem. I never did have any line problems while I lived there.
On the other hand I have always paid for line maintence in apts. because I didn't install the wiring and Didn't have access to to it.
JMO,
Jim

The loud hum (as loud as the dial tone) disappeared as quickly as it came. Probably something to do with the CO (if not related to water, and the low of 18 we had that night). I've seen weird hums come and go like that with nothing ever being done to fix it.

OTOH I think the line at my mothers shop has a hum now. Doesn't seem loud enough to call it in but I'm gonna check with a better handset. Is AT&T playing some kind of joke on me? Musical Lines? (instead of musical chairs)
I get frustrated with POTS because it hums, crackles, has static etc and I get frustrated with VoIP because it doesn't function like POTS. Guess there's no happy medium for me.  :-\

Get 2 tin cans, 2 buttons, and a length of string.  Maybe you will get better quality audio.

POTS continues along here, one big happy copper family. ;)

Every year or two we have the AT&T techs out, they find us another clean pair back to the CO, and we use it until it gets fuzzy.  They say that hardly anyone in my hood is still using POTS, so they have lots of wires to choose from now. 

Isn't there still a law here in the US that the phone companies have to provide POTS?  Or something like that?

Quote from: McHeath on November 19, 2013, 12:37:52 AMIsn't there still a law here in the US that the phone companies have to provide POTS?  Or something like that?

If there is, I'm sure they're quietly working on getting rid of it so they can pull up the copper to sell as scrap to china... :D

That hum came back, and was coming back every night that it would go below freezing! Line tech came out today and cleared a mouse nest out of the pedestal across the street from our block, and repaired the section they chewed on.

Quote from: McHeath on November 19, 2013, 12:37:52 AM
POTS continues along here, one big happy copper family. ;)

Every year or two we have the AT&T techs out, they find us another clean pair back to the CO, and we use it until it gets fuzzy.  They say that hardly anyone in my hood is still using POTS, so they have lots of wires to choose from now.  

Isn't there still a law here in the US that the phone companies have to provide POTS?  Or something like that?

Yes there certainly is, if there wasn't they would've done away with POTS by now. I wish when they do away with POTS that the infrastructure be replaced with fiber but that seems like a long shot seeing as how AT&T and Verizon have pulled the wool over everyones eyes.

Looks like its coming....The end of POTS, that is....

This is an article from Fox News.  It was posted in the TCI and VOIP Listserves by Steve Cichorsky.

The link to the Fox article is:


http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/11/20/fcc-announces-plans-to-upgrade-century-old-phone-system/?intcmp=obnetwork


The text of it follows:


Move over, Ma Bell.

About a third of Americans use iPhone or Android-based cellular phones, and another third place digital phone calls through their cable provider, Vonage or others. But that last third of Americans still rely on the century-old network of copper wires that make up the backbone of the country's communication system. And they're long overdue for an upgrade.

"The public switched telephone network will be shut off some day. The question is when will that be," an FCC official told FoxNews.com.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday announced plans to expedite the largest change to the nation's phone system in decades -- a move away from the aging, circuit-switched system that sends those analog signals over copper cables to a modern, digital, IP-based network that largely relies on fiber optics.


'This is what I have called the Fourth Network Revolution, and it is a good thing.'

- FCC chairman Tom Wheeler

Once tests prove that the new system works in localized trials, the digital phone network will be rolled out nationwide. And ultimately, the copper wires that have linked families and farm houses for over a century will be turned off.

"This is what I have called the Fourth Network Revolution, and it is a good thing," FCC chairman Tom Wheeler wrote in a blog post. "The way forward is to encourage technological change while preserving the attributes of network services that customers have come to expect ... we have listened, and now it is the time to act. In this, I agree with my commission colleagues."

The copper wires that make up the public switched telephone network carry POTS signals, short for plain old telephone system. And even cellular calls still touch and depend on all that old copper.

In January, the FCC is expected to begin "a diverse set of experiments" in order to figure out how to transition to the new IP-based system, a transition certain to take years. The initial experiments will likely include regional tests of an IP-based system to ascertain reliability, scalability and so on, an FCC spokesman told FoxNews.com.

The commission's technological advisory committee set a goal of 2018, which is likely too ambitious, he said. But expect localized trials as soon as 2015.

The upgrade may mean introducing the age of video calling to landlines. An IP landline network, unlike current copper wires can handle much larger amounts of data that could be used to make video calls.

"Our current infrastructure has served us well for almost a century but it no longer meets the needs of America's consumers," AT&T's Jim Cicconi said in a response published online. "The transition to broadband and IP services that has already begun is driven by consumers who are moving to the Internet and choosing to connect in ways not imagined just a decade ago."

Companies like Verizon and AT&T currently control the existing landline phone network and are subject to strict rules by the FCC to protect consumers. It is unclear how the planned changes will affect the telephone companies as the FCC has historically been opposed to classifying broadband Internet as a telecom service.

"The way forward is to encourage technological change while preserving the attributes of network services that customers have come to expect," Wheeler wrote. "History has shown that new networks catalyze innovation, investment, ideas, and ingenuity."

this brings me to a question and I know that this is on the forum somewhere but I can t find it. is there a way that our vintage rotary phones would still work on the new system? Gregg

Quote from: southernphoneman on November 21, 2013, 05:09:50 AMis there a way that our vintage rotary phones would still work on the new system? Gregg

Probably through the same ATAs they use for phone service on cable lines over there, though the best way is just to buy a Panasonic system and connect that to the ATA.... :D

That or start a petition to deny the dismantling of the copper networks, cos it's too reliable to get rid of, cos in the event of a power failure, fibre-op is dead in the water if you have no backup power, whereas copper lines keep running so long as the exchange has power (battery or generator-supplied), keeping traditional phones working when everything else is not... :)

IP-based network, what fun! I had one for a while through Comcast. Not only did the phone service go down when the power was down (it uses a modem that needs power from the regular household power supply), but the phone service didn't function even if just the internet was down (the modem uses the internet).

Quote from: southernphoneman on November 21, 2013, 05:09:50 AM
this brings me to a question and I know that this is on the forum somewhere but I can t find it. is there a way that our vintage rotary phones would still work on the new system? Gregg

Not by just plugging it in.  The plug-in to any new IP based system will not be a simple tip and ring DC loop.  The only way old phones will work on any IP based system, even those in existence today, is through an Analog Terminal Adapter (ATA), or sometimes referred to as a special purpose router.  Those who are on Vonage, or with cable based phones are already using these ATA's in order to plug in their old phones.  It is likely that some day as IP based phones become more and more prevalent, the makers of the ATA's won't bother with the additional cost to have a port to plug in a legacy POTS phone.  In fact there won't be as much of a demand for an ATA at all.  THe "phone" device of the future will have its own plug.  The plug for my IP based phone at work is the same as the network cable my computer plugs into.  In fact it plugs into the same network as my office computer.

Some day in the future, the only way to even demonstrate older phones will be to have either an ATA so you can connect a POTS phone to an IP system, or get yourself a Panasonic (or similar) PBX such as a 308 or 616 that you can connect several phones to and call and ring back and forth.

It should also be mentioned that there is an IP based Telephone Collector's C*Net that you will see referred to from time to time.  I am on it, and several others are too.  It is a semi-private IP system where we as collectors can connect our old phones, switchboards and key systems to, and call each other up.  For that all you need is an old phone, high speed internet service, and an ATA that is configured for C*Net.

Not only the end of POTS
More and more of my friends just drops everything except the mobile, and yes it is more expensive with POTS, and even with IP telephony.


>:( >:( >:( >:(

dsk

Ah yes, the ever touted "The way forward" lingo. ::)

Never heard that line before, have we?

Certainly I don't dismiss the benefits of free long distance calls that I can place, and talk to people thousands of miles away as long as I like.  (provided I pay for an internet connection)  Video calls, texting, the ability to voice call from anywhere, it's all good.  Of course it's not all that reliable, and there's the rub.

"The way forward" seems to mean that we get a lot of nice new things but have to give up one old thing, reliability.  A curious compromise, but that seems to be the mood of the era. 

"It's shiny!  It's new!  It's fancy!  It's got a 5.27" screen with mega-retina uber-wunnerful resolution and a 2 bazillion ghz deci-quad core processor!  Oh, uh, and it's fragile and breaks easily, don't drop it, and uh, never place a critical call on it that you actually need to get through on.  Also, you'll need to update stuff on it endlessly to keep it working, and in a couple of years -if it lasts that long- it probably won't work well anymore, what with the newer OS protocols we have coming down the pike and the cheap components we sourced from the lowest bidder in China.  But hey, it's shiny!"

What was the old standard, 99.999% uptime on the POTS phones?  They won't even tell us what we get these days with our cell phone service, and we all know why. 

Isn´t that what the stamp collectors used to say when the telephone was introduced?

The mobile has much more capabilities than just making Phone calls. So it´s not just shininess why people buy it.

I have given up my POTS line. I had AT&T POTS & DSL but almost 2 years ago I gave up on the DSL and switched (back) to TWC RoadRunner internet -- 2.5x the speed of the DSL I had (top tier) for $10 less/month. I used to say that TWC was the only company I hated worse than AT&T but as time wore on I found I couldn't really claim that any more.

My AT&T POTS was getting flaky and the repair service was indifferent at best. So I made the switch to RR voice service. What I was paying AT&T ca. $40/month for, I'm now getting from TWC for $10/mo. Of course if I lose my power I lose my phone, but I already had my internet system (modem, gateway, etc) on a UPS because at work I'm on call periodically and have to be reachable on my cell phone and my cell reception sucks so I have a microcell. So I need my internet service to be up.

Anyway, I'm now on RR voice and all the old phones still work. RR tell me that their modem/ATA has a REN of 8! I tried to stay with POTS but it was a struggle. I finally relented. AT&T was probably happy to see me go -- I was probably more trouble than I was worth. They want everyone on Uverse (even though they wouldn't give me Uverse -- I'm a tiny bit too far from the cabinet).

POTS ended in our house this weekend. The wife wanted to shut it off last summer. The bill was just shy of 40 dollars per month for a no frills line that we hardly used. I talked into keeping it because of my obsession.
Recently, I made her a deal. If she let me (I am unable to work and she pays the bills) get a 616 for my phones, I would no linger need an outside line and she could have the phone line disconnected. Well, I got my 616, along with a second one for a spare, so I kept my end of the deal. I sure won't miss those annoying calls, unless I decide to call myself.    Jim

I also gave up POTS about 8 or 9 years ago when Vonage was new.  I have since moved to another VoIP service with my cable provider.  This semi-POTS service works great, except now that my wife and I both have smart phones, the "home phone" rarely gets used.  I have been thinking of cancelling my VoIP line now too.

We have cheap $15 a month phones. They serve our needs.   Jim

Quote from: old_stuff_hound on December 05, 2013, 09:34:15 PM
My AT&T POTS was getting flaky and the repair service was indifferent at best. So I made the switch to RR voice service. What I was paying AT&T ca. $40/month for, I'm now getting from TWC for $10/mo. Of course if I lose my power I lose my phone, but I already had my internet system (modem, gateway, etc) on a UPS because at work I'm on call periodically and have to be reachable on my cell phone and my cell reception sucks so I have a microcell. So I need my internet service to be up.

Have you had a power outage since you switched? The reason I ask is I have analog cable from TWC and there's an "amplifier" box on the power pole across the road from my house, and it belongs to TWC. One day my neighbor across the road had a power line short, which took out the power to the pole and my house. The TWC repairman was here before the Duke Power truck, which had to come from a neighboring county. That power outage took out the cable and phone service for everyone down the road from me and they were complaining. They had power, but no signal because the amp was dead. So unless TWC has a backup on their amps in your area, you may still be dead in the water when the power goes out.

I'm one of the minority who still has POTS and I don't own a cell phone. So if the power goes out, I have no way to report it. So I'm keeping my POTS, which is only $25 a month from Windstream.

We still have our pots line too, but a few years ago, we lost the connection for a week. A cable was digged up, it was easter time, and it was soooo difficult to fix it.  Lots of neighbors lost their connection too. This grade of service cost them many subscribers.

Here in Norway cellphone are the cheapest solution for the moment. Then VOIP (If you forget the internet costs) and then POTS.

Why do I keep it? 
I'm old fashioned, it serves my alarm system, and I play with it in another way than what is possible to a PABX.

During my lifetime  I have been out of POTS connection for 7-8 days, The mobile network has been down 2 days, (2 years ago)  Internet ar going up and down as an elevator, and GET has about monopole on a fast internet connection where I live. (ADSL are bad because of long lines to the exchange).

Mobile phone with an adapter, and battery backup looks like an almost equal product as a landline, at least if you don't use it for playing. (with old telephone stuff)

dsk

Quote from: jsowers on December 16, 2013, 11:08:06 PM
Have you had a power outage since you switched? The reason I ask is I have analog cable from TWC and there's an "amplifier" box on the power pole across the road from my house, and it belongs to TWC. One day my neighbor across the road had a power line short, which took out the power to the pole and my house. The TWC repairman was here before the Duke Power truck, which had to come from a neighboring county. That power outage took out the cable and phone service for everyone down the road from me and they were complaining. They had power, but no signal because the amp was dead. So unless TWC has a backup on their amps in your area, you may still be dead in the water when the power goes out.

I'm one of the minority who still has POTS and I don't own a cell phone. So if the power goes out, I have no way to report it. So I'm keeping my POTS, which is only $25 a month from Windstream.

I have. We had a pretty widespread (based on observation, just driving around) outage a month or so ago. I ran off the UPS for a while and when the power still hadn't come back I got the little Harbor Freight 2-stroke generator from the barn and fired it up. My plan had been to feed the UPS with the generator, if for no other reason than to filer the power some. But it seems the waveform from the generator was bad enough to cause the UPS to freak out so I ran all the gear directly off the generator. Everything worked and when the power came back about 2am I switched back to commercial power. Well -- I should probably say, "Everything worked when we went to bed. I assume it was still working several hours later but I did not specifically check."

I was looking at getting a 2-stroke generator (in the UK we can get basically the same thing that's referred to as the "Harbor Freight" generator), but looking at a lot of youtube videos on them, with the noise and the shaky waveform, yeah, they're probably only good for lights really... :D

Quote from: twocvbloke on December 17, 2013, 06:25:34 PM
I was looking at getting a 2-stroke generator (in the UK we can get basically the same thing that's referred to as the "Harbor Freight" generator), but looking at a lot of youtube videos on them, with the noise and the shaky waveform, yeah, they're probably only good for lights really... :D

Actually, most electronics these days will put up with surprising crappy power. I guess they have to if you can plug them into 120v or 240v, 50Hz or 60Hz, with nothing more than something that changes one shape of prongs to another....

But as far as my little generator goes, I bought it only for short outages. Anything longer than a few hours and I bring the big one online. I have a well and have to have real power to run the pump.

What I'd really like is a Lister Startomatic but those are a little scarce over here. ;-)

Oh yes the cell phone is far more capable than the POTS phone, and it's not only shininess that drives us to them.   :)

I guess my main point was that for all this money we spend on our new gizmos we get surprisingly unreliable service.  Just now I had to do the old unplug it and plug it back in for the router, and earlier a reboot of the computer and some memory management on the phone.  I never make critical calls on the cell as it may drop the call at any moment, so I use the landline for those. 

I've noticed that more and more I'm getting a request for a callback number if we get disconnected from the help lines, which recognizes the unreliable nature of the cell phone.

For the kind of money we are spending I believe that we ought to be getting both new capabilities AND old time reliable service.  Instead we are in an either/or era, which feels like we are being cheated.  Why can't the providers make these services more dependable?  Is it the inherent problems of the cell phone, or is it that they don't want to spend the money on networks?

Which is the reason we keep the landline, it always works.  The house alarm is hooked to it, and I know in a power failure, which happens surprisingly often, it will still work.  It's curious how often the power goes out, here I am in central California sitting in the dark more than I care to because PG&E can't keep the lights on.

But that's another issue.

Quote from: McHeath on December 18, 2013, 07:09:16 PM
Why can't the providers make these services more dependable?  Is it the inherent problems of the cell phone, or is it that they don't want to spend the money on networks?

You forgot the third option -- (most) customers don't seem to care. I think it's a combination of providers not wanting to pay and customers not demanding better.....

I have a POTS line connected to a modified 1A2 key system. I use the 2564 keyfields in a wooden enclosure with a standard modern phone. I've replaced the K400E card with a circuit that provides lamps for off hook and hold. Don't plan on eliminating the POTS line, and technically don't own a cell phone. I do have a basic company provided cell phone. If the company didn't provide one I would get something basic - but I much prefer to use a Tip & Ring phone. When a coworker calls I'll usually ask if they're near a phone and call them there. So often batteries go dead - the cellphone is in a bad area - and I think generally have poor audio quality. I'll acknowledge cellphones are great in many circumstances - but not for every conversation. Lately I tend to let calls go to voicemail when I'm driving. In my state a hands-free device is required. Sometimes it's a hassle and unsafe to find the headset, plug it in and put it on. The bluetooth headset will sometimes lose power due to a low battery at times. What I find really annoying is finally getting the headset situated to hear something like - 'I sent you an email...' - a big waste and abuse of the technology. I know I'm in the minority and I hate the fact that at some point due the the cost I may need to consider an voip line. If/when I do I sure hope I can get an adaptor to convert it to tip & ring.

I was worried when I started collecting old phones whether I could even call out with them. A couple years ago, we dumped our expensive and flaky DSL service and got FiOS installed. Part of it was getting a feed for our 2 phone lines from the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) attached to the side of the house that the fiber optic cable tunneled under our driveway connected into. When I received my first auction win in the mail, I was pleased that it was able to dial out without any problem. (I forgot how long it took to dial a number, not having used a rotary dial in 30 years)

I hereby speculate the common battery from the CO is from the battery screwed into the wall underneath my stairs that feeds the ONT on a ridiculously long cable I made the installer run. And since electrical signals do not travel down light (although when I master that I shall be two-thirds completed with my plans for world domination, see my avatar), the copper run to the ONT must terminate at some ATA.

As long as I keep the ONT's battery juiced, I should have POTS phone functions, as long as the other side is alive, which didn't happen after a 6 day power outage a few years ago. darn trees don't like to be pummeled by hurricane force winds and then iced over. And since everything is on fiber optic, I probably won't get dumped into that Cellular-based thing all the phone companies are moving to in the next 5 years. Hoping  ???

My mother's phone service went out recently.  Verizon told her that the problem was "unfixable" and that she needed to upgrade to digital. 

Verizon must really want everyone off POTS.  They've been after me to move to digital voice for several years.  The latest incentive is to add TV for two years for less than I'm paying for no TV and send a gift card.

Quote from: Sargeguy on January 06, 2014, 09:52:13 AM
My mother's phone service went out recently.  Verizon told her that the problem was "unfixable" and that she needed to upgrade to digital. 

If it's unfixable, then she can't go onto their digital service unless they fix it, which means it's fixable, and they're telling a blatant lie to mis-sell her a product that she doesn't need or want on the basis that her analogue setup (which probably just has a dry joint or broken wire somewhere) is permanently broken... ::)

Very devious tactics there... ::)

Two hours after posting this my POTS service just went out.  Coincidence?  I think not!

Quote from: Sargeguy on January 06, 2014, 06:04:40 PM
Two hours after posting this my POTS service just went out.  Coincidence?  I think not!

Exuse me Greg, but what does mean " POTS " ? sorry for my ignorance ...:(

Plain Old Telephone Service

ah thanks

Quote from: HarrySmith on January 06, 2014, 06:11:56 PM
Plain Old Telephone Service

Okay thank you Harry....

You are welcome ;D

I asked the same question a few years ago ;D

Actually,  I get tone from my NID*.  Maybe its time to disconnect the 297G? :'(

*Network Interface Device

Quote from: HarrySmith on January 06, 2014, 06:37:52 PM
You are welcome ;D

I asked the same question a few years ago ;D

No problem I learned something today  ;D

Quote from: mrbugsir on January 06, 2014, 12:21:55 AM
the copper run to the ONT must terminate at some ATA.

As long as I keep the ONT's battery juiced, I should have POTS phone functions, as long as the other side is alive,

Yes, ONT contains the ATA. The OLT (Optical Line Termination -- the other end of the fibre) is either in the CO or in a remote cabinet (in which case, I'd expect its power is somewhat less reliable....)

If I had to guess, I'd guess the other end of your fibre is connected to something very much like this:
(http://www.broadbandsoho.com/FTTx/Alcatel_7342_OLT_Overview.jpg)

Enough with the acronyms already :o

Quote from: HarrySmith on January 06, 2014, 10:30:24 PM
Enough with the acronyms already :o

Sorry -- they're part of the picture! ;-)

QuoteMy mother's phone service went out recently.  Verizon told her that the problem was "unfixable" and that she needed to upgrade to digital.

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

Had the AT and T tech out last week over some U-Verse problems, loses signal at random moments.  Once you bond a little with the field techs, which seems to happen real fast when they see all the rotary phones hooked up, they will start talking honestly about what is going on.

His comments:

"They ("") aren't going to spend any money maintaining the copper anymore"

"They ("") spend as little as possible on the network"

"They ("") aren't really interested in maintenance"

Now of course this is ones guys opinions, perhaps he's disgruntled. 

Quote from: Sargeguy on January 06, 2014, 09:52:13 AM
My mother's phone service went out recently.  Verizon told her that the problem was "unfixable" and that she needed to upgrade to digital. 

Maybe they said "upgrade to wireless"?
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-wireless-sandy/

QuoteLast fall, Superstorm Sandy wiped out landline telephone service for thousands of people. Many of them are never getting those landlines back.
...
On Fire Island, N.Y., off the southern coast of Long Island, Verizon is replacing its copper landlines with a wireless telephone system called Voice Link. The new system consists of a small modem-sized device that plugs into an electrical outlet and a standard telephone jack in your wall at home. That device connects to Verizon's wireless cellular network, which brings phone service and a dial tone to the existing cord or cordless phones in the home. Customers can use it to make calls, and it and offers services like call waiting, caller ID and voice mail.

Not that I consider that an "upgrade" but I could see them trying to spin it that way....

Quote from: McHeath on January 08, 2014, 12:52:34 AM
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

Quote from: DavePEI on January 08, 2014, 06:41:51 AM

Quote from: McHeath on January 08, 2014, 12:52:34 AM
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

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 (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.

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.

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!!)

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.

Quote from: poplar1 on January 23, 2014, 09:28:03 AM
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.

Quote from: Russ Kirk on January 23, 2014, 05:50:12 PM
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.

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.

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.

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

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... :)

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.

Her you may see how the Norwegian telecom "giant" plays: http://tinyurl.com/18r (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

an article from today's 'daily telegraph' (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/technology-topics/10698203/The-end-of-the-landline.html)...........some interesting comments below the line


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

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

POTS just got another 1 yr renewal over here. The promo ended so I called retentions and the first guy I got was pure lazy and wouldn't do anything for me. Put in an order to Comcast last week then today I decided I should call into retentions one more time and got a wonderful CSR from the south who put me back on what I had before. I cancelled that order with Comcast...

I hate to part with something that works so well and almost never requires any thought to keep it that way.

Our POTS is up to no good again, been getting humming, crosstalk and static for several weeks now. Opened a ticket two weeks ago and never heard back. Politely chewed out a repair center rep (I wasn't rude or demanding just asking what's going on and making my case) and now I got a new appt moved to Saturday and somebody higher up called me after hours.

Every time something happens with our line I think hard "will this be the end of POTS for us?" As it's always very tempting to port to a VOIP provider, which I may have done already if our cellphone service didn't go out for a day on Saturday (backhaul issue at the tower)

Something interesting I noticed is the rings are being cut short to .5-1 second now. I also hear a howler tone in the background in a call or if I answer a call.

Sounds like a classic case of someone has their wires crossed.

As reported yesterday, 41% of US households have just cell phones--no landline (POTS).

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-wireless-only-households-in-america-20140708-story.html

http://internet2go.net/news/over-57-us-homes-have-no-landline-or-dont-use-landline

I read a similar article the other day from CNN or one of the other news websites.  One of the additional startling things is the way they define "Land Line".  When thy use land line, they also include all the VoIP-based services such as Vonage and cable providers, and those services are eating away at pure copper-pair based POTS services from a legacy telco.

I wonder what the ratio of POTS to non POTS users are when you define POTS as only a copper pair coming from a telco?

I assume we have seen the end in improvements to CO switching technology. I don't think we have had a "CO conversion" here this century.

Terry

Quote from: Phonesrfun on July 09, 2014, 01:08:41 PM
I read a similar article the other day from CNN or one of the other news websites.  One of the additional startling things is the way they define "Land Line".  When thy use land line, they also include all the VoIP-based services such as Vonage and cable providers, and those services are eating away at pure copper-pair based POTS services from a legacy telco.

I wonder what the ratio of POTS to non POTS users are when you define POTS as only a copper pair coming from a telco?

In my subdivision of 95 homes there is literally just a handful if that of people that still have POTS, the rest of them are cable VoIP and Uverse VoIP.

I'm guessing in the areas where cable is dominant or att has Uverse the number of actual POTS users is very small. In rural areas it may be more but most of those types of places where I know people they usually stick to cellphones and talk about how horrible the local carrier is *cough* Centurylink, Verizon *cough*.

They have so many open pairs going to the crossbox by our house that whenever we have a line problem in the F1 pair they just swap the pair (that's how they fixed the very latest issue). In fact those F1 feeders have probably been almost unused since around 2004, when they put in a RT for DSL and moved everyone who signed up for DSL over to RT based POTS.  We had a RT based line and a CO based line, I could always tell the difference (in dial tone and background noises).

It's back -- the hum. Called the tech that came out last week and he's coming back asap. I'm tired of having our line "go bad", it's obvious there's some failing splices somewhere! and I doubt if they'd ever fix it, the only copper they're investing in is the stuff between the Uverse VRAD's and the homes. If/when it comes back after the tech fixes it, that will be the end for our home having POTS... Our number is loaded with junk calls anyway and I'll be glad to port it to a VoIP provider that screens the calls however I like it to.

In Canada the most recent number is that around 85% of households still have POTS. The number is slowly declining, but it's still higher than the 81% who have "1 or more" cellphones.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/bcw/942869-mchugh-canadians-still-love-their-landlines-but-for-how-long
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadians-spending-more-on-smartphones-and-home-internet-2014-01-31

Why the difference from the US? Perhaps because
- for one, there is a de facto monopoly on copper-based communications with Bell in eastern and central Canada and Telus in western Canada.
- many rural areas of Canada don't have any cell coverage.
- we have among the most expensive cellphone services in the world...many plans have limits as low as 50 or 100 minutes per month with $0.35/min thereafter for local, $0.50/min or more for long-distance.
I'm just guessing here.

In my province, Quebec, the cellphone ownership is even lower than the national average at 73%. Anecdotally, I can say that there are basically two telecommunications options for homes: copper/fiber from Bell or cable from Videotron (Rogers in most other provinces). Most people get a 3- or 4-service package from one company or the other, which includes TV, Internet, home phone and cellular. This means people using Videotron would have a VoIP-like service over their cable, not copper-based POTS. So for one, as others have pointed out, it's unclear if that 85% with land lines all have copper POTS (I doubt it), and second, a good number only have it because of a bundle, and rarely if ever use it. One person I know has land line, but doesn't even have a phone plugged in (since he only gets calls from telemarketers, he says).

Following the links to related articles, I ended up here:
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadian-households-without-landlines-2014-07-09

According to this article, 83% of Canadian households have an active cell phone (76% in Quebec).  21% of Canadian households have cell phones exclusively. Also:

The share of households with a traditional landline fell from 66% in 2010 to 56% in 2013. In Quebec (43%), the percentage of households with a landline was lower than in any other province, while the proportion using telephone service by cable modem (37%) was almost twice the overall Canadian rate (19%).

Telephone service from Internet providers (voice over Internet Protocol, such as Skype) was still relatively rare in 2013, with 3% of households reporting its use.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Canada: 21% Cell only + 56% traditional land line + 19% cable modem + 3% VOIP + 1% no phone= 100%]
[Quebec   ?%   Cell only + 43% traditional land line + 37%  "          "          ?%   "         ?%  "     "      = 100%]

I'm using an Xink bluetooth thingie.  Routes cell calls into my house wiring, rings two 202's and two 302's.  Works adequately, but just OK.  I had a thing called a Cobra Phonelynx that worked just OK too.  I wonder why the performance/quality of these devices isn't better.

Quote from: poplar1 on July 17, 2014, 03:16:26 PM
Following the links to related articles, I ended up here:
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadian-households-without-landlines-2014-07-09

According to this article, 83% of Canadian households have an active cell phone (76% in Quebec).  21% of Canadian households have cell phones exclusively. Also:

The share of households with a traditional landline fell from 66% in 2010 to 56% in 2013. In Quebec (43%), the percentage of households with a landline was lower than in any other province, while the proportion using telephone service by cable modem (37%) was almost twice the overall Canadian rate (19%).

Telephone service from Internet providers (voice over Internet Protocol, such as Skype) was still relatively rare in 2013, with 3% of households reporting its use.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Canada: 21% Cell only + 56% traditional land line + 19% cable modem + 3% VOIP + 1% no phone= 100%]
[Quebec   ?%   Cell only + 43% traditional land line + 37%  "          "          ?%   "         ?%  "     "      = 100%]

Hm, the numbers are a bit confusing, but I guess the 37% with cable was being counted as "home phone" in the other article. Makes sense due to the popularity of Videotron here--they started marketing cable telephony probably 10 years ago.
It hasn't happened yet, but perhaps one day Bell will start to offer fiber-based VoIP, and that will really be a sign of the end of copper POTS. Fiber is even starting to reach some semi-rural areas now, so we'll see.
My understanding is that with satellite-based Internet, the latency is too high to support VoIP, so people for whom that's the only Internet option still need POTS.

I still see POTS as having advantages over any other kind of service, but at the same time I have to think, how much of that is logical and how much is just me being nostalgic for old technology. I just couldn't do cellphone-only because my battery barely makes it through 1 day of use, and the reception in my house isn't great. My friends with Videotron tell me that the company includes a battery backup when you get the modem, so you can still get phone service for 2-3 days of no power, which would probably be enough for 99% of the time. But then I think of the recent storm in New Brunswick, for example, when hundreds of thousands of homes lost power, a few thousand for almost 2 weeks, and I think, isn't it still worth it to have POTS for those emergencies.

Quote from: Jack Aman on July 17, 2014, 09:31:54 PM
I'm using an Xink bluetooth thingie.  Routes cell calls into my house wiring, rings two 202's and two 302's.  Works adequately, but just OK.  I had a thing called a Cobra Phonelynx that worked just OK too.  I wonder why the performance/quality of these devices isn't better.

Certainly an interesting idea. Useful at least to any phone collectors who don't have POTS! I've used a bluetooth earpiece before that seemed to have decent quality, at least as good as speaking into the cellphone directly, so don't see what the problem would be with the gateway.

About the only thing I know about Bell Canada is they've bought out Ontera in North Bay ON at a rather scarily low price considering the high value of the Ontera company's assets... :o

Until you pointed this out, I never realized that the term "land line" was being used for anything other than central office lines (5ESS, DMS-100, etc.). The only breakdown of non-cell lines I have found is in the Canadian  techvibes.com article  (reply #130).

AT&T calls traditional CO lines "home phone." However, if you attempt to click on the link for "home phone" at att.com, they steer you to "U-Verse Voice," which is their VOIP offering. U-verse Voice does not work with rotary phones or some alarm systems, or if there is a prolonged power outage. If you want VOIP, it's about $3 per month for MagicJack or $40 a month for AT&T Uverse Voice.

Quote from: Phonesrfun on July 09, 2014, 01:08:41 PM
I read a similar article the other day from CNN or one of the other news websites.  One of the additional startling things is the way they define "Land Line".  When thy use land line, they also include all the VoIP-based services such as Vonage and cable providers, and those services are eating away at pure copper-pair based POTS services from a legacy telco.

I wonder what the ratio of POTS to non POTS users are when you define POTS as only a copper pair coming from a telco?

I was wondering if there was any way to get specific data.   For instance, the baby Bell here in my city is Century Link (Former Pacific NW Bell).  It isprobably an impossibility to find out from them how many of all their lines are really connected, as opposed to not used or ported over to another service provider.  Maybe PUC offices track that kind of data.  I wish I knew somone who works in the CO.  The CO is right across the street from where I work.

The POTS will not be closed in 2017 in Norway!
At least the press tells so:  http://www.nrk.no/sognogfjordane/fasttelefonen-far-leve-vidare-1.11982461 (http://www.nrk.no/sognogfjordane/fasttelefonen-far-leve-vidare-1.11982461)
Or here: http://www.digi.no/932353/beholder-den-ekte-fasttelefonen (http://www.digi.no/932353/beholder-den-ekte-fasttelefonen)

One key word is DSLAM  Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer 

What do we actually get?

When you read what they actually say, the customer will remain connected to the old copper pair, but what they have in the exchange building may change. 

So what do we get?  IP-telephony with a huge adapter bank.  The government has released the demand of uninterruptible telephony during power-outs.  (The mobile network has a demand of 4 hours battery backup) 

We are fooled again. ...and again.  ....   .....  >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

dsk

I can understand that, when I got fibre installed here (the Fibre-to-the-Cabinet or "FTTC" type), I asked the BT Openreach guy where it was connecting, and the fibre portion connects to a DSLAM in a nearby street cabinet and is joined onto the copper pair feeding the vDSL signal into the copper, whereas the copper line itself continues to run between exchange and the Master socket, providing regular, exchange-powered analogue telephony... :)

So what is received in this house is the best of both worlds, a traditional phoneline that works in a power failure, and high speed internet access at minimal cost... :)

Though I'm sure someday they'll be removing the copper portion and ordering us to use ATAs at somepoint, but that's probably a while off yet, we're usually about 20 years behind everyone else... ;D

TwoCV, do you have fibre to your home or just copper to your home? Here we have the traditional ADSL service which in most cases is fibre to a cabinet where it joins up with the copper from the CO and the copper pair carries on with dial tone and ADSL service to your home. But more and more areas are being converted to fibre to the home and most new areas are fibre (only) to the home. When the fibre runs all the way to your home here, in most cases they are no longer using the copper for the phone line if there even is copper.

Sounds the same there but I wasn' able to determine if you have fibre to your home for ADSL or just to the cabinet "close" to your home.

Terry

We have no fiber in our street, only copper.  About 3.5 km to the exchange building.  Just a few hundred meters to the nearest neighborhood with fiber.  When they got fiber the cable was just put under the top of the soil, sometimes a few centimeters under the vegetation.  The copper cables are dogged down about 1-1.5 meters deep.

(looks a little strange here please help me if the text should be changed)

Regards from Norway

dsk

Quote from: AE_Collector on January 30, 2015, 10:59:13 PM
TwoCV, do you have fibre to your home or just copper to your home?

It's copper to the home, but a few hundred meters away is the cabinet where the fibre access is and they somehow piggyback the copper line that goes back to the exchange onto that cabinet's vDSL equipment, we're not that close to having FTTH (Fibre to the Home) as standard yet (costs a lot to have it installed right now), even FTTC is limited, so most people have to suffer from slow ADSL (ours was 1.8Mbps on a good day with our last provider)...

I just decided to get the "fibre", even if it's not true fibre, as PlusNet were offering 40down/20up free for 6 months and £50 cashback, though if I had waited a tad longer the free period could have been longer!!  ::)

We're definitely not losing copper POTS any time soon in this country, it's just got to carry more stuff over it in the meantime... :)

Hi Everyone,

We still have POTS through AT&T and are often told we will need to upgrade to Uverse ASAP as POTS will no longer be available after 2020.

Recently, an AT&T representative also stated that POTS will no longer be an option after 2020 as "the State of California would no longer be allowing copper lines."

This reference to California regulation / law and the year 2020 got me curious!

In trying to find the truth behind the "sales pitch" I came across a number of articles that may also be of interest to this community:

Northern CA:
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/05/07/call-kurtis-investigates-are-phone-companies-phasing-out-traditional-landlines/

Bay Area, CA:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/05/at-t-pushes-to-end-landline-service.html

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/20/att-aims-to-pull-plug-on-traditional-landlines/

Southern CA:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20160426-column.html

---

When searching for "ATT 2020":
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/technology/gearing-up-for-the-cloud-att-tells-its-workers-adapt-or-else.html

Take care,
GLadstone

We do still have copper line, and POTS, but what is in the other end of the copper line?   Answer IP telephony of some kind.
We will probably go for IP telephone during 2017 due to the cost of having the old copper line.

dsk

Same here, copper's not going anywhere in the UK for a long time, only new-builds (if they're lucky) are getting Fibre to the Premises services, while everywhere else gets left behind with only ADSL and vDSL (aka Fibre to the Cabinet) as the only options for "high speed" internet access, but retaining analogue telephony because it's just too reliable to get rid of...

Looking up the numbers, as of August 2016, almost 800,000 people in the UK have fibre to the home, sounds like a lot, but, when you consider the entire UK population totals around 65 Million people (as of 2015, so probably more now), it's pretty much a fart in a jacuzzi at the moment, so copper's here to stay for 10 to 20 years at the least, unless BT-Openreach step up their game to replace copper lines with fibre...

We are getting fiber here during the spring, the dug up the the road, and it pops up a plastic tube where the property boundary are, and the rest is the house owners responsibility (me), so I have put the tube up the garage wall, and stripped it to the air cable in to the house, and down in a closet.  I Really hope that is OK.  The property is mostly stones, so digging is not a good option.  Most of the neighbors said no thanks, we stick to the copper and ADSL. Not sure what is the smartest, but we may keep the POTS if we want, but it will cost about $40 extra pr month. I have to find someone who lets me use my own ATA at the SIP account.

dsk

Some of my older links in this thread has went dead, and it seems not practical to post pictures of Norwegian text for you to read.
After some pilot projects the complete end of POTS is delayed, It is of-course a matter of costs, where it is kilometers between the houses, fiber is expensive for elderly users not interested in anything else than a phone, and something to transfer alarms of different kinds.  Not easy to handle via mobile.   DSLAM may be a solution.  It is almost as expensive to run an exchange with almost no subscribers, so the bills are getting bigger and bigger. so that is a way to force other solutions to win.

dsk

What happens to fibre lines in the event of things like earthquakes or hurricanes?

If I came across a broken telephone cable in the aftermath of a disaster I dare say I could twist the pairs together myself and restore it. But if I came across a broken fibreoptic cable what could I do?

Seems like this has been given no thought whatsoever to me. The more you rely on the normal electricity supply to power things like digital exchanges, domestic ATAs & routers and fibreoptic repeaters, the less robust the communication network will be. And as for cell phones... assuming the cell tower remains powerd up, how long does your battery last these days without plugging in?

Andy.

You are completely right, we have started on shutting down th FM net, and DAB will be the only, and just a few days after the first FM senders was shut down, huge areas were out of radio for many hours due to a fiber failure.

dsk

I have received no notice of POTS ending here in Kansas.  Nothing in the phone bill or in the advertising mentions the end of POTS.  I'd like to hear from members in other states in the US to maybe find out if California is the only state doing away with POTS.

Probably depends on your carrier. Verizion territory they techs have been instructed to not repair copper lines. Instead they want to give the customers a wireless interface for their home line.

ATT is transitioning to uverse. But no, no fanfare or advance notice. I expect you will wake up one day and be forced to changeover, or have nothing.

So I read somewhere that AT&T is pushing Satellite TV now that they bought who...Dish(?) and are not pushing Uverse as it is more expensive to provision than Satellite which is already set to go. And whatever I was reading showed net loses of Uverse TV customers. While the cost factor may be true that seems unbelievable to me that they would stop building and provisioning for the future and would push Satellite TV instead.

Here we are installing Fibre to the Home like crazy, building and upgrading IPTV (same system as Uverse) and decommissioning Satellite TV once customers can be converted to IPTV.

Has anyone heard anything about Uverse TV backing off?

Terry

Quote from: AE_Collector on January 24, 2017, 11:01:23 PM
So I read somewhere that AT&T is pushing Satellite TV now that they bought who...Dish(?) and are not pushing Uverse as it is more expensive to provision than Satellite which is already set to go. And whatever I was reading showed net loses of Uverse TV customers. While the cost factor may be true that seems unbelievable to me that they would stop building and provisioning for the future and would push Satellite TV instead.

Here we are installing Fibre to the Home like crazy, building and upgrading IPTV (same system as Uverse) and decommissioning Satellite TV once customers can be converted to IPTV.

Has anyone heard anything about Uverse TV backing off?

They bought Direct TV and supposedly put up more satellites to deal with weather outages.

Quote from: trainman on January 24, 2017, 07:15:59 PM
Probably depends on your carrier. Verizion territory they techs have been instructed to not repair copper lines. Instead they want to give the customers a wireless interface for their home line.

ATT is transitioning to uverse. But no, no fanfare or advance notice. I expect you will wake up one day and be forced to changeover, or have nothing.

What is a "wireless interface"? Do you mean something that couples between their phone and router? Or is it more like a wifi link to some place in the local community serving xxx hundred homes? If the latter how would they have enough bandwidth to carry audio, even encoded, in dense areas of population? If it's the former then isn't that just bog-standard VOIP? Either way, it sounds like it's going to require uninterupted electricity. Not good in the aftermath of disasters, war zones or extreme weather.

i am hearing people complain about the satellite tv service.  and as far as i know, as far as voice goes, i dont know of anotger voice plan than mixed in with the whole uverse deal

Quote from: TelePlay on January 24, 2017, 11:58:59 PM
They bought Direct TV and supposedly put up more satellites to deal with weather outages.

Kind of silly putting up more satellites when all they need is a bigger dish, here in the UK we have Sky who for the past 20-ish years used 43CM* "Zone 1" dishes as a "compromise between aesthetics and functionality", problem is, a bit of rain wiped out the signal, in recent years they upped the size of the Zone 1 to 50CM*, but, they still like to fail in poor weather, they also offer a "Zone 2" dish (60CM*) for the more northerly (aka Scottish) subscribers, suffers the same issue up there, but in the Zone 1 territory, a Zone 2 dish is a vast improvement, even if the size difference is only 10-17CM, it makes a huge difference to the signal reception, so long as it's fitted properly (see pics)...  ;D

And yes, that's my dish, fitted by me, and cold weather made the metal contract and the U bolts came loose as a result...  ::)


(*43, 50 and 60CM is measured vertically (top to bottom), rather than width on these elliptical dishes compared to standard "round" dishes)

Pics, first is Zone 2 on the left, Zone 1 (being replaced) on the right 2nd is how it should look, 3rd is what happens when you put a dish up in summer and forget to tighten the bolts up before winter comes!! ;D

I recently upgraded my internet service to fiber optics. Along with the service you can get unlimited phone service with all the bells and whistles for an additional $20.00.
My Mom and me live on the same property, and her landl9ine is constantly shorting out when it rains. So I told her about the phone service and I said i would let her have the phone service because mine landline works great. She has one of my old phones, and I told her she can"t use that anymore. She was VERY disappointed. Is there any aftermarket transformer that I can plug into the wall that will give her the 48 volts she needs to get the phone to ring ?

D/P

Quote from: Dan/Panther on January 25, 2017, 12:42:17 PMIs there any aftermarket transformer that I can plug into the wall that will give her the 48 volts she needs to get the phone to ring ?

48vDC is the base operating current, it's 90vAC that makes the ringing happen... :)

Is there any aftermarket item that will provide this ?
D/P

Quote from: Dan/Panther on January 25, 2017, 12:58:23 PM
Is there any aftermarket item that will provide this ?
D/P

A quick search of the forum leads to one of these:

https://www.vikingelectronics.com/product-details.php?pid=219

Not sure where to get one of those, but it plugs in and provides boosted ringing current... :)

Quote from: Dan/Panther on January 25, 2017, 12:42:17 PM
I recently upgraded my internet service to fiber optics. Along with the service you can get unlimited phone service with all the bells and whistles for an additional $20.00....
Is there any aftermarket transformer that I can plug into the wall that will give her the 48 volts she needs to get the phone to ring ?

Isn't the company that furnishes your internet providing 1 or 2 voice jacks on their equipment? If so, these should work with any Touch-Tone single line sets, for both calling out and receiving calls. The ringing may be less than 90 V but still able to ring at least one or two standard phones.

Now it is time for ending the POTS in our house, they have actually done something so the rotary does dial wrong digits pretty often, so I guess the exchange has been replaced by some ATA like stuff.

Next week we get VOIP to 1/3 of the cost, and I just plug in my dialgizmo and hopes for the best. Her do they not port pots to mobile, so this is the best way to keep the  number.

dsk

By the way, even the VOIPcompanies are getting fewer, and when I was looking for RJ11 jacks, even those are less common than what they were. 
Now I we have the VOIP, with a locked Linksys SPA 2102, completely locked, non parameter may be adjusted.  But it works. I have 2 dialgizmos and the first I tested kept on holding the line, and I am not sure about the second one either.

It is always some new things to consider when you get a new solution!  Maybe I have to use a Mitel Smart1 or something else with an external power source?

dsk

I am having excellent luck with an X Link BTTN between my home wiring and my cable (phone) modem.  I am running two 302's two 202's and one 102.  Both 302's and all three subsets ring strongly with incoming calls, and that is without the "extra ringing power" you can set in the software.  If your dials are a little gritty/slow, you can adjust for that too in the software settings. Have never had a misdial on any of my old phones.  My wife and I both pair our cell phones to it as well, so there are effectively three lines in to the house when we're home.  Works very well indeed.  The house line rings with a conventional North America ring, my wife's cell calls ring with the British "ring-ring" pattern, and my cell calls announce with a custom ring pattern...all settable in the software.  Really clever gadget and works very well.  The phones act just like they're on POTS...maybe better... certainly dialing is very reliable.  The "press one now, press two now" commands that we all live and die by these days even work!  Much better, cheaper, and more versatile solution than dialgizmos in every phone.  About fifty bucks from Amazon.  Just need to be sure your house wiring is physically disconnected from POTS/copper.

Quote from: Jack Aman on September 05, 2017, 09:52:37 AM
I am having excellent luck with an X Link BTTN between my home wiring and my cable (phone) modem.  I am running two 302's two 202's and one 102.  Both 302's and all three subsets ring strongly with incoming calls, and that is without the "extra ringing power" you can set in the software.  If your dials are a little gritty/slow, you can adjust for that too in the software settings. Have never had a misdial on any of my old phones.  My wife and I both pair our cell phones to it as well, so there are effectively three lines in to the house when we're home.  Works very well indeed.  The house line rings with a conventional North America ring, my wife's cell calls ring with the British "ring-ring" pattern, and my cell calls announce with a custom ring pattern...all settable in the software.  Really clever gadget and works very well.  The phones act just like they're on POTS...maybe better... certainly dialing is very reliable.  The "press one now, press two now" commands that we all live and die by these days even work!  Much better, cheaper, and more versatile solution than dialgizmos in every phone.  About fifty bucks from Amazon.  Just need to be sure your house wiring is physically disconnected from POTS/copper.

I totally agree. I think X link is a very easy and reasonable way to get the rotary phones to work. It is a lot better than using dial gizmo's. You can also use it as an incoming line to a 308/616. The BTTN sounds like the nicer unit to buy.

Jim S.

The BTTN is the only one that provides for a hard line (POTS, VOIP, what ever)  The other one just ports cells to house phones.

For those of us in Canada, I have a Cogeco Cable supplying my TV, Internet and Home Phone - all through a single modem.

I am still experimenting, but I have the following connected to my self-installed home network:

1. AE40
2. WE304 (wired as 302)
3. British GPO232
4. WE202 w/ 634-BA subset

All phones are basically unmodified, factory original components and wiring (except GPO - I have added a capacitor in series and a resistor to drop the REN to just below 1).

All phones are dialing out using standard pulse, so I am guessing pulse-to-tone conversion happens on the modem level. All are happily ringing too, with ~ 90 VAC, standby voltage is around 50 VDC.

I am guessing that whatever modem is being used by Cogeco, it is compliant with the legacy telephony standards, and is likely good to a full 5 REN (or 100 LN, as the case may be in Canada).

Quote from: Jack Aman on September 05, 2017, 10:08:08 AM
The BTTN is the only one that provides for a hard line (POTS, VOIP, what ever)  The other one just ports cells to house phones.

It is a nice option to port thru a landline as well as a cell. The really cool thing about xlink is that it supports pulse dialing.
Jim S.

Quote from: Fennec on September 05, 2017, 10:33:01 AM
For those of us in Canada, I have a Cogeco Cable supplying my TV, Internet and Home Phone - all through a single modem.

Well, un compatriote du  Québec .  (a compatriot of Quebec)

My all old black and white tvs are supplied by Vidéotron.. and, of course, all my old phones with a fingerwheel work very well... Tu te rendras compte que mon anglais n'est pas tellement bon ;) .

Quote from: Contempra on September 22, 2017, 08:55:30 AM
Well, un compatriote du  Québec .My all old black and white tvs are supplied by Vidéotron.. and, of course, all my old phones with a fingerwheel work very well... Tu te rendras compte que mon anglais n'est pas tellement bon ;) .

Ton Anglais est pas mal du tout, par contre mon Français est n'est pas terrible :)  ("Your English is not bad at all, on the other hand my French is not all that good"; "n'est pas terrible" is a French idiomatic expression, implying that subject actually IS bad  ;) )

BTW, the modem is Arris Touchstone TG862, and looks like it can push in excess of 5 REN - the exact number doesn't seem to be documented...

No problem Fennec ;)

On Friday morning, a colleague discovered that the landline was dead. He called Telenor and they happily replied that the fixed-line error correction had ended, and thanked them for many years of customer relations.

I am now trying to help him port that number to an ip service. Telenor would not since the area had another fiber service.

dsk

Quote from: dsk on September 08, 2019, 07:01:54 AM
On Friday morning, a colleague discovered that the landline was dead. He called Telenor and they happily replied that the fixed-line error correction had ended, and thanked them for many years of customer relations.

I am now trying to help him port that number to an ip service. Telenor would not since the area had another fiber service.

dsk

Nice! (not)

Here in the UK the majority still get their internet connection via the old fixed copper wire (either ADSL or VDSL), although I believe British Telecom do have plans to move to a full IP based service in the not too distant future.  One hurdle they have to get over is that they have a legal obligation to provide access to the emergency services (ie 999) if the power fails. That will be less easy to do if your phone service relies on your mains powered router being on, and I can't see them supplying everyone with a UPS.
:)

Don't be to sure! They have modified that here to a minimum of 4 hours of cellphone coverage. By experience wi know that it will not work like that when the bad weather destroyes a mast.  You do not have coverage everywhere on the countryside.  What they actually say is we do not care about those.

dsk

Quote from: tubaman on September 08, 2019, 07:10:28 AMThat will be less easy to do if your phone service relies on your mains powered router being on, and I can't see them supplying everyone with a UPS.
:)

The fun part is, Openreach were supplying their Optical Network Terminators (ONTs) with a battery backup unit (BBU), but now as part of the new version ONTs, no longer will, and as these are also the analogue telephone adaptors, they need electricity to provide telephone service, so no power = no service, and no service = no access to emergency services (999, 101, 111, etc.), so they're already backing out out of the requirement to ensure access... :-\

Article on not supplying BBUs:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/10/openreach-to-stop-providing-battery-backup-for-fttp-broadband.html

Article on the new type ONT:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/09/a-look-at-openreachs-compact-fttp-broadband-ont-and-mini-olt.html

I personally have a UPS for the main modem-router by the master socket, so if and when Openreach were to replace the copper with fibre round here (I'll probably be in my 80s by the time they do at their current rate! Presently 34.....), I can supply power to an ONT myself, just inefficiently given it's AC mains converted to DC (UPS battery charging) converted back to AC (UPS inverter output) and again back to DC (device PSU), where a dedicated BBU would be far more preferable...

I would not dare to trust the fibre network during a power-out, so my only hope is the cellphone service. That will probably go down within 4 hours!

Now the question is if I should keep my home-phone (VOIP). Here they are not allowed to port that to a cellphone. 

I  have the X-link, and it works but still it is not as good as VOIP, but close. 

Even friends and family calls on cellphone number, so the only calls we get on the VOIP are sellers knowing that only elderly people keep their POTS number.   

As long as it has a low cost, I guess I keep it. (But I'm not sure)

dsk

Quote from: dsk on November 05, 2019, 03:09:53 AM
I would not dare to trust the fibre network during a power-out, so my only hope is the cellphone service. That will probably go down within 4 hours!

Now the question is if I should keep my home-phone (VOIP). Here they are not allowed to port that to a cellphone. 

I  have the X-link, and it works but still it is not as good as VOIP, but close. 

Even friends and family calls on cellphone number, so the only calls we get on the VOIP are sellers knowing that only elderly people keep their POTS number.   

As long as it has a low cost, I guess I keep it. (But I'm not sure)

dsk

Nowadays, having a cell phone is almost an obligation unfortunately, but we know that the waves that provoke this kind of device, I wonder if it is really useful or not. For my part, I do not have cell-phone. And as long as I can, I will not have any either. Regarding the 'voIP' many hackers go through these kinds of things.

Quote from: dsk on November 05, 2019, 03:09:53 AM
I would not dare to trust the fibre network during a power-out, so my only hope is the cellphone service. That will probably go down within 4 hours!

Your cell phone service plugs into the fibre network.

It is simply a race - which battery goes flat first. Remember that if any one battery in the path goes flat, communications dies.

Jack

Each PCS provider has 3 cabinets at the base of a "tower" site. One of the 3 is a battery cabinet capable of powering the transmitter and receiver cabinets for about 4 hours, shorter if the cell site gets heavy to max use in a large emergency situation.

Significant or network strategic "tower" sites usually have a generator on wheels within the tower ground fence (outdoor sites only). Some are automatically started with a power outage, others require a cell tech to drive to the site to start the generator. Not all "tower" sites are deemed worthy of, can cost/benefit  justify a generator - remote low usage "towers" don't get generators.

So, the "tower" site will fail when the batteries go dead or if so equipped, the generator runs out of fuel. Natural gas lines were never run to tower sites an propane LPG tanks were never installed to run generators or heat ground buildings housing the wireless equipment.

Judicious use of a phone, especially if one has one of those small but powerful USB battery backup/ barging packs, will see the phone lasting many times longer, days longer, than a "tower" in a power outage situation.

Quote from: Western Bell on November 05, 2019, 09:32:51 PM
Each PCS provider has 3 cabinets at the base of a "tower" site....

Thanks for posting that info. I'll be looking more closely at the next 'tower' I go past here now....

Quote from: FABphones on November 06, 2019, 04:41:07 AM
I'll be looking more closely at the next 'tower' I go past here now....

When you do, you will see a lot of different company base station equipment. Some, like AT&T, do not use equipment that can be out in the rain so they always have a concrete hut or small building housing their equipment. Also allows them to maintain a constant temperature and humidity for their equipment.

Sprint has always used outdoor capable equipment and and 3 cabinets but seem to have gotten their electronics down in size so both XMT and RCV can fit into one cabinet requiring only a second cabinet for battery backup, which is larger these days than in the early 2000's so they must have added more batteries to extend the max spec life from 4 to 8 hours.

The image on the left is a typical outdoor ground based set up on a concrete pad. The one on the right is a roof top set up using a metal frame resting on supports that spread the weight over a larger area of the roof determined by the building's specs.

You may see smaller cabinets used by other companies with a smaller customer base.

Second image below shows a mixed base station ground site with a generator on the right. No two sites are the same, it seems, due to a range of needs. Note the ice bridges over the cabinets and coaxial leads installed to keep ice chunks that fall off of the tower in winter from damaging the wires and equipment (a 5 pound chunk of ice reaches about 60 mph in a 200 foot drop and hits with about 3,100 foot pounds of energy). Ice bridges are always used for equipment next to a tower in northern climes.

I Refuse to go totally digital! as I have stated before, I hate cell phones.... I have 3 landlines! 1 home package with the internet and 2 more POTS lines! I tried to use Cableone and their system was all VOIP. Centurylink is what Mountain Bell has turned into.... and it still supports original WE equipment! Long Live POTS! (and Key systems!) I'll never give up my 1A1 system!

Quote from: Babybearjs on November 07, 2019, 02:28:20 AM
I Refuse to go totally digital! as I have stated before, I hate cell phones.... I have 3 landlines! 1 home package with the internet and 2 more POTS lines! I tried to use Cableone and their system was all VOIP. Centurylink is what Mountain Bell has turned into.... and it still supports original WE equipment! Long Live POTS! (and Key systems!) I'll never give up my 1A1 system!

Three lines...triple the spam calls! Good stuff!

Quote from: Doug Rose on November 07, 2019, 09:22:46 AM
Three lines...triple the spam calls! Good stuff!

What's good about more spam calls? I don't get it.

Quote from: Western Bell on November 07, 2019, 03:26:59 PM
What's good about more spam calls? I don't get it.

humor  ;D. ...Don't forget to tip you waiters, they will need it to pay for there lines...Doug

Quote from: Doug Rose on November 07, 2019, 05:56:52 PM
humor

Oh, sarcasm, an ironic or satirical remark tempered by humor mainly used to say the opposite of what's true.

Sarcasm never worked for me in business or my personal life - never knew what the truth really was when talking to anyone who liked to use sarcasm. And, they usually used it to make someone look or feel foolish. Not being a mind reader, I found it best all around to stay away from people like that.

Quote from: Doug Rose on November 07, 2019, 05:56:52 PM
Don't forget to tip you waiters, they will need it to pay for there lines...Doug

Now I'm confused by " . . . you waiters, they will need it to pay for there lines . . ." Waiters? Lines where? Sorry, I'm lost again. Was that also sarcasm, or some type of help I don't understand.

Could we please get back to the thread?

The end of POTS  ?

dsk

Quote from: Western Bell on November 07, 2019, 09:49:50 PM
Oh, sarcasm, an ironic or satirical remark tempered by humor mainly used to say the opposite of what's true.

Sarcasm never worked for me in business or my personal life - never knew what the truth really was when talking to anyone who liked to use sarcasm. And, they usually used it to make someone look or feel foolish. Not being a mind reader, I found it best all around to stay away from people like that.

Now I'm confused by " . . . you waiters, they will need it to pay for there lines . . ." Waiters? Lines where? Sorry, I'm lost again. Was that also sarcasm, or some type of help I don't understand.

As stated, humor.  Most of the calls are spam calls on our home line. Three would be three times the spam calls. Humor. Sorry if I offended you. Hence the smiley face....Humor....Doug

I will admit that cell phones are getting popular.  There are programs where you can get a free cell phone and free service.  Because of such programs, now homeless people have cell phones.  You can't do that with POTS.  You need a permanent address for POTS.

I agree. the government program does offer free cell phones and service, of which I do have, but don't use. they give you a cheap "Q-Link" android phone and for most it works... but I'll keep my Pots service over that because I know it works and always has. at one time the phone company offered a simple pots line to low income people, that I think is gone now. Centurylink offers the POTS line for about $26.00/Mo. which is good if that's all you need. the day they start offering FREE phone and Internet service to low income people... that would be a blessing.... but they'd have to qualify.... as they always have had to... as for the whole POTS system, its not going to go any ware. as long as there are copper and fiber lines.... there will have to be POTS... the problem is, the advertising.... the phone companies don't tell you its still available! they want to lock you into a "Package" and then they make the money. at one point you even could do a 2 line package... and they took that away years ago. but, if you rent, or own your own place, Pots line should always be available... upon request!

The easiest way to preserve regular phone service is to HAVE IT, and not discontinue it!  If enough people have it, it will not go away.  If too few people have it, it WILL go away.  It is that simple.  Want regular phone service, as I have and refuse to get rid of, then subscribe to it.  It is not "too expensive".  If you can afford multiple cell phones and multiple cable services, and an outrageously expensive German car, you can afford phone service.

Quote from: MMikeJBenN on November 10, 2019, 03:16:01 PM
The easiest way to preserve regular phone service is to HAVE IT, and not discontinue it!  If enough people have it, it will not go away.  If too few people have it, it WILL go away.  It is that simple.  Want regular phone service, as I have and refuse to get rid of, then subscribe to it.  It is not "too expensive".  If you can afford multiple cell phones and multiple cable services, and an outrageously expensive German car, you can afford phone service.

I did believe that too, but now 2 people I know has got the message, your line is faulty, we are not going to look for the fault, thank you for the cooperation, and good bye.

That is the level of service for a line at cost of nearly 3 cellphones.

dsk

Look up at the telephone lines in your neighborhood, do you see a line with insulation falling off it?  Yup.....It's a copper line for POTS service.

Think there might be some static on that line. Cross talk? It's  not just going to your house, it's going from pole to pole. Same line that was there when Grampy and Nanny got their Telephone installed and paid for it over and over again with the monthly fees.

Wait until it rains.

Think they can find a clean pair to you? For how long?

Why would the Telephone provider go under the enormous expense to upgrade the copper path when it is already there digitally.

If POTS is not dead, it sure is dying....Doug

I've been a telco contractor for 13 years now. With my interest in the history and evolution of the telephone network, it's blatantly obvious to me that telecoms (or should I say, giant media conglomerates who happen to own telecoms) want to limp the copper networks along as long as possible and only do band-aid repairs so they can maximize profits from obsolete networks that were probably written off the books years ago.

I've taken many photos of aerial terminals and pedestals that I've worked in, and it's a wonder they even work at all anymore. They'll have techs go around "re-building" terminals, but all they're doing is removing the old metal covers, pulling back the old ring cuts to expose copper that hasn't been weathered, and splicing in a fresh section to join the two ends back together. Sometimes they don't even do that. A new plastic terminal cover is put over top of the existing splices since they're like guitar strings and they break off at the old ring cuts, so there isn't enough to work with.

The spans between the poles get damaged from squirrels, birds, trees, lightning strikes, garage fires, etc. But nothing is really done unless more than one or two people are affected. All we do is line transfer orders (LTO) by hopefully finding a good spare pair. That's nearly impossible, as there aren't many spares left, so we have to look at "drop lines" which are pairs previously assigned to other customers, usually in other terminals and quite often between my customers terminal and the cross-connect. Sometimes we're lucky and the drop line is in a terminal past the customer. If that doesn't work, they say test some pairs flagged defective, which could've been 10 or 15 years ago.

If an aerial service drop is damaged, we hang new ones, but it's still being hooked up to distribution cable that was put up in the 60's or 70's. I still have to work in some super old "Reliable" terminals with rubber covers. Those might be from the 50's but I have yet to find any historical photos to prove it. Only found a drawing of one like this: http://telephone.bouwman.com/Michigan/Lambertville/Terminal.html

I could go on, but I should get to work. I might have a call to go fix someone's line that's randomly dialing 911  >:(

Yesterday was even the last day of having a regurlar phone number at home, we had ported our old number to Zadarma andu used IP-telephone ...  But the old national "sister of ma Bell"; Telenor made it so difficult = expensive for Zadarma to keep the number so we had to change number or stop...   Now you have to call me via Sipbroker, wait for the message, and dial the rest.  That works  :)   
I will probably put up a cellphone and x_Link too, but the good old +47 67069089 is lost. >:( >:(   The funny thing is that I may still call out, and you will receive a call from just that number  :o
dsk

The way to preserve "Plain Old Telephone Service" is to try to convince as many people as we can about the dangers of using a cell phone for everything, (not confidential, as radio waves are PUBLIC DOMAIN).  As long as there is a demand, they will offer it, but if the demand falls below a certain point, the point as to where is is costing them money instead of making them money, they will drop it.  I keep wishing for a huge scandal involving cell phones that scares people into resuming Home Phone service.

Mike

Quote from: MMikeJBenN27 on September 09, 2021, 02:36:26 AM
The way to preserve "Plain Old Telephone Service" is to try to convince as many people as we can about the dangers of using a cell phone for everything, (not confidential, as radio waves are PUBLIC DOMAIN).  As long as there is a demand, they will offer it, but if the demand falls below a certain point, the point as to where is is costing them money instead of making them money, they will drop it.  I keep wishing for a huge scandal involving cell phones that scares people into resuming Home Phone service.

Mike

An AT&T residential line (served by 5ESS or DMS100 central office) here, with Complete Choice feature package, costs $46 per month -- $66.07 with junk fees.  This increases by $2.00 per month + tax every year. A business line is now $341 per month! That is enough to convince most people (not me!) to drop their 1FR/1FB lines. EDIT: The AT&T website offers "traditional home phone" for "$37 or less "+ taxes and fees and "complete choice enhanced" for $51 + taxes and fees. https://www.att.com/home-phone/landline/

AT&T has already lobbied for, and gotten approved, permission in many states to drop traditional copper lines wherever another service is available. They have been wiring our neighborhood for fiber. While 1 Gig data speed for $40 a month (with discount) beats the 5.0 mb DSL ($45 per month) previously the top speed here, I doubt that the 5ESS will be in service much longer. Most of the outside plant techs have retired. We were on direct copper feed (not SLC) all the way to the CO, which meant if your cable pair was unbalanced or noisy, or even if the line had "no dial tone", you had to wait a week for repairs.

I understand that telco true landline rates went up considerably in California. How much are you currently paying for a residential line served by a Central Office?

Now I am paying over $90.00 a month, but I do not want VOIP, as the internet is not confidential, plus, I may not be able to use my dial telephones.  I have a small collection, and I use them, so the $90.00+ is worth it to me.  I do not like being tracked/be listened to by hackers.

Mike

They have already dropped the copper lines in many areas, and uses lots of money to remove the copper lines and poles.
My wife's parents are now loosing internet on copper wire, ADSL and is offered a solution using the 4G net on mobile.

I do not like this!

dsk

I use cable and my neighbor still has his copper line.

Century link is my provider. About 4-5 years ago they brought fiber throughout the neighborhood.
The fiber for our houses is coiled around the pole on the back corner of the properties..
Jim

I gave up landline phone service years ago.  I now pay $60/mo.  for internet and $10.84 for monitored phone service with OOMA.

I was just informed by AT&T that the home telephone line I have had for 20 years will need to be transferred to their fiber VoIP service. They say they are decommissioning the copper in my neighborhood now that fiber is available. I have no choice in the matter. If I decline to transfer the number, my POTS will be disconnected regardless.

Quote from: shadow67 on October 02, 2021, 06:17:25 PM
I was just informed by AT&T that the home telephone line I have had for 20 years will need to be transferred to their fiber VoIP service. They say they are decommissioning the copper in my neighborhood now that fiber is available. I have no choice in the matter. If I decline to transfer the number, my POTS will be disconnected regardless.

Which state?

Wow.  Disgusting that they can do that

lucky for me, I'm in a mobile home park and there is only copper here... fiber in outside and available IF the park is willing to pay for the upgrade...

I'm living on the outskirt of a bigger German city and Telekom pushed me into VOIP years ago, although their "last mile" is still copper.
POTS also would be available, but not combined with any internet service.
I got myself a rotary-friendly router and started experimenting with a couple old phones I had. That's actually how I started collecting...

Quote from: shadow67 on October 02, 2021, 06:17:25 PM
I was just informed by AT&T that the home telephone line I have had for 20 years will need to be transferred to their fiber VoIP service. They say they are decommissioning the copper in my neighborhood now that fiber is available. I have no choice in the matter. If I decline to transfer the number, my POTS will be disconnected regardless.

This will happen to us all at some point as the drive is towards fibre internet. I'd actually be pleased if it was happening where I live as currently we are stuck on a VDSL internet service with no sign of full fibre coming in the foreseeable future. At 40Mbps it's perfectly useable, but looks very slow compared with the nearby city that has full fibre to all properties.
:)

The change to fiber is financially advantageous ti the provider, which means that they will inevitably move toward it.  They  can't afford to have sentiment deter them from providing the same service to all their customers.  At least we do have means of using our instruments in the new systems.  That's better than the no choice option given to radio owners in some countries these days, where the stations have been closing over the years.

In many cases, we can NOT use our phones the way they are intended, the Internet can be hacked, meaning that bored rich teenagers can listen in on our phone calls, we have to have backup batteries, or else we will have no phone service during a power failure, and we CAN stop the move to fibre if enough of us band together and fight it.  I don't care about "Maximum possible profits by any means necessary".  They are supposed to serve US, we should not have to serve THEM.

Mike

Quote from: MMikeJBenN27 on October 03, 2021, 09:14:51 AM
In many cases, we can NOT use our phones the way they are intended, the Internet can be hacked, ...

This is technically correct but if you take sensible precautions (patched OS with updated anti-virus etc) it's unlikely to happen. I think you'll find a lot of phone calls already go the VOIP route once they reach the exchange irrespective of whether they start as POTS at your house.
:)

What you are talking about sounds like it is for cell phones.  I am talking about HOME phones, specifically rotary-dial phones.  There is no "os", or is there?

Mike 

It's much easier to listen into analog calls, not to mention party lines in the olden days...

Quote from: shadow67 on October 02, 2021, 06:17:25 PM
I was just informed by AT&T that the home telephone line I have had for 20 years will need to be transferred to their fiber VoIP service. They say they are decommissioning the copper in my neighborhood now that fiber is available. I have no choice in the matter. If I decline to transfer the number, my POTS will be disconnected regardless.

Be sure to port your number to another carrier before AT&T disconnects your line. You can try Google Voice ($20 one-time fee), Magicjack ($19.95 one- time fee + $35. - $50 a year) or Boostmobile Cellular ($20 fee + $15 per month for unlimited calls and unlimited text messages and 2 gigs of data).

To listen in on "analog" calls, you need a remote location or a telephone truck, and a crew to illegally climb up the poles.  The average teenager or young guy in his early 20s can't afford that.  The other way is to break into a telephone cabinate, which can result in jail time.  I say it is easier to hack a cell phone call, because the hacker doesn't have to be at the location. 

Mike

I have had this interest since I was a boy, and in the late 70ies  a club I had joined had rented a "house" in the woods for a weekend.

Two of us went a trip in the woods (197x), and at one point the phone cable was so low that I could reach it, so I used my pocket knife and removed the insulation of a pair (with a distance of approx 4 inch) and clipped on my d.i.y but set. Directly in on an conversation between a local and the local police and a person complaining about one of the older members that was old enough to have a drivers license, and had parked where he should not.   When we went back we told him that we had overheard a conversation that someone was mad about his parking, hi solved it, and did not ask how we had heard that  ;D   The one and only time I have done that.

When I served we just used an unlocked cabinet on a pole, and called to redirect the bus that should pick us up. I guess that was a non army line.

What I was trying to say earlier is that a lot of POTS calls go onto an IP based network route once they get to the exchange anyway so all that is happening with VOIP is that IP part is being extended back to your house. Once your phone calls are in the mix with the rest of the internet traffic it's not going to be so easy to listen in.
The only part of it that bothers me is the inability to use the phone during a power cut, but thankfully they are rare where I live and it's not so difficult to get around that one anyway.
:)

Here in Norway even the IP-telephony looks like it is dying out. :-)

We gave it up recently, a sim-card adapter connected trough an ATA to the VOIP PABX is one working solution.
The other is solution is the 2 step system of Sipbroker.   Sipbroker does of-course not understand pulse, but I have found how to put it in to the cellphone register so I just call one single number.  (The local sipbroker number) comma  *0114711  and it rings at home in Norwegian day-time.   :)

That's one of the other things that I don't like about VIOP - I have to buy and maintain the batteries if I want a service that is independent of P.G.&E.  If I am eventually forced to go to VOIP, I will wish that they would revive the #6 Dry Cells.

Quote from: MMikeJBenN27 on October 04, 2021, 09:35:08 PM
That's one of the other things that I don't like about VIOP - I have to buy and maintain the batteries if I want a service that is independent of P.G.&E.  If I am eventually forced to go to VOIP, I will wish that they would revive the #6 Dry Cells.

I agree it's far from ideal. Here in the UK there was a requirement for Openreach (our POTS network provider) to provide battery backup units when full fibre internet was installed, but they have managed to worm their way out of that one (https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/10/openreach-to-stop-providing-battery-backup-for-fttp-broadband.html).

Quote from: poplar1 on October 03, 2021, 10:02:30 PM
Be sure to port your number to another carrier before AT&T disconnects your line. You can try Google Voice ($20 one-time fee), Magicjack ($19.95 one- time fee + $35. - $50 a year) or Boostmobile Cellular ($20 fee + $15 per month for unlimited calls and unlimited text messages and 2 gigs of data).

I'm using OOMA...$5/mo plus tax. I think there might have been  a porting fee but it was nominal and I don't remember how much it was. You can often find their TELO device on Goodwill or eBay cheaper than at Amazon.

You might want to let AT&T convert your landline to fiber, then you'll have fiber to your home at their expense, should you decide to get fiber internet, where normally you'd need to pay an installation fee. It's what I did when Verizon gave me the same ultimatum. Kept the landline for a month, then transferred the number to OOMA (I had Comcast at the time). Later, when FIOS dropped their price and upped their speed, I switched to FIOS because I had the fiber already installed!  Once I was happy with it, I dropped Comcast. FIOS offered me 200M symmetric (reliably measures 300) for $40 while Comcast was 100/20 for $75.  They used to be neck and neck, but I'm not complaining and glad I have the option.

I also have OOMA.  I like that my voicemail service posts on my Email with the recording, the call logs and the multiple tiers of call screening/blocking.  If you should buy a TELO device, be sure they provide a transfer code, otherwise there is a fee for transferring the device to your name.

Quote from: MMikeJBenN27 on October 04, 2021, 09:35:08 PM
That's one of the other things that I don't like about VIOP - I have to buy and maintain the batteries if I want a service that is independent of P.G.&E.  If I am eventually forced to go to VOIP, I will wish that they would revive the #6 Dry Cells.

I have a UPS on my router, OOMA box and PBX. It will keep them up for a couple of hours. After that, I'll use my cell. We rarely have outages, but storms will sometimes kill the power..

One source for free or low cost UPS is companies that prefer to buy a new UPS, rather than replace the batteries. That's how I got mine. I treat our IT guys at work well, and sometimes they throw equipment they don't want in my direction. Ham radio flea markets, Craigslist,etc are also good sources.

Quote from: ka1axy on October 05, 2021, 11:55:51 AM
FIOS offered me 200M symmetric (reliably measures 300) for $40 while Comcast was 100/20 for $75.

Those are some amazing prices, I'd switch to fiber if I could,
I pay Comcast $96.30 for 'Extreme Pro+' they advertise upload speeds up to 800mb but in reality i get less than 100 but consistently 20 on upload.
There are some local taxes here in Oregon that up the price, but I think its only $6.30.

From the end of this year it is definitively no more POTS in Norway.
https://www.abcnyheter.no/nyheter/norge/2022/09/06/195869404/telenor-stenger-fasttelefonnettet-fra-nyttar

Are there any pots networks left?

Here, POTS customers will get service through ATAs installed in a roadside cabinet as long are their "last mile" copper cable is kept up. Deutsche Telekom still often provides internet through copper as well (ADSL / VDSL), but is going to upgrade to fibre more and more. I suppose the copper will be withdrawn where that happens?

"Real" POTS offices? Good question...

I still have POTS... until at least next year.
COs are being shut down one after another and copper lines in rural areas are left in ruins.
Fibre is (slowly) coming, but unlike in former times when PTT was the only king, is being installed by temp workers who are not competent enough and do not have time to properly learn. I saw lines that had fallen on the ground after just 2 weeks. It just seems some bureaucrats made renewal plans, but are simply not aware of anything that would not be abstract.

BellMTS still has plenty of POTS here in Manitoba, Canada. They're on a big push to get FTTH out to a lot more areas, but I'm still seeing news articles of customers being without working landlines for weeks.

Before I quit contracting for them,  I was in a couple remote COs whose ancient GTD-5 EAX switches appeared to be recently upgraded to something modern. I was surprised since the new stuff probably won't be needed for very long, relatively speaking, especially compared to how the old stuff. I wonder if they've started upgrading their "newer" Nortel DMS stuff yet 😏

147 years of common telephone networks on regular copper lines are ended today here in Norway (https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/t24/1.5/16/1f641.png) 
Still it works in my home with an electromechanical switch... (https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/ta5/1.5/16/1f642.png)
I do not know if you may open this link from outside Norway, but here is the last call: (https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/t99/1.5/16/1f62d.png)
https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/ruth-_89_-ble-oppringt-telenor-sjefen-_-den-siste-telefonsamtalen-pa-kobbernettet-i-norge-1.16226206

Bad news all the way around.  I think they want to do away with regular phone service so that they can more easily hack into people's phone calls.  Wireless is actually radio transmissions, and radio transmissions are easily intercepted, even from remote locations.  I am keeping my regular telephone service until they take it away from me.  If they don't, I will not get rid of it. 

Home phones forever!

Mike

It's fine if you don't like cell phones but please stop repeating these lies/misunderstandings about how they work. Cell signals are encrypted and not "more easily hacked" or intercepted. And other than the link from phone to tower they use the same back end network as a landline

DSK: So will Ruth still have a working phone? And what kind of central office switches were still in service until today? Anything old?

Quote from: Stormcrash on December 19, 2022, 04:18:32 PMCell signals are encrypted and not "more easily hacked" or intercepted. And other than the link from phone to tower they use the same back end network as a landline

I agree.

Cell phones (the original analog phones) no longer exist. Those were basically analog walkie-talkie devices that could be tuned into with an appropriate 800 mHz analog receiver.

PCS phones are digital and use the same compression/decompression technology as CDs to convert sound waves into 1s and 0S. On top of that, the digital sound bits are coded to the phone sending and receiving the digital stream with a unique code assigned to each phone known to only the MTSO (Mobile Telephone Switching Office) which uses the control frequencies of a digital call to allow the call to proceed. Illegitimate phone IDs are rejected, attempted calls ended.

"Cell" today refers to the network of towers in any area that provide blanket coverage, each tower is a cell on a network of towers each providing digital PCS communications.

The analog Motorola Flip Phones, and the multiple number of equivalent analog phones back in the day, are no more.

How this all works is explained well in the link below including this paragraph pertaining to phone security coding:

"All cell phones have special codes associated with them. These codes are used to identify the phone, the phone's owner and the service provider.

Let's say you have a cell phone, you turn it on and someone tries to call you. Here is what happens to the call:

When you first power up the phone, it listens for an SID on the control channel. The control channel is a special frequency that the phone and base station use to talk to one another about things like call set-up and channel changing. If the phone cannot find any control channels to listen to, it knows it is out of range and displays a "no service" message.

When it receives the SID, the phone compares it to the SID programmed into the phone. If the SIDs match, the phone knows that the cell it is communicating with is part of its home system.

Along with the SID, the phone also transmits a registration request, and the MTSO keeps track of your phone's location in a database -- this way, the MTSO knows which cell you are in when it wants to ring your phone.

The MTSO gets the call, and it tries to find you. It looks in its database to see which cell you are in.

The MTSO picks a frequency pair that your phone will use in that cell to take the call.

The MTSO communicates with your phone over the control channel to tell it which frequencies to use, and once your phone and the tower switch on those frequencies, the call is connected. You are talking by two-way radio to a friend!
As you move toward the edge of your cell, your cell's base station notes that your signal strength is diminishing.

Meanwhile, the base station in the cell you are moving toward (which is listening and measuring signal strength on all frequencies, not just its own one-seventh) sees your phone's signal strength increasing. The two base stations coordinate with each other through the MTSO, and at some point, your phone gets a signal on a control channel telling it to change frequencies. This hand off switches your phone to the new cell."

https://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/academic/courses/03w200a/projects/wireless/cell_technology.htm

There is virtually no way to "listen in" on over the air transmissions and, AFAIK, the receiving tower to sending tower connection (be it copper, FO or microwave) moves the encoded digital train of compressed and account coded phonetic bits (CD encoding technology digital bits) is what is sent over the air to and from a tower.

Listening in on a PCS to PCS conversation is not possible without knowing the phone codes of a call. However, if calling a landline, the call could be "tapped" after the digital signal is decompressed, made analog by a DAC, somewhere upstream of the analog "old" phone.

But I could be wrong as to who has access to what, where and how so always carefully choose what you say on any phone.

Quote from: poplar1 on December 19, 2022, 06:46:40 PMDSK: So will Ruth still have a working phone? And what kind of central office switches were still in service until today? Anything old?

We just saw a little square box, (Ill guess it was a mobile to landline adapter) and a new handsfree telephone set.

The more realistic issue is not that voice communications might be overheard - that one is as old as telephony itself and according to the legend inspired Mr. Strowger to his inventions.
Overhearing random phone calls by the communist East German "security" must have been one of the most boring jobs in the world. I have scorched my sauerkraut yesterday - is that a code word for a coup? Jeez.
The more realistic issue is data privacy. I suppose in the countries where the majority of the forum members live, pretty decent rules have been set up on this subject. "They" won't come to your house when you said the wrong word or used the wrong app. Legal authorities may tap into the communication of criminals though, and that doesn't seem to be a bad idea.

Back to the topic, great to hear that Ruth can still call her friends with familiar equipment and over a reliable system.

Quote from: countryman on December 20, 2022, 04:07:50 AMThe more realistic issue is data privacy. I suppose in the countries where the majority of the forum members live, pretty decent rules have been set up on this subject. "They" won't come to your house when you said the wrong word or used the wrong app. Legal authorities may tap into the communication of criminals though, and that doesn't seem to be a bad idea.

Yes, I agree, but first, we now know that rules, even laws, are not adhered to.

Second, the MTSO control channels. Everything on these channels is recorded somewhere forever to include calling number, number called, location of both phones and other information related to apps and service provider network data.

In addition, "they" know the location of every phone at the moment and for months, if not years, historically. Digital phones "ping" towers every 6 seconds so the network knows which tower has control over the phone should someone call the mobile phone. And if location services is turned on, GPS data is sent on the control channels every 6 seconds. A recent example is "they" identified every phone that was within a mile of a crime scene during a 6 hour period on the day and hour of the crime and they interviewed each phone's owner/user. They will come to your house just for being somewhere. It's a much different world in this digital area.

The phone's control channel meta data is stored in a huge server farm forever for future analysis and/or data mining. It's not the conversation as you say, it's  the control data that is kept.

And that is just as bad.  I simply do not like being tracked, and I don't like "data" from me being stored.  That's why I am sticking to my home phone.  Yes, the Feds can still tap it, etc., but "civilians", can't for the most part, and corporations won't risk it.  I am not important enough for them to undertake something like that, and risk getting caught.

Mike

This is the equipment I could see, but I do not recognize the black box.

That's the way mobile systems work.
When Ruth never moves that square box, the provider will know the same things as before: Where she lives and when she used the phone.
Formerly, it was the norm that the provider printed your full name and address in a book every so often and distributed this data all over the world.

Quote from: TelePlay on December 20, 2022, 07:54:57 AMYes, I agree, but first, we now know that rules, even laws, are not adhered to.

Second, the MTSO control channels. Everything on these channels is recorded somewhere forever to include calling number, number called, location of both phones and other information related to apps and service provider network data.

In addition, "they" know the location of every phone at the moment and for months, if not years, historically. Digital phones "ping" towers every 6 seconds so the network knows which tower has control over the phone should someone call the mobile phone. And if location services is turned on, GPS data is sent on the control channels every 6 seconds. A recent example is "they" identified every phone that was within a mile of a crime scene during a 6 hour period on the day and hour of the crime and they interviewed each phone's owner/user. They will come to your house just for being somewhere. It's a much different world in this digital area.

The phone's control channel meta data is stored in a huge server farm forever for future analysis and/or data mining. It's not the conversation as you say, it's  the control data that is kept.

Which barring the addition of the tower location information is the same stuff phone companies have always kept records on, what calls are made between what numbers and for how long. Nothing changes in how that data is used either, it's for billing, network traffic engineering, and if the feds come knocking with a warrant they get the specific records and time period covered by the warrant, just like a copper line

And no way civilians can "tap" a cell call, not since the earliest analog days (even then they would only hear half the call anyways). You'd need to bust the encrypted control channel, identify what time/frequency division slices are allocated to the call you want and break the crypto and encoding on the actual digitized call, not going to happen in real time. Meanwhile to tap your landline they'd just have to follow the wires to the pole/box and put a recorder on your wires before it reaches a conentrator/swtich

Quote from: Stormcrash on December 20, 2022, 11:11:57 AMWhich barring the addition of the tower location information is the same stuff phone companies have always kept records on, what calls are made between what numbers and for how long. Nothing changes in how that data is used either, it's for billing, network traffic engineering, and if the feds come knocking with a warrant they get the specific records and time period covered by the warrant, just like a copper line.

In addition to tower data (vector and distance information for triangulation of the phone), a lot of digital information (including GPS geolocation recording of the phone) is saved for analysis in many ways years after the phone was used. The following is from the web site of a law firm (https://www.howelawfirm.com/e-discovery-and-forensics/mobile-phone-evidence/phone-metadata/) specializing in metadata retrieval and analysis:


"Simply put, metadata is data about data. A phone's metadata describes key facts about an individual data file such as phone calls, photographs, texts, etc. With this data, you might reveal habits, activities and interests, or even uncover a lie. For example, metadata from a phone might show you:

Location and time a user accessed certain online accounts.

Phone call duration, call status (incoming, outgoing, or canceled), date and time, call type (voice or video).

Software application install and uninstall dates for, their use frequency, and even usage time.

Camera or device used to take a photo, whether was a downloaded photo or not, capture date, time, and GPS location, deletion status.

Device or browser used to send an email, its delivery time, or even show an email was spoofed.

Consider also the ways text message and call metadata can provider deeper context to key relationships.

For example

What time of day or night did they usually communicate? By text or phone call?

Were there group chats? Who else was involved?

How often did they talk or text?

Who usually initiated communication?

Was communication mutually reciprocated?"

And "they" have even better techs than a law firm.

That site is describing metadata stored on the phone, not metadata sent to the carrier

Most of the metadata listed never leaves the phone and is just how oeperating systems work. Verizon certainly doesn't know when I take a picture on my cell phone, and your web traffic is nearly universally encrypted end to end (this site actually being an exception since it doesn't use https) which prevents man in the middle snooping of what you upload/download (tracker cookies in browsers are a whole different story though)

Half of that metadata listed is not something sent to the carrier but would apply to metadata extracted from a physical device in possession of the extractor. And that's why iOS for instance encrypts the device and can self lock on failed access attempts so even physical possession can't give that data without the type of effort only agencies like the FBI can muster

The only metadata in that list carriers would get is voice call/text origin/destination/time, possible aggregation of DNS records for websites, but not the content for any of those, not what you said/wrote/did on those connections

Thanks for clarifying that.

But given the transmitted metadata, data about data, can be used by "them" to "identify" a phone, if they them acquire that phone wouldn't "they" then have access to all the metadata (and I'm not so sure anymore about phone companies refusing to unlock phones with their back door key as they once were).

The FCC order of August 2019 created a lot of scare tactics and hype by vendors of phone systems, alarm equipment, etc. In fact, this order directly applied to ony about 200,000 POTS lines out of some 39,000,000 POTS lines remaining in the U.S.

However, with the deregulation of POTS lines, at least in some states, there will be "forced migration" by the increased price for POTS lines. Here in GA, AT&T has been increasing the price by $2 oer month every December. My residential line is now $52 (with Feature Package) + junk fees = $72/month.  Business POTS lines, which were recently about $100 per month, are now $342! My house had a common battery 98A wall set in 1911 (found the outline for it when we steamed off all the calcimine paint  on the plaster walls) -- no batteries needed -- but now they are promoting a VOIP line that will require battery backup.

When I was working for the state of GA as a Communications Tech, new buildings required 2 dedicated POTS line just for the fire alarm. And probably at least one for the elevators. Medical records, last I heard, can be transmitted only by Fax, which, for most Fax machines anyway, requires a POTS line. (Google search did not list source of quotation below.)

In August 2019, the FCC released a mandate requiring telephone networks to sunset long-standing POTS phone line connections, requiring a full phase-out nationwide by August 2, 2022.
...
What Are POTS Lines Used For?
Fax machines.
ATMs.
Elevator call boxes.
Fire alarms.
Burglar alarms.
HVAC systems.
And More.
Apr 27, 2022

 . . . and when delivering stuff directly to hospital surgery floors, I always saw a red POTS phone on the back counter of the surgical control desk for back up should the power go out and the digital business phones at the front of the desk go silent. Haven't done that work for 4 years now so don't know if they still have the POTS lines.

Quote from: Stormcrash on December 19, 2022, 04:18:32 PMIt's fine if you don't like cell phones but please stop repeating these lies/misunderstandings about how they work. Cell signals are encrypted and not "more easily hacked" or intercepted. And other than the link from phone to tower they use the same back end network as a landline

OH ! It"s not a lie at all my friend ! All signals can be intercepted . The proofs are there . besides, a cell phone can be hacked remotely my dear friend. even when you plug it into a public charging station. do not forget that one "USB" input is used at a time; charging your cell, but also collecting data . I know a few people who have been there and received weird messages. So it's easy for hackers to intercept cell signals.


https://www.quora.com/Network-Security-How-can-cell-phones-calls-be-intercepted-by-government-and-private-biggies (https://www.quora.com/Network-Security-How-can-cell-phones-calls-be-intercepted-by-government-and-private-biggies)

That's the weak spot, the link to the cell tower.  I had a cell phone, but got rid of it when I retired 3 years ago, as I no longer needed to call the dispatcher when I was held up in traffic, and my wife has one, and we generally go everywhere together, so no need for two of them.  Another problem with them is that they sometimes hang up on you.  That annoys me.

Mike

Quote from: TelePlay on December 21, 2022, 01:01:30 AMThanks for clarifying that.

But given the transmitted metadata, data about data, can be used by "them" to "identify" a phone, if they them acquire that phone wouldn't "they" then have access to all the metadata (and I'm not so sure anymore about phone companies refusing to unlock phones with their back door key as they once were).

That's why modern operating systems like iOS (and increasingly desktop Windows/macOS) encrypt the drive, you can't decrypt without the password protected keys stored in tamper resistant modules inside the cpu. And most encryption schemes are set up such that neither the phone maker (like Apple) or your carrier has a key to decrypt, that's why whenever there's a high profile case with the FBI wanting access Apple says sorry nothing we can do, and the carriers have even less to do with all this than Apple/Google and they instead have to rely on difficult and delicate hacker exploits that usually involve ripping the phone apart, not something a casual hacker could do

Nobody has a backdoor key and everyone has pushed back any time a government has hinted at wanting one since the early 2000's for precisely the concerns of government or hacker access discussed here. It's also why things like iCloud allow triggering a remote wipe of your device and an account lock to prevent theft and access of data.

Metadata isn't some special omnipotent thing, it's just more data made for managing other data. If you send someone a digital photo then yes they can access the metadata inside the file to see where/when it was taken if the camera generated that metadata (and most do now) and put it in the file. Even when metadata is uploaded to services like iCloud it's stored encrypted along with the real data and is encrypted in transit, the only metadata that Apple has access to is metadata they generate themselves about the account, but not on the contents, and even that is stored encrypted in any remotely modern service so only appropriate systems can read it, and even if that gets hacked they still can't read your files or private metadata

Quote from: Contempra on December 21, 2022, 08:20:01 AMOH ! It"s not a lie at all my friend ! All signals can be intercepted . The proofs are there . besides, a cell phone can be hacked remotely my dear friend. even when you plug it into a public charging station. do not forget that one "USB" input is used at a time; charging your cell, but also collecting data . I know a few people who have been there and received weird messages. So it's easy for hackers to intercept cell signals.


https://www.quora.com/Network-Security-How-can-cell-phones-calls-be-intercepted-by-government-and-private-biggies (https://www.quora.com/Network-Security-How-can-cell-phones-calls-be-intercepted-by-government-and-private-biggies)

Receiving a radio signal doesn't mean you can actually decrypt it and process it. Encrypted digital communications are not easy to crack and insert yourself into. That quora post is not a reliable source and has some truths but a lot of FUD in it

On the USB front it's not very likely but yes you really shouldn't use those public USB sockets, the risk of something having physical contact over a generic port that is meant to do many things (unlike the cell link which is tightly controlled in how communications can be initiated) being able to send a bad payload to exploit a security vulnerability is small but real. Very different from supposed intercepting of the signal though as what those viruses do is start originating their own secure communications to a control server, not intercept a normal signal.

Hackers aren't some magic breed with godlike powers to crack any electroinic device in the world. The most common attack remains social engineering, getting your password or credentials via phishing. Most hack access is done just by logging in as the victim, which is why 2 factor auth (like codes sent to your email/text or using dedicated authenticator devices) are becoming more important, and most of those fishy messages are just a spray and pray to see who sends them info after not paying close attention

My phone company, ATT, tried to get me to switch a few years ago, but I flatly refused.  I don't care about "changing times".  At least not unless they force me.

Mike

Verizon sent me a letter a few years ago, giving me a date by which I had to either let them convert my landline to fiber or lose service. So, I took the fiber option. Kept the line for a month and then did a number transfer to Ooma which saved me about $20/month.

Fast forward to COVID, when I converted from Comcast to FIOS (remember that fiber?), resulting in a 3x speed increase and a .5x cost drop per month. Reliability increase as well. Can't say enough good things about fiber (well, except for no battery, of course).

Ooma is a great basic phone service but it does not do pulse dial or more than one ringer...so I did what any normal phone nerd would do...bought a Panasonic mini-PBX (KX-TAW848) and hooked up ALL the phones! Attached one of the four CO (regular POTS) lines to the output of the Ooma box. When I built the house, I had 2 runs per room of CAT3 installed, a very smart move, as they work for network or phones. My UPS will hold the phones and network up for 2.5 hours.

So I will add the following:

Months ago, after warning my brother that his copper DSL and analog phone service would be forced to upgrade to fiber soon, he got an "upgrade notice" in the mail.

They (CenturyLink) wanted him to BUY his own fiber optic modem and increase his monthly bill from about $80 to over $100 per month. Also worth noting, he has had years of ongoing failures as a result of CenturyLink's inability to adequately maintain copper lines.

His DSL speed was about 5Meg per second and there was no mention of increasing it after the forced fiber upgrade.

So his analog line and DSL service got cut off (but he kept paying as they only cut the physical line) and we moved him to an Internet service that gave him 50 meg per second for a fraction of the cost he was paying. He uses almost no Internet.

We had began the porting process of his line (that he kept paying for for three months despite it it working) , and for three months CentryLink refused to allow the port out.

I had to make use of some contacts I have in VoIP and make an enemy in the VoIP business along the way but three months later his number of the last 30 years was ported out.

Now he has his "old school"  phone number ported to encrypted VoIP line (good luck if you think you can crack that unless I was  stupid enough to allow you to be a man in the middle, like a VPN). 

His ATA is a Grandstream HT802 and when it rings it rings BOTH ports (with high power)  and he can make/receive 2 simultaneous call, one on each ATA port. It also supports rotary dialing  via his Old AE wall phone that he paid $5 for , seen pictured here


(http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=312673;image)


(http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=312675;image)


and with Plunger replacement hack here http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=26823.msg259383#msg259383

Overall his switch to comcast and VoIP cost him a fraction of what Century Link charged him.

BTW I remember that I used to go to Bend, OR and did some business there. CenturyLink was there and people ALWAYS complained about them,  their high prices and dishonest billing practices. If you have a century Link analog line , PORT YOUR NUMBER NOW. do NOT WAIT, they will make it extremely difficult. CenturyLink now is thhe owner of the foormer USWest/Qwest/Pacific_NW_Bell properties in the Portland Area. They really have NO CLUE

 

POTS is dead. Services like VoIP are obviously the next step, but I believe they will go away as well. DTMF is going to go away because there is no need for tone dialing on the internet. And, to go even further, I believe that phone numbers are going to go away. Those are a relic of the past. They are very limiting, and they are not necessary on the internet.

The future of telephone is going to become more like a Zoom call or a Microsoft Teams call. You will no longer dial a number. You will simply select the name of the person or business you want to speak with. Or, you might ask Alexa or Siri to connect you with someone. Young people today don't know or remember any phone numbers. 

Very soon, all old phones will need to have have some kind of internet or computer adapter. Fire alarms, burglar alarms, elevators, etc. will all need to be internet connected. Old telephones are fun, but they are ancient technology now. This will obviously require people to have backup power somehow, but I don't think there is any way around it. Fax is also dead. There are internet services that will send faxes to hardwired fax machines if needed. You can also install a Fax modem on your computer. But those are also very old technology and are going away. The laws that required faxes are quickly being changed.

@markosjal -- my sister also has a Century link copper line because they haven't installed fiber in her neighborhood yet. She is constantly having problems with her line. They are obviously only doing minimal maintenance on the old copper wires. There is a large old telephone junction box on a corner in her neighborhood that was hit by a car. The external metal case is smashed and the cover came off. All the wires inside are exposed. It has been that way for over a year and it doesn't look like they plan to fix it. I don't even know if anyone knows how to fix it anymore.

Regular phone is not dead.  Not yet.  I still have mine and refuse to get rid of it.  I DON'T WANT to place phone calls over the internet.  The internet is full of hackers, and it is Public Domain.  I still value my privacy.  I don't care about "changing times", as I am not a follower of trends.

Mike

I am in Boston, Mass. Two or three years ago, Verizon forced me to switch from copper to FIOS or lose service entirely because they shut down the old system. I might have been the last one in my neighborhood on the old system. All my old phones still work, though.

Unless you live in a small bubble and only make local calls, then all your phone calls are internet connected.

Almost all of the telephone exchanges have been computerized, and most of those computers are connected to the internet. In fact, many of those computers are literally the backbone of the internet.

The old mechanical switches are long gone. The telephone exchanges no longer physically connect one copper phone line to another copper line to make a phone call. Your plain old copper wires connect to a computer at the exchange. Your analog voice signals are digitized. Some are sent over fiber optic cables. Many of larger fiber optic cables are also used for internet traffic. The largest phone companies are also internet companies, and it's all just data to them.   

Almost everything is digitized today and the NSA can see and hear anything that goes through an exchange. Unfortunately, your representatives don't care about your privacy as much as you do.

What you think is POTS is not really Plain or Old or Telephone anymore. It's all data now. The only final remnant of POTS is the copper wire that goes to your house. But, they are quickly replacing those as well. As long as people continue paying for it, then the phone companies will continue selling something that looks like POTS, but it will really just be an internet service that mimics POTS.   

Since X-mas my fibre internet with TV and phone has went up and down, they claim that noting is wrong. 
I guess it was easier to measure on the old copper cables. 

At my house, I can sign up for Google Fiber, Comcast/Xfinity, or CenturyLink.

Google put their fiber line underground in the street. I haven't had any problems with them, and they are very nice. They only offer 1 GB or 2 GB internet and VoIP telephone. I got the 1GB plan and it is very fast, but it is a little expensive at $70/month. VoIP telephone is $10/month extra. 

Comcast/Xfinity still has the copper coax on the telephone pole behind my house. I can get gigabit internet on that wire, and it works very well. Comcast is notorious for constantly and endlessly raising their prices, so I dropped them for Google when the price went up again. It was over $120 per month just for gig speed internet without cable TV. I won't pay for TV when I can get over 100 channels for free with an antenna.  They also offer VoIP telephone for an extra charge. My neighbor said he pays them $40 per month for their phone service. They call it landline phone, but it is VoIP.

CenturyLink currently only has the original copper phone lines coming to my house. Telephone service is shockingly expensive. My neighbor said he pays over $70 per month. CenturyLink only offer DSL internet on that line. But, they are in the process of adding fiber optic in my neighborhood. They are just twisting the fiber optic cable around the old copper wire on the telephone pole. The worker said that they will probably disconnect the copper wires when they are done and telephone will require a VoIP box after the fiber is installed.

So, I will be able to continue having something that looks like Plain Old Telephone Service, but it will really be VoIP over the internet. The original POTS over copper wires will cease to exist soon. 

Quote from: MMikeJBenN27 on January 12, 2023, 06:16:15 PMRegular phone is not dead.  Not yet.  I still have mine and refuse to get rid of it.  I DON'T WANT to place phone calls over the internet.  The internet is full of hackers, and it is Public Domain.  I still value my privacy.  I don't care about "changing times", as I am not a follower of trends.

Mike

Yea but most all VoIP services nowadays are encrypted and unless you are stupid enough to put a "man in the middle" like a VPN then your calls are pretty secure darn and still fall under all of the legal protections of phone calls. To decrypt a call you need to be at one end or the other or as I said "in the middle". Not too easy

Quote from: markosjal on January 14, 2023, 12:55:31 AMYea but most all VoIP services nowadays are encrypted and unless you are stupid enough to put a "man in the middle" like a VPN then your calls are pretty secure darn and still fall under all of the legal protections of phone calls. To decrypt a call you need to be at one end or the other or as I said "in the middle". Not too easy

A VPN does not create a man in the middle but the VoIP provider itself often is itself a man in the middle.
It's still end to end between you and the VoIP company, or between you and the other endpoint if your phone really does negotiate a shared encryption secret with the other endpoint phone.

Note that for actual end-to-end encryption to work, both parties have to have non-revoked signed certificates and clients that either trust each other's certificates or trust certificate authorities that have signed each other's certificates.

Without that, you are vulnerable to MITM regardless of how the two endpoints are connected.

The reason for this is the clients sign the public data the two endpoints send each other that used to negotiate the shared secret.

One endpoint has "A" and "a" and the other has "B" and "b". The first sends "A" to the second and the second sends "B" to the first. The shared secret "s" can be derived from "Ab" and "Ba" but not from "AB", so the shared secret is never transmitted between them but both independently derive the same shared secret that is used to encrypt the message.

Look up DH key exchange to see how it works. ECDHE, which is more modern, is conceptually the same.

But the first has to know that "B" really came from the second and the second has to know that "A" really came from the first, or MITM is possible. That's where the signed certificates come in.

Quote from: AliceWonder on March 28, 2023, 09:47:29 PMA VPN does not create a man in the middle but the VoIP provider itself often is itself a man in the middle.
It's still end to end between you and the VoIP company, or between you and the other endpoint if your phone really does negotiate a shared encryption secret with the other endpoint phone.

That is precisely what I mean. Many VPN companies have been purchased by questionable owners recently. The  VPN company itself or its partners becomes the man in the middle

They can't become the man in the middle of an end to end encrypted connection because the shared secret is never transmitted, nor is the ability to generate it transmitted.

With DH key exchange (DHE), the number A is public and sent but a is private. B is public and sent but b is private. Via modular math, A*b = B*a and thus is the shared secret - but A*B is meaningless, so there is no way for a VPN (or anyone else) to break the encryption between the two endpoints (well, things like logjam attack exist, but that's only feasible with 1024-bit or smaller encryption).

End to End encryption is only vulnerable to an attacker that has access to one of the endpoints or is able to spoof one of the endpoints, but signed certificates and the PKI system makes that incredibly difficult unless the attacker has control of one of the endpoints.

A VPN doesn't give the magic security some think it does, all it really does is sometimes keep your IP address a secret (but it often doesn't even do that), but a VPN can not become a MITM between two parties communicating with DHE/ECDHE key exchange and a somewhat modern encryption algorithm.

They can however log all your activity through them and sell the data and yes, many have been caught doing just that.

One of the reasons I refuse to become an on-line freak.

Mike

Quote from: AliceWonder on March 29, 2023, 04:05:11 AMThey can't become the man in the middle of an end to end encrypted connection...

no idea where you get this info but it is the VPN server that generates said encryption key leaving the VPN server (VPN company) "in the middle" of the connection

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/104486/does-using-a-vpn-completely-stop-mitm-man-in-the-middle-attacks-if-not-what

The VPN encrypts everything between you and the VPN but when you connect to an encrypted endpoint (web server or end to end encryption, whatever) then what the VPN is encrypting and decrypting is an already encrypted message.

It's encrypted by your application client (web browser, phone, whatever) using a shared secret only your application client and the destination have. Then the encrypted message is further encrypted by your VPN client, using a shared secret (and often a different encryption algorithm) only your VPN client and VPN provider have.

Then when it gets to your VPN provider, the VPN encryption is decrypted but the original encryption is still there for the message being sent to the destination.

Quote from: AliceWonder on March 30, 2023, 05:13:12 AMThe VPN encrypts everything between you and the VPN but when you connect to an encrypted endpoint (web server or end to end encryption, whatever) then what the VPN is encrypting and decrypting is an already encrypted message.

It's encrypted by your application client (web browser, phone, whatever) using a shared secret only your application client and the destination have. Then the encrypted message is further encrypted by your VPN client, using a shared secret (and often a different encryption algorithm) only your VPN client and VPN provider have.

Then when it gets to your VPN provider, the VPN encryption is decrypted but the original encryption is still there for the message being sent to the destination.

You are making a LOT of assumptions your first error is TRUSTING a 3rd party. (VPN Provider). What you say may be true on a PRIVATE VPN but not always on a commercial VPN. Need I say more?

Quote from: markosjal on April 01, 2023, 04:02:01 AMYou are making a LOT of assumptions your first error is TRUSTING a 3rd party. (VPN Provider). What you say may be true on a PRIVATE VPN but not always on a commercial VPN. Need I say more?

Perhaps I'm missing something but I can't see where @AliceWonder said they trusted VPN providers. What has been correctly stated is that you are using an end-to-end (ie client to client) encrypted message system then the security or otherwise of the VPN you are using is of little relevance.

You need to read the thread. If you use a "VPN Provider" its a lot different than a "Private VPN" and that is my point . VPN providers should not be trusted for security. Go ahead and trust your VPN provider with your bank account and Login to your bank. Many Free VPNs SELL YOUR DATA (as yes they can see it).

With ANY VPN you put a "Man in the middle". The question is how trustworthy, or WHO is that man.

I do not care what anyone says,  there is more than enough evidence to support this statement.  ANY VPN provider has the ability to control or read encryption keys sent to both ends.

If anyone doubts this ASK GOOGLE, but it relates mostly Commercial VPN providers not PRIVATE VPNs as you yourself control that with PRIVATE VPN.

I am too out of breath to keep saying it. Done with this thread, believe what you want.

Quote from: markosjal on April 01, 2023, 01:47:19 PMYou need to read the thread. If you use a "VPN Provider" its a lot different than a "Private VPN" and that is my point . ...

That I do agree with as most consumers use a VPN provider to disguise the source of their traffic, for example so someone in the UK can watch Netflix from the USA which would otherwise not work. It does also encrypt the traffic but that is not usually its primary purpose.
A private VPN is there to ensure the traffic is secured and cannot be tampered with en-route (ie by a man in the middle attack).

Quote from: markosjal on April 01, 2023, 01:47:19 PM... Go ahead and trust your VPN provider with your bank account and Login to your bank. Many Free VPNs SELL YOUR DATA (as yes they can see it).
...

As the connection to my bank is HTTPS encrypted then all the VPN provider would know is that I have connected to my banks website. They would not be able to work out whether I was just looking at their products or actually logging in and doing some banking.

Quote from: tubaman on April 02, 2023, 03:17:29 AM...A private VPN is there to ensure the traffic is secured and cannot be tampered with en-route (ie by a man in the middle attack)...

Do not forget ANY VPN Provider is "in the middle" (this includes in the middle of any and all encryption, and on the route used to exchange keys)

Done here, I guess some people just DO NOT GET IT!

Quote from: markosjal on April 02, 2023, 04:27:03 PMDone here, I guess some people just DO NOT GET IT!

Thank you sir, May I have another

Quote from: markosjal on April 02, 2023, 04:27:03 PMDo not forget ANY VPN Provider is "in the middle" (this includes in the middle of any and all encryption, and on the route used to exchange keys)

Done here, I guess some people just DO NOT GET IT!

As is your ISP "in the middle" - I hope you trust them?

You can have my POTS line when you can pry it from my cold dead hands. MIB

I think markosjal is getting at the key exchange weakness, its well known and used by hackers often;
"The Diffie-Hellman key exchange is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. In this attack, an opponent Carol (AKA your VPN provider) intercepts Alice's public value and sends her own public value to Bob.
When Bob transmits his public value, Carol substitutes it with her own and sends it to Alice.
Carol and Alice thus agree on one shared key and Carol and Bob agree on another shared key.
 After this exchange, Carol simply decrypts any messages sent out by Alice or Bob, and then reads and possibly modifies them before re-encrypting with the appropriate key and transmitting them to the other party.
This vulnerability is present because Diffie-Hellman key exchange does not authenticate the participants.
 Possible solutions include the use of digital signatures and other protocol variants."

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10471009/how-does-the-man-in-the-middle-attack-work-in-diffie-hellman

Quote from: TymerTopCat on April 05, 2023, 02:29:45 AMYou can have my POTS line when you can pry it from my cold dead hands. MIB

NOPE they WILL take if before that as they did with my brother. Wanting him to pay WAY MORE for Fiber optic internet with a VoIP line.

I see more and more of these as time goes on. Walked past this one today so grabbed the pictures. It's been sitting open like this for a couple of years now.

The pedestal is Ameritech land lines and fiber has been put in the area so they seemed to have just abandon copper.

Looks like someone ripped it open. Probably to take out all the copper.

Quote from: HarrySmith on June 21, 2023, 05:14:37 PMLooks like someone ripped it open. Probably to take out all the copper.

Don't know Harry. Looks like nothing is missing but what's inside is covered with grass cuttings.

About 300 feet down the street there is another one in fine condition. I think a sidewalk snow plow hit the first one and no one cared to fix it.

They don't care about these anymore. 6 weeks later the only change is the person who cuts the grass put the front cover that was laying on the ground up against the pedestal.

Quote from: Owain on March 20, 2011, 06:13:05 PMYes, 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.

It's probably more the particular SLIC chip they're using in their line cards. They may no longer include the circuitry to count the dial pulses.

Someone could write a book: "101 Ways to Loose a POTS Line"

Here's one, how it happened to me.

AT&T is putting FO in everywhere in my city. AT&T marked their desired path through my back yard utility easement to horizontal bore in a FO conduit.

Underground marking company marked all underground phone, gas and power lines.

Marking was not perfect.

The underground directional boring bit ran into a 50 pair phone cable and as the cable was wrapped around the bit, it pulled the cable out of the pedestal about 4 feet from the bit.

That cable was running to another pedestal about 50 feet away. That pedestal provided copper grid phone service to some 20 homes, including mine.

Service guy came out and ran 8 fifty foot long patch cables to reconnect the pedestals, restored service.

Talked to the technician. He told me they will most likely give buried FO to every home affected at no charge (they are not going to replace the now dead 50 pair cable).

They will install a new FO pedestal, bury a FO cable to my house, install whatever is needed in my basement including a new WiFi/internet/phone modem.

After all is done, POTS won't even be an option for me. The copper grid will be gone from my homes point of view. Will no longer even have a choice to keep copper or switch to FO service.

Have had copper VOIP for 5 years now and my 616 continues to give me rotary dial out abilities. Just no more copper coming into my house since this horizontal boring incident.

Quote from: TelePlay on Yesterday at 04:37:10 PMSomeone could write a book: "101 Ways to Loose a POTS Line"

Here's one, how it happened to me.

AT&T is putting FO in everywhere in my city. AT&T marked their desired path through my back yard utility easement to horizontal bore in a FO conduit.

Underground marking company marked all underground phone, gas and power lines.

Marking was not perfect.

The underground directional boring bit ran into a 50 pair phone cable and as the cable was wrapped around the bit, it pulled the cable out of the pedestal about 4 feet from the bit.

That cable was running to another pedestal about 50 feet away. That pedestal provided copper grid phone service to some 20 homes, including mine.

Service guy came out and ran 8 fifty foot long patch cables to reconnect the pedestals, restored service.

Talked to the technician. He told me they will most likely give buried FO to every home affected at no charge (they are not going to replace the now dead 50 pair cable).

They will install a new FO pedestal, bury a FO cable to my house, install whatever is needed in my basement including a new WiFi/internet/phone modem.

After all is done, POTS won't even be an option for me. The copper grid will be gone from my homes point of view. Will no longer even have a choice to keep copper or switch to FO service.

Have had copper VOIP for 5 years now and my 616 continues to give me rotary dial out abilities. Just no more copper coming into my house since this horizontal boring incident.

Wow what a hassle.
You'll hopefully get a decent speed boost on your internet.

Quote from: 5415551212 on Yesterday at 08:16:41 PMYou'll hopefully get a decent speed boost on your internet.

The hassle was no internet for 24 hours, but they did respond to the outage quickly.

Yes, looking for a speed increase, to be followed by a monthly price increase in a year or so.

Guess that's why I keep finding the busted up pedestals along a major city street near my house. The copper pedestals will all be gone some day.