atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Copper is Dead

Just mulling.....

We're moving offices.
Decided to go with fiber over EOC (ethernet over copper), even though the pricepoint is about 2X. IMO, huge dramatic decline in maintenance, repair, etc with copper these days.

Same goes for our Voice. Debating/Mulling over how I'm going to feed the PBX. We do have SIP trunks in it already, but that's mainly for backup trunks.

Mulling over a *old school ISN PRI*, in which only a handful of carriers still offer as such---and yes, it runs over copper. Then's theirs latter options that are IP centric.

For all of ya'll that refer, advise, etc - what's your take. Hell, I have another site with a chronic. OSP has given us 2 months on the ETA on repair/replacement...

What PBX

IPO. We currently use a PRI with SIP

Just installed a larger PBX (well large for us, about 50 extensions) and the customer went with AT&T SIP over fiber shared with their main internet connection (aka AT&T Flex BVoIP). At our office we have SIP over a dedicated T1 from Windstream. Both have proven to be reliable. We did have a 5 minute or so Windstream outage this past fall, however.

We have a third customer that has a PRI over fiber from AT&T.

In every case, however, the SIP was provided by the company providing the circuit. I've tried third party SIP providers at home (using pro grade equipment) and it has not been as reliable.

As long as your PBX plays nice with SIP, the SIP trunks and circuit are from the same provider, and the circuit is of good quality, it seems like a safe choice.

I say go fiber when possible. I can' see a downside besides it's expensive right now. It'll eventually come down.

You know all of this said, AT&T relies on copper to support fiber and assumes everyone still has at least 1 copper trunk. They include a US Robotics 56k modem with every fiber install in order to access their on site router incase the fiber goes down.

So I guess copper does still rule supreme in reliability.

If the fiber is down....regardless of CPE management capability via a dialup, what's the benefit....as the prem. is still Hard Down regardless..

I guess the idea is that they can remotely reboot the CPE, or make configuration changes in hopes of restoring service.

Broadband CPE is so cheap these days.....most "being the word" , IMO, would possibly ride over a secondary ~high speed~ circuit and come into the equipment via a secondary route, IMO. It's been eons since I've seen or even consider dial up a secondary means on getting in, if the primary is down

Fiber is much more reliable than copper. The LECs are not maintaining copper properly. In fact, many places where Verizon is the LEC, their fix for bad pairs is install FiOS. As you may know, there is a theoretical limit to bandwidth on copper. I don't know of anything commercially available that approaches that limit, however, that limit is based on good copper from termination to termination. Today, that's a gamble.

I have a problem with SIP in that some politician or some money greedy entity will somehow find a way to either tax the use of the internet or make the use of SIP and VoIP metered, just like dedicated lines/trunks are now. Then the advantage will go away and what is left? At least, with fiber, the provider may be able to bundle services for an advantage as opposed to what we have now.

Rcaman