Posted on 11/18/2008 8:34:01 PM PST by Kukai
A few points:
Cable will never fully defeat DSL, mainly because of business customers. Simply put, a business location is much more likely to have telephones than TV’s.
Those aformentioned businesses are not going to buy cellular service for every desk in the office when they can leverage a handful of landlines into an internal phone system capable of sharing the outside connections. land line phones also generally run on power provided by that land line as opposed to limited battery life, so for desk-bound locations cell phones make absolutely no sense.
Some businesses may be well suited to VOIP phone systems, but it is by no means a good fit for all or even most of them. And many that would benefit from it would do better to use it as their internal phone system and still use POTS lines for external calls.
Go to your local shopping mall and you will find that most of the stores have POS systems that communicate back to their home office. They are almost certain to have a DSL connection for it. It would not make sense for them to buy that DSL line and not use the same LEC for voice.
Land line telephones flat out sound better and last longer than cell phones, and VOIP carries its own host of expensive drawbacks.
As long as there are business customers, copper is not going away.
HEY! Watch it! I’m still running copper here with POTS and DSL over it. It just works. I had ISDN before DSL with two bonded B channels for 128 kbps way before DSL, too. The costs were horrendous with two simultaneous metered calls to a nearby exchange.
When the power goes out, my indestructable Princess touch-tone phone and copper land line still work. No charging required!
In Houston 2 months ago, the power was out for 3days-4weeks. This was a major city. Those with cellphones were SOL to keep their phones charged and even if they worked, there was no guaranty that the towers would work or that there would be sufficient lines.
But land lines did reasonably well. There were some outages caused by hurricane Ike but the lines did serve a purpose.
Digital tv was **** as the storm blew through too. What are we going to do? Have battery powered digital receivers for battery powered radios/tv audio/weather in an emergency? Ever listen to a digital signal that is cutting in and out because of bad weather? You at least stand a chance at hearing the signal when there is static cutting in over it. Not so when a digital receiver has to “resync”.
And those rechargable cars are going to suck in the next hurricane too.
But that’s okay, we now permit the police department to establish a curfew even though it is SUPPOSED to be the jurisdiction of the mayor.
Really?
I do.
I also have a cell = however, where I live, storms often knock out electricity. Sometimes it's only hours, sometimes a day or two - but in the '98 Ice Storm, I was without electricity for 19 days. Everything was coated with ice. trees were down everywhere - including across my drive. It was too dangerous to go anywhere.
With my wood stove, I stayed warm and could heat water and cook.
With my land line, I had access to the 'outside' - crucial in an emergency. My cell soon ran out of juice...To recharge it over and over in the car for 19 days would have been a nightmare...even had the gas lasted.
So I guess I'm a dinosaur = but one who rests easy knowing I can reach the outside world from my little forest home. 'Very comforting for an old granny.
Of course, a lib would just think: "Well, granny ought to be in a retirement home or an assisted living place or some other gov't run scheme to bleed people of their last dollars/
Until they get cell phones to keep a charge for an extended time and or have an independent of electricity or car recharger, they need to leave people with access to the outside.
Some recent immigrants will gladly remove that copper and take it in to the recycling center.
You must assimilate to the new technology. You aren’t supposed to speak of the limitations and failures of the digital world, whether it is substandard compression and artifacting on DVDs, digital television, dropout in telecommunications, or whatever.
By a new phone. You can play P!nk on it and be hip. Or play the new Jay-Z Obama theme song.
As for corporations, they can talk through the internet.
And all of this digital communication can be processed/monitored much easier.
In the late 70’s some prophetic(or pathetic)industry reps. proclaimed that within 4 years all cars would have CB radios as standard equipment.
Even worse in Alaska - no copper, no phone.
One of the local ILECs is selling nakid DSL - you need a cell phone (an account really) to ge the service. At least they are trying to milk the last possible dime out of plant that was installed 20 to 30 years ago.
IF there is no current running thru the line (wet) all of the splice rot and the line is dead. ILECs will not replace the plant and CLECs would rather sell you a cable based link.
ME? I have all 3, but then I woked in the industry for a numbers of years.
For real emergencies, the family all have ham licenses....
There is also an issue sending FAX. It works fine over copper pairs. Not so well over other media. Many cell phones purport to be able to support FAX. The AT command sets have lots of "support". They don't work reliably. My fallback is to scan to PDF and e-mail the file. The quality is better and the transmission is faster.
Audio headsets are not a hazard. A cell phone transmits RF at 800 MHz and/or 1.9 GHz. You're shoving a hot transmitter next to your head. There's a reason why handset manufacturers have to pass "SAR" standards. The effects on brain activity are measurable. The jury is still out of how much is too much.
I operate a small Linux server that is connected to the net over a land line with DSL.
Just happens to be the cheapest thing out there.
I went through the same process, but opted for just 1 B channel until the DSL over a dedicated pair was offered. A couple years later, the first DSL that could operate on top of a voice line was introduced. I still have my 1996 vintage ISDN terminal adapter in a box.
I can't believe anyone who cares about voice quality would use anything else.
I work out of an office in my home. All of my phone time is spent either selling my products to prospective customers, or trouble-shooting the technical problems of existing customers. Neither of these groups are willing to tolerate the drop-outs, distortion, delays, echos and other issues associated with cell or internet-based phone service.
For folks like me, there is no viable alternative to POTS.
Actually I just pull out the .38 and blast the bastards, no sense making a call.
I use a land line for several reasons, one, I can't get DSL without being hooked up to a landline, good luck if you are able to do so. I need a landline in order to phone in my pace maker signals every 3 months, beats the hell out of driving 50 miles to do it. At last but not least I use a landline because I can actually hook up with some one and not have to worry about walking to one side of the house and lose the person I am talking too. Obviously the people who use cell phones constantly do not live in an area where cell coverage is spotty.
Oh, and the part about the .38 was true, I find them much more effective in combating attacks then a cell phone. Cell phones don't cause much of a wound.
Land line is still out after IKE. Comes and goes... static mess when does come back. I like having a home phone. Cell phone reception is terrible way out in the country. But, glad to have it. Still, miss my home phone.
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