AT&T signals end of copper land line service

[K6JEK]

What's a telephone?

Most of the younger generation only have cell phones.
Some only watch TV via the Internet, no cable. My son for example.
All they want is a good Internet connection.
If it weren't for the blackout rules on Internet sports sites like MLB.com, that's all I'd want too, my smart phone and a good Internet connection

(And my ham antennas up a lot higher and some stinking sun spots)

[Steve - K4HX]

No different than your water, gas and electricity. What's your point?

"Mother Bell" and "Ma Bell's" died in 1984 along with their monopoly. Now they're just a big company trying to keep their feet above water.

How many choices do you have when it comes to getting a phone installed in your home? Never mind cellular: how many "wired" companies are available to you? More to the point, how many are available to your boss when he needs lines for his business? The vast majority of business phone lines are still wired and still provided by the ILEC in your area, and they are a monopoly in all but name.

Bill, W1AC

[W4EWH]

No different than your water, gas and electricity. What's your point?

"Mother Bell" and "Ma Bell's" died in 1984 along with their monopoly. Now they're just a big company trying to keep their feet above water.

How many choices do you have when it comes to getting a phone installed in your home? Never mind cellular: how many "wired" companies are available to you? More to the point, how many are available to your boss when he needs lines for his business? The vast majority of business phone lines are still wired and still provided by the ILEC in your area, and they are a monopoly in all but name.

My point is the same one you just made: there is no difference between my water, or gas, or electric service and the choice I have for dial tone: there are other options which are available, but not practical.

In the case of dial tone, my point is that I don't think the monopoly disappeared, as WA2CWA contends. The labels may have changed, but there's still no meaningful choice available to landline customers.

My water is from town wells, so my choice there is to pay the town or cart my own. Not much of a choice, but still there: rearranging my pipes to have a greywater supply for toilets and to collect & filter rainwater for drinking would cost a lot, but I know it has been done and that I could do it if the town water got too expensive.

My gas is from the local utility. I could heat my home with wood or coal if I wanted to. Again, not much of a choice, but still doable, and my son is staying in a wood-heated home right now. So, again, I know I could do that if I chose.

My electricity comes from National Grid, and although there are various bulk resellers competing for my attention, their rates are all comparable, so there's little advantage in switching. I could, however, do without if I chose to do so, and I know a family that does: they have solar arrays and a backup generator and no connection to the grid. It could be done if I chose to do it.

There is no company available to provide POTS service to my home other than the ILEC, which is Verizon in my area. I don't consider Comcast to be a viable alternative: their rates are exorbitant, their service (at least when I used it some year ago) was abysmal, and the "cable modem" only has backup power for a few hours during a power failure.

We could debate, at great length, the question of whether cellular is a viable alternative to POTS service. For some residential users, the prices may have dropped to a point where pre-payed phones are affordable by lower income consumers, but they will never be at the "Lifeline" rates my state PUC mandates for elderly, infirm, and handicapped consumers, and even if they were, those rates don't include Internet access ("tethering" doesn't count, given the bandwidth limits and the high costs of plans that allow it).

Anyway, the choices that residential customers have are not the issue: for a business user, there's only one meaningful choice, and that's the ILEC.  A corporate manager isn't likely to pay his employees to cart water, to tend a fire, or to maintain a solar array, and he won't consider exotic and unreliable alternatives to the wired phone network either. It's just not a viable option given the costs of paying his workers, vs. the potential discounts.

Mother Bell didn't die: she just changed her dress and learned a new dance.

YMMV.

Bill, W1AC

[W4AAB]

Absolutely, Bill. AT&T went out and bought back BellSouth down here. I have Verizon cell. I just could see paying $80.00 for landline when I can get cell for $55. Of course, there are dead spots even here on the ridge, but when I finish paying off the place, I hope to have some put a cell tower up here.
                                                   Joe W4AAB

[Steve - K4HX]

OK. So we've established that there is little or no choice in water and electricity. So what? This is nothing new. Monopolies are legal when the government declares them so. They are not monopolies when the government declares so. The government has declared that Ma Bell is no longer a monopoly. Continued rants against Ma Bell equate to peeing in the ocean. The reality is that there is more choice in phone service now than ever before.

[W9GT]

There is no question that copper pairs are an expensive and antiquated way to provide plain old telephone service these days.  The reliability factor of twisted pairs is/was pretty good, however, and even though fiber is an excellent replacement for the copper cables, it has considerable vulnerability.  There is still a lot of aerial fiber out there and when you lose a big fiber cable as a result of a car hitting a pole or a tree limb crashing through a cable, you lose a lot of traffic. Buried fiber is great, but even it has its limitations and occasionally gets dug-up or cut by contractors.  Fiber sure can provide a lot of bandwidth capacity and that is what makes it really attractive.

As for wireless service, the dirty little secret is that probably over 90% of the wireless network is land-line, whether it is copper or fiber.  Only the last link from the cell site to the mobile is radio.  Of course there may be a few microwave links along the way providing T-1s or DS-3 service to cell sites, but most of those links are land-line copper or fiber.  It is also interesting to note the traffic limitations of the cellular/wireless network.  When there is a storm or other disaster that knocks out land line services, not only are the cell sites cut-off from the network, but the wireless network itself goes down because it can't handle the traffic load of everyone trying to access circuits at the same time.  This is true also with the old copper and switch network as well, but when that service is down, people may expect that wireless will always be there and that is just not the case.  Ask the folks who have experienced recent disasters such as hurricanes and wide spread damage from tornadoes, etc.

Oh well, when all else fails, call on Amateur Radio (or resort to smoke signals).

As with the demise of all older technology, there is a certain sadness and nostalgia associated with the change, but progress is progress.
I spent 43 years in the telecommunications industry and I participated in the introduction of fiber and wireless.  I'm sure that the problems associated with the switch-over to fiber will eventually be eliminated or greatly reduced.

73,  Jack, W9GT

[Steve - K4HX]

Yes, fiber rules. PTP air links for backhaul are becoming more and more prevalent. WiMax and other Ethernet via RF technologies are growing like crazy. Many companies are producing microwave backhaul with 100 Mbps capacity and a few are now at 1 Gbps. Lots of stuff going on in the 60-80 GHz range, not to mention 6, 11 and 23 GHz.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

 This is true also with the old copper and switch network as well, but when that service is down, people may expect that wireless will always be there and that is just not the case.  Ask the folks who have experienced recent disasters such as hurricanes and wide spread damage from tornadoes, etc.

Actually, in our area during the Sandy hurricane and its aftermath, my cell phone was the only working communication tool other then listening to the radio.

As with the demise of all older technology, there is a certain sadness and nostalgia associated with the change, but progress is progress.
I spent 43 years in the telecommunications industry and I participated in the introduction of fiber and wireless.  I'm sure that the problems associated with the switch-over to fiber will eventually be eliminated or greatly reduced.

73,  Jack, W9GT

Since the majority of my entire working career was with Bell Labs, AT&T, and Lucent, I've seen and/or was involved in many telecommunications changes, advances, innovations, etc. over the years. Thinking back, I've never viewed change with any sadness.

"Ma Bell" and her "System" passed on in 1984.

[W3NE]

All comments here have been interesting.  In the mid-'eighties I was with a group of engineers from ABC at a conference with AT&T engineers and executives where we discussed distribution of premium pay-TV programming direct to homes by fiber in competition with cable companies. AT&T told us that even though they had financial resources then to begin conversion to fiber distribution, they were adamant that copper would remain indefinitely on the last link (pole-to-house) because of their (then) absolute reliance on a self-powered system. The rechargeable battery concept was totally rejected, and they would not consider running copper with fiber together on the last link - end of story. That philosophy shows the importance once attached to a self-powered telephone system that obviously had to change with new circumstances.

What disrturbs me far more than trivialities of telephone power is our nation's dependence on possibly vulnerable satellites for marine and business communications and, above all, strategic military operations.

[Steve - K4HX]

Why?

What disrturbs me far more than trivalities of telephone power is our nation's dependence on possibly vulnerable satellites for marine and business communications and, above all, strategic military operations.

[W3NE]

The answer is, or should be, self-evident.

In any case the issue is off topic and I apologize for raising it.

[W4EWH]

As with the demise of all older technology, there is a certain sadness and nostalgia associated with the change, but progress is progress.

I once had a debate with Nicholas Negroponte, the author of The Negroponte Switch, which predicted that all wireless communicaiton would convert to wireless, vice versa. I argued that geostationary satellites should be considered a special case of "wired" communication, but the author of "Being Digital" demurred without forcing me to admit how silly I was.

It's only natural to cling to the things we grew up with: I thought the #5 crossbar was the best telephone switch ever, and I thought the #1 ESS was a kludge that came off the drawing board too quickly. I, however, am not a switch designer, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I'm not so sure, however, that "progress" is always, well, progress. Many of the "advances" that have occurred in the phone network are actually (IMNSHO) counter-productive, intrusive steps backwards.

I guess I am getting old. 

73,

Bill, W1AC

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Many of the "advances" that have occurred in the phone network are actually (IMNSHO) counter-productive, intrusive steps backwards.

73,
Bill, W1AC

What advances?

[Steve - K4HX]

Not looking for an argument. I was genuinely curious. All comms systems come with risk. Was wondering why you found the satcom risk level unacceptable.

The answer is, or should be, self-evident.

In any case the issue is off topic and I apologize for raising it.

[W3NE]

I am disturbed by total reliance on satellites; there is a difference between that and finding it "unacceptable" as mis-stated. Backhaul was mentioned earlier. Broadcasters use redundancy in backhauls just as there is redundancy in many parts of the broadcast system for reliability of service. There is financial incentive for that. National security is at risk for our growing dependence solely on satellites, however, and that is disturbing.

This is a strange conversation for December 7.

[Steve - K4HX]

Good enough. I have not seen anything close to total reliance on satcom, most especially in the national security arena. And the military conducts a huge amount of their comms, maybe the bulk on the Internet. It would seem the hacker threat there exceeds any threat to satcom. Of course the internet is much more fault tolerant than satcom, so who knows.