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The end of POTS?

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

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GusHerb

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.
Jonathan

GusHerb

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.
Jonathan

Phonesrfun

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

-Bill G

poplar1

"C'est pas une restauration, c'est une rénovation."--François Martin.

Phonesrfun

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?
-Bill G

AE_Collector

#125
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

GusHerb

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).
Jonathan

GusHerb

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.
Jonathan

JmaJeremy

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).

poplar1

#129
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%]
"C'est pas une restauration, c'est une rénovation."--François Martin.

Jack Aman

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.

JmaJeremy

#131
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.

twocvbloke

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

poplar1

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?
"C'est pas une restauration, c'est une rénovation."--François Martin.

Phonesrfun

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.
-Bill G