atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News Verizon and Copper Phase-Out

The V web site had no picture* of the actual hardware, but here is one:

CNET Review

Looks like a plastic toy...

*Err, maybe there is a pic on the V site, but I was blocking all their scripts, so they wouldn't let me see it

Jim
==================================================
Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

The reviews of this "technology" in the aforementioned links pretty much sum it up. We are becoming a society of people who accept poor phone call quality and equipment incompatibility. First it was VOIP (a joke in my book) and now using an already-taxed cellular network to offload the wireline industry.

I guarantee that these poor victims will succumb to this reality when there is a local emergency or on a popular calling holiday, like the new year, mother's day, etc. I've witnessed this myself on the cellular network many times.

We have recently embarked on a project for a large taxi service that places red "TAXI" phones at the front desk of most apartment and condo facilities, car dealerships and bars. Previously, they were using Verizon's Centrex lines at the rate of about $16.00 per month. Now, they have chosen to replace these lines with at&t versions of this same box for $19.99 per month. After all of the BS taxes on the Centrex lines, it comes out in the wash to me. I really don't think that they are saving any money, but the company thinks that they are. Hey, they are paying us to make hundreds of these transitions, so I'm not complaining.

The problem is that these gadgets don't provide true voltages and they are finding that many of their existing Rath Microtech autodialer phones don't work on them. By the time that they pay to replace the phones with newer ones that don't require real phone lines, I can only walk away shaking my head (after getting their signature on the work order). 48 volts? What's that?

If it sounds too good to be true, it really, really, really is.

What I keep wondering about with them getting rid of all of the hard lines. Is what are people to do during disasters when the power goes out? How many people or businesses are set up with back-up power source? I know hard lines can get knocked down, but when they are still good, you can still make calls since telephone power if provided by the phone company.

Look how bad the cell networks performed during the recent natural disasters and what happened in Boston as some examples

I would imagine that just like all other technologies that cell would continue advancing and meet whatever needs are required. I can recall many times during emergencies where landlines could not get through because they did not have the capacity to support the huge volume of calls. I don't know about any of you but my preparation plans for a natural disaster do not involve sitting by the phone and making calls. If things are so bad that power is out and cell towers are down then I will probably have bigger things to worry about.

What Tito said.

Pretty interesting how this is evolving:

https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/AARP-Joins-Those-Fighting-Verizons-Killing-of-Copper-124841

We seem to be a society easily sold on what is perceived to be convenience rather than reliability:

https://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/04/shame-bostons-wireless-woes/5320/

When Sandy hit northern NJ we had widespread power failures lasting 8-10 days (over 2 weeks for some people.) Besides the storm damage we have one of the worst power utilities (JCP&L / FirstEnergy) who has adopted the same maintenance plan as Verizon - don't maintain what's not broken. So with unreliable power and communications services that now require continuous power to the CPE (cellular, FiOS, cable) we are killing the reliability of our public communications network.

Subscribers served by LEC "hard lines" (we in the telephone industry call them wired lines) have no guaranty that they will have seamless service during power outages. True, the central offices have not been messed with by the cluelesscenti (yet) and continue to be the last bastion of reliability in a phone world gone mad, but in outlying areas, POTS lines are often (and more and more, recently) delivered by copper only in the last mile, and derived along the way from Lightpath or SLiC cabinets. These "improvements" are powered by local batteries that are sometimes checked, sometimes maintained, and sometimes even replaced when necessary.

The battery in a carrier cabinet of this type will work for 8 hours at average usage. The one that serves our local police department and town government buildings regularly fails at around the 8 hour mark, a great improvement over the earlier events from a few years ago during which they failed after an hour or two. Just like a car that, never driven, will never run out of gas, cabinets serving remote residential subscribers who stay off the phone during natural disasters, might keep going for days. But it's a known fact that during a disaster, phone usage goes up.

The balance between copper that fails more than optical fiber, and CO battery that doesn't fail, compared to local battery, is a constant source of discussion and worry.

I heard that this happened during Katrina. The cellulars towers only had eight hours of battery. That's why there's a push for solar power in telecom. Well, to be fair, the frugalness of the telecom world is the real reason.

Text messages go through better, as last I heard, they are transmitted through microwave links and supposedly they can be resent by the SMSC.

How well will alarm lines work through these fiber lines? Is it channelized?


This has me wondering if there's anyone still renting their telephone from the ilec, since this might end that service. It happened to my grandmother (she was renting her phone until the 1990's).

Most ILECS have stopped renting consumer telephones. There is 1 company....that I know of....that continues the practice. The phones range from Western Electric rotary dial models to more recent at&t/VTech units.