The AM Forum

Has anyone had any experience switching from a digital phone service back to landline? We've had digital phone for a few years. I wasn't aware (the decision wasn't mine) of the installation of the eMTA (modem) at the time and so after a time I noticed that there some unpleasant RFI emanating on the bands every 100khz or so. I tracked it down to the digital phone eMTA. It's a model made by Arris. Unfortunately, the power supply is built in to the modem and there seems to be no way of isolating it and feeding just the modem itself with clean DC power. The other hurdle is Time Warner does not seem to allow any other eMTA other than this one Arris model. Even other models made by Arris still have the built in power supply.

At this point I've been thinking about switching back to copper landline (i.e POTS - Plain Old Telephone Service) and I was wondering if anyone has done this as well and if they've received any resistance, raised eyebrows or have any suggestions. The POTS provider in this area is Verizon and I've heard some stories that they try to railroad people into their FIOS/Digital Phone package. It'll be interesting trying to convince them that, no, I just want copper. Thankfully the hardware is still present in our house.

Is the Arris model a cable modem/phone box?

The trick to "convincing" them is to say something like this- "I want plain old fashioned copper wire based telephone service. If you want my money, that is what it will take to get it."

It just services digital phone. The cable modem for Internet is separate. Other companies make modems for digital phone that have outboard (wall wart) power supplies. These are easy to replace with a linear supply. I'm not exceptionally versed on the world of digital phone connectivity and so I wonder if I do swap in another brand modem if the hardware at Time Warner's head end will still play nicely with it.

No the digital phone modem from your cable company is programmed to look for the server for your phone service.
It's not going to be easy to convince Time Warner there is a problem unless a tech comes and visits and you demonstrate how this device is affecting your Ham radio station.

RFI isn't the only thing I'd worry about. If I'm having chest pains in the middle of the night I don't want to hope that I'm not in the middle of a power outage or that my modem went into orbit and needs reset when I go to dial 9-1-1. No, POTS isn't fail safe but I'm not aware of anything out there yet that can equal its reliability overall. POTS is still the best we have under that scenario, but it's going away and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

Good luck on switching back to the older copper line.  Verizon in our area is all Fios and once they hook you up the copper is clipped with very short leads!  They just don't want to maintain the copper anymore.  Even folks with DSL service get lousy service since its all copper based. 

Joe-GMS

Around here AT&T does not have anyone who can repair copper pair, so if you want a plain telephone they give you a box and a phone.  The box is a cellular connection and the phone plugs into it.

If you happen to live in a rural area with a small, independent phone company they may have copper connections and have someone that can fix the line.  I have helped the local guys a few times when things go wrong.  They always want to know how I know how to test the line.  Good luck!

I have an Arris box and it's both a cable modem and provides two telephone line connections (they also have for just one). Power supply is built inside the box. No RFI getting into any of the radios.

Have a friend that still has POTS. Lost dial tone; waited a week for Verizon to come out. Cleaned cross-connect terminals at one of the neighborhood street boxes. Worked for about a month, and last I heard, dial tone was now intermittent. POTS is not a good investment today.

What about simply wrapping the egress cables with some ferrite beads or clamping some on?   Seems some 43 and 61 may kill that.


--Shane
KD6VXI

This makes me glad I live in AZ.  POTS is regulated by our Corporation Commission, and prompt repair service by Century Link is mandated by law in the deal that allows them to offer internet and cable TV.

If I have a problem, it is usually fixed the same day.  Not bad for almost 7 miles of copper to the fiber transition into the metro.

DG

Since I happen to be the Moderator of The Telecom Digest, I suggest you ask this question there: we have several thousand regular readers whom have a lot of experience with this sort of issue.

You can send a post to telecomdigestsubmissions at telecom-digest dot org. I'll obfuscate your email address if you want: just put "[obfuscate]" in the subject line.

73,

Bill, W1AC

I went through a similar process that ended up back at a real twisted pair. As Jim mentioned, aside from all of the other issues, not having a phone line when the power is out was not acceptable. We had Time Warner Cable, perhaps the worst customer service in the entire universe. We went without service for several days due to a blown splitter from a nearby strike. Their reps weren't clever enough to figure it out on their multi-layer screens. Finally got one who knew what he was doing, and got a tech out here to fix something I could've done myself in 5 minutes or less. At least he left me some spare splitters in case it happened again, but we dumped them a while later. Even when the power was on, their modem was forever resetting for no apparent reason.

In the meantime, Verizon sold off their rural routes to Frontier, so that's who we have now. And no, having a cell phone is no guarantee either. Cell sites overload fast in emergencies. The tornadoes of a few years back proved that yet again.

Besides, everyone knows you need a REAL phone in the station.

The GMS Hotline ;-) 

Works great.   

I'm going to bid on the salvage rights to all that twisted pair hiding underground!!

Can you say BONANZA!!

Hm, this sounds like something to step lightly with.

I've been reading some articles about how Verizon has perhaps been intentionally negligent in the repair of the copper lines in hopes of forcing people to switch to fiber/FIOS. Stories abound of people's lines being down for weeks or a month while Verizon sits on their hands and does little to solve the problem.

I haven't gotten much help posting to ISP specific forums regarding the matter of using a different modem. It's the usual response even from users. "You must use the modem they provide."

The idea of using ferrite to solve the issues would be sound but I tested the modem completely disconnected from any coax and it's the unit itself that is radiating the RFI. My friend and I spent an afternoon poking at the modem to try and figure out how it ticks. Naturally, there is no documentation anywhere. From what we were able to surmise the power supply is on a sub board that is connected to the main board. It's a double layer board and there are multiple voltages involved to power the unit and so simply isolating the power supply looks to be nigh on impossible. As a laugh, though, we found that pressing down on a certain IC with our finger changed the pitch of the RFI. Lovely.

Bill, thank you very much for that resource. I will certainly make use of it.

So, I figure the first step will be to contact TWC and see what they have to say. I know I'll probably get a very canned response either from their phone support or their tech who comes out to investigate. However, the RFI is so incredibly obvious that perhaps there may be a way to pry some information regarding whether or not it really is impossible to use another brand of modem. If I can then that's problem solved right there.

If they're not helpful then I'll talk to Verizon and see what their mood is about it.

I use a cell phone exclusively for talking to folks however the rest of my family does make limited use of the home phone. However, more and more the home phone has just become a place for telemarketers and robotic calls and so perhaps I could convince them to transfer over to just cell phone service and get rid of home phone service. I need to be diplomatic about this as it's hard to recommend an alternative (POTS) if the provider (Verizon) is going to drag their feet if service is needed on the line.

Ferrite on the power cable.   That's your egress,  not the coaxial cable.

Check the rfi forum on contesting.com.  Ed,  rfi@arrl hangs out there.

Be prepared to be told to put ferrite on the power cord there as well, however.

I like pots lines myself,  too.   Just seems better,  although that's probably all in my head,  too.

--Shane
KD6VXI

About a year ago a friend and fellow ham passed away and I helped his widow clean out his estate.  One item in the mess was a little device that looked like a telephone RFI device.

However, it has the name Tele-Z-Apper on it.  So after doing some research it is a device that sends a tone down the line from your house to the computer dialing your number and tells it something strange.  After changing the battery in it, I plugged it into the line and within a few weeks the telemarketing calls stopped.

It is a bit annoying to hear those tones every time you pick up the handset, but worth getting even with telemarketers.  After a while you can remove it until the next round starts.  I can't wait for election season to start.  ;D

Do you have a preferred source for ferrite?

There are still areas in NJ and NY where FIOS service is not offered currently. If you desire phone service in those areas, they try to push you to Verizon Wireless. If you want Internet service in those areas, they push DSL over the copper.

Why not approach Time Warner with a "defective" Arris box issue and request a new one. Maybe the one you have has some component(s) issues.

There's no guarantee that POTS service would remain viable during bad storm conditions either. Trees pull down wire and poles can fall over or disappear in the wind. Beavers and other critters like to chew on wires too. Rain and snow accumulation seepage into connections can introduce all sorts of cross-talk. Metals in remote cross-connect boxes can, over time, degrade the quality or kill the connection. Central office flooding and lack of replacement parts for 40 or more year old components that fail, and are no longer made, can lead to a lot of phone service frustration.

When hurricane Sandy came through our area, we lost power for over a week but cell phone service never failed. I also still have a traditional 2500 phone too in the shack and it works great hooked to the cable modem.

For what its worth, we have had FIOS for many years now and I have had no issue with the phone over FIOS.  Over a 10 year period of time, I had a couple of issues where Verizon had to do a reset from their end on since I could not reset their wireless router.  I believe that is when the power glitched to the router, but no amount of me doing resets would fix the issue.  It was some issue related to an IP address issue. I bought a small very expensive UPS for the router and have not had a problem since.   So Verizon's FIOS  has been good based on maybe a 10 to 15 year run with it. 

Joe-GMS   

My last order was direct to Amidon.   Otherwise,  China is one source,  palomar engineers,  Fair-Rite,  Mouser,  etc.

--Shane
KD6VXI

Southwestern Bell / AT&T is pushing the "U-verse" service here. I have declined it and kept the copper lines with the ADSL and the POTS, partly because I am getting a lot for my $ and partly because the provider presumes to tack on per-megabit overage fees, that don't apply on ADSL.

I was told in no uncertain terms by the Southwestern Bell / AT&T office that Southwestern Bell / AT&T will FORCE all subscribers to the IP-based system within two years.

This means that they presume to eliminate all of the copper service, and once the freedom of choice is eliminated by the stodgy ol' robber barons, there will be an upcharge of the telephone bill by $10 to boot, and a probably electrically noisy box that must consume MY electricity to run the phone. About the noise, their solution will probably be to simply ask if I want it removed!

The battery backup inside will only last a day, and the Corporation won't be too badly bothered if people expire during a prolonged power outage because the backup battery is dead and no one can dial 911 or make any phone calls at all, as they have no doubt had their lawyers and accountants figure up the cost of any lawsuits against the additional profits made by the supposed economizing of the infrastructure and the outrageous jack-ups of the customers' bills. There is also the matter of poor people who can barely afford a phone but are above the threshold dollars for 'lifeline' programs that supply one for <$20 a month. Some of those will not be able to go from $25 to $35 a month for a telephone. The copper here is is 60 years old however it is plenty good for 6 megabit ADSL now (>100 carriers on twisted pair up to 1MHz) and will be good for POTS for decades more.

During an outage, the Telco is never without power and has huge reserves of fuel to run large generators and can run for many days or weeks in a disaster and furthermore the gummint will see to it that at least some fuel is delivered to priority industry.. This infrastructure can often be seen by looking carefully. I really feel like writing my government representatives a reasonable and polite letter explaining why a "telco-powered" telephone serves the public interest, is important for safety of life and limb, and is also a national security asset.

In an area like where I live, copper is the only option. Even a lot a cell providers still don't have great coverage out here, I'm lucky where I'm at but just a few miles to the north or west and you don't have service. The only  cable  services are in the towns and most of those are just mom and pop outfits, TV only. Comcast is available in a few of the towns but I'm not sure on the service quality. We have Centurylink DSL here and its pretty reliable, they are pretty good at fixing it too, you just have to find  someone there that can do something besides read a script. From what I can  tell reading about that U-verse service, it still relies on DSL over a copper line to the suscriber's house, but everything up to the local node in the neighborhood is fiber, and in some newer locations, everythingis fiber to the suscriber's house. I still prefer twisted pair analog voice over anything IP, at my job its a lot easier to work with and usually always work, I hate dealing with Comcast and all these other companies' phone service, we've run into all kinds of trouble with those digital phone services and  also VOIP phone services when trying to interface them with the phone systems we sell. Copper is still the best there is, at least for residential use. I've helped out with a few businesses that have a PRI (23 voice channels and 1 data channel for call control, etc. over a T1 on copper usually, we have a few customers with PRIs coming in on fiber) and even though its a digital service, it still works just as well as a POTS line does.

I live in Roseville Mi. Our landline phone provider is AT&T. The phone still worked during the great blackout of 2003. I will never give up my landline Molon labe. The infrastructure for our phone system in my neighborhood is over 60 years old and still works great.

John N8QPC

If its causing interference to a licensed service, isn't that illegal?

QTH here is on twisted pair copper.  I won't give it up unless an equivalent can be provided.  Cell service here stinks.  Only one room in the house on the 2nd floor can receive a signal.  Internet service here is ATT/Frontier ADSL without any issues over the last 10 years.  Initially ADSL did not work well with the receivers.  The fix was to put the PS and modem into an RF cage and ground the cage to the electrical ground and problem goes away.  Works like a charm, squeaky clean quiet.

Try wrapping the modem in aluminum foil and ground it somewhere, preferably on the back of the device. Try the threads on the coax connector. If this works, then remove the foil and use a screen as the digital crap gets so hot it destroys itself. Worked for me. 

Sure, but I think the remedy in the law is to discontinue its use, not redesign it for reduced emissions. The same applies to doorbells, TVs, computers, and the rest of it. The onus is not on the manufacturer or the owner (telco) but on the user of the noisy gear, so the customer is stuck with the no-win choice and the encumbrance, and paying for it. In the contract is probably a paragraph stating the subject equipment is not guaranteed for fitness for any purpose, etc etc. so the contract can't be in breach by the provider due to their noisy gear therefore penalties apply one the trap is sprung.

In the early 2000s I ran a big VAX on 220V at home. It made a lot of electrical noise and somewhere in DEC or the included FCC documentation I came to believe there is a noise level for gear intended to be used in the home and a higher level or some exemption for that to be used in business locations (computer room in this case). It said this is not for use in a residence due to emissions, or something, I do not recall that long ago.

BTW this 6000 series model was very popular/numerous and the blower there is huge and quiet and fairly easy to find. It is 24V for full blast but runs on 12V more slowly and quire silently. There are two in each computer. It's designed for vertical mounting but I have put a few hundred hours on one face down on top of the cabinet to suck the heat out of the big rig here. On full blast of course  ;)

I work for Verizon, but not the copper phone line part, the old MCI that Verizon bought.
They want copper to die, they no longer put covers back on, or put air on the cables to keep the water out.
They want to be in the wireless business and want to get rid of all the other regulated stuff.

The last storm around here, the power was off for 3 days, and nothing worked, the entire cell network was down in South Jersey.
No home phone, no power, no cell service.
This is the way its going.

Even more interesting is the company has out sourced almost everything to Manila and some to India.
They have a lot of control and access, even to government stuff.

Since the FCC ruled they can not slow down or stop access to other things like netflix, they no longer want to be in the content provider business, just the internet access business, since young people download stuff off the internet to watch.

Fios is expensive to build and connect to peoples houses, I have heard $700.00 per customer plus $750.00 in house work to hook each customer up.
They no longer really want to be in that business, wireless has huge profits and little infrastructure.

Things are really changing.
When the power goes out, ham radio may be the ONLY way to communicate at all.

Your right about devices going into a residential home environment having tougher EMI standards.  Any marketed device with a switching frequency greater than 9 kHz has to either pass FCC Class B or Class A emission requirements.  The testing performed looks at both the conducted (what coming out of the line cord) and radiated emissions.   Class B outlines allowable levels for residential application whereas Class A outlines the levels for non residential type of products.   The thinking is, in a residential enviroment you have other devices in close proximity to the radiated source so the emission levels from that source need to be lower.    More details can be found in the document I have attached.  In particular see page 3 which talks about the differences.   

https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Documents/bulletins/oet62/oet62rev.pdf

Joe-GMS   

Standards are nice, but they don't always help you. Part 15 standards (or any standards, for that matter) have to be viewed in terms of practicality and recourse. First, the tougher standards for residential equipment are geared toward electronics that is commonly found in the home, like television receivers, cordless phones and audio systems. As we are painfully aware, our radio communications equipment is orders of magnitude more sensitive and therefore more susceptible to interference.

Part 15 states that certified devices must accept interference and cannot cause interference. WA2SQQ nailed it: the burden of eliminating interference that may be caused falls on the operator of the interfering device, not on the supplier or manufacturer. If the device is operating within the applicable standards, then the supplier and manufacturer are off the hook and you have no recourse with them.

my guess it is the SMPS that's causing you grief. Surround your modem/switch with an RF cage and ground the cage. Allow for some ventilation by drilling vent holes. Wouldn't hurt to put some beads on the wiring but probably not necessary.

At Rattlesnake Island I have a fairly extensive network infrastructure, and the antennas are close to the the wires and the cottages so there's plenty of coupling!

When I first built this setup, there was an  S9 "hiss" in the background on 75 meters.  Normally the background was near 0.  So, pretty strong.  When I transmitted, the DSL line would lose synch.  We have a DSL line here (1.5 megabits) as well as a connection to the mainland using 2.4gHz with good, long range equipment at each end.

There were problems with RFI coming from what seemed like everything that was hooked up!

I ended running EVERY line in and out of any device and/or in and out of EVERY power supply through cores with as many turns as possible.  I didn't necessarily use type 43.  In fact, the best filters here are made of some pretty high perm material that I use for pulse transformers in off-line PWM modulators.

Anyway, all this to say the power supplies are part of the problem and the devices themselves are the other half.  It really is possible to quiet things down but it does take a lot of cores.  I probably have 20 [pretty big - like 3 inchers] cores total here, just dedicated to filtering network and phone devices.

Good luck with it!  The problem is solvable.

I have these running next to my backyard.  You can see one leg of the 40 meter delta in the picture.  My 75 meters is wiped out also by S9 noise, and I attribute it to the power lines.  40 meters is fine though.

Jon
KA1TDQ

As a thought experiment only and not to be realized in this brane for a myriad of reasons:

Everyone of those towers is grounded.
A wire in quarter wave increments of your favorite freq., incorporating velocity factor, say at 3885 out to the base of one might be interesting.

Ah, yes. A total east-west strap!

Jon

This inspired me to eliminate the remainder of the noise generated by digital devices at Rattlesnake Island.  I still had to contend with an S-5 constant background hiss/hash.

I ended up filtering the ethernet cables to 2 devices; the power supply outputs of several others and the power supply lines to everything.  Now the noise doesn't move the S meter.  The filters are random windings of whatever cable needs to be quieted down, through fairly high perm torroids.

Worked great!  It's nice to have the quiet background back again.  I've been lazy for a couple of years about fixing this problem.  Now it's done !