Death knell for landlines - RANT

[wcampbell47]

Don't know if anyone has mentioned it but you can buy cell phone boosters. They have an outdoor antenna, an indoor antenna, and a little electronics box. You have to buy the right one for your service provider. I went from 2 bars to 6 bars in the house. Bought it on Ebay for about 60 bucks.

Not everyone has the success you experienced with an inexpensive booster, especially ones geared only for your provider. A good booster that can handle signals from any carrier is not cheap.

 

[newbury]

Let's compare....... with an olde analog Cu line as long as you can make it to the phone, you could dial 911 and expect help to arrive. Whether or not the grid is up.

With the power out:

1) you need to have known to arrange ahead of time for the the backup D cell pack for fibre,

AND

2) you need to have healthy batteries in place,

AND

3) you have to manually turn it on.

This is progress ? It's a good thing we aren't talking about a critical communication tool....

Rgds, D.

You left out it's only expected to be able to run 20 hours on 12 Dcell batteries, so you better have a backup set.

 

[k0ua]

You left out it's only expected to be able to run 20 hours on 12 Dcell batteries, so you better have a backup set.

But the old telephone Central Offices have a huge bank of Lead Acid batteries that will hold up the equipment for a couple of days, and will have a diesel generator too. Which may or may not start, depending on how well maintained . And that nice copper wire will extend that -48 volts out to the field. Glass fiber does not conduct electricity. It sure does conduct data over a laser beam, real fast too!

Look, we have made our choices, we are not interested much in POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). What we want is high speed data to our homes and business's. If you want POTS over the fiber, then back the electronics up at the far end yourself. What I am saying is "quit yer bitchin" You are getting exactly what you have asked for.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

You left out it's only expected to be able to run 20 hours on 12 Dcell batteries, so you better have a backup set.

That problem can be dealt with quite easily with a UPS. Get a cheap one and replace the tiny battery inside it with a tractor battery and it'd last a week. If my phone company offered to move me from copper to fiber I'd be on it like a rooster on a June bug. It would mean I'd have to reopen a 1/4 mile trench from the street to the house, but it would give me an alternative to satellite Internet that was faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

 

[ultrarunner]

Somewhere there is a story about off grid with line telephone service using the line voltage to charge a battery for lights...

The first time I heard the phone ring in the middle of nowhere... it sure was a surprise at the rustic camp with POYS service

 

[k0ua]

Somewhere there is a story about off grid with line telephone service using the line voltage to charge a battery for lights...

The first time I heard the phone ring in the middle of nowhere... it sure was a surprise at the rustic camp with POYS service

I suppose you could charge a battery and run an LED or two, but it would be a darn slow charge, because the line current is limited to around 20 milliamps and the -48 volts will drop to around -5 or less depending on the length of the loop. So yes possible, but not practical for much real world lighting. Keep on mind when you pull loop current on the telephone loop, you are "off hook". So callers would get a busy signal all the time.. "hey sorry about the continuous busy signal, I was charging my batteries".:laughing: Hey, I know get a "teenager line" and double your charging current!

 

[PILOON]

Where we live they wired fiber optic up to 1 Km from us (under a gov't grant) and then back to wire and poles from there to serve last 75 homes (all which are side by side in about 2 kms.)
Whenever there is a power outage they need to bring a truck so that he can recharge the batteries to power the land lines as they do not have a standby gen set as part of that installation.
Hence power outage equals no communications so you better be in good health as no 911.
Making matters worst is that cellphone coverage is very very spotty due to surrounding hills.
They claimed that it would take $200k to convert hence we get old modem only slow internet via bell.
Fortunately one ambitious entrepreneur set up a wireless internet network for our needs and that at moderate pricing.
Other than a few rare occurrences his system is excellent. (a frequent problem was squirrels chewing his power cables, LOL)
Other hitch seems to be folks that download hi deff films and using bandwidth, especially on Sundays.

 

[newbury]

But the old telephone Central Offices have a huge bank of Lead Acid batteries that will hold up the equipment for a couple of days, and will have a diesel generator too. Which may or may not start, depending on how well maintained . And that nice copper wire will extend that -48 volts out to the field. Glass fiber does not conduct electricity. It sure does conduct data over a laser beam, real fast too!

Look, we have made our choices, we are not interested much in POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). What we want is high speed data to our homes and business's. If you want POTS over the fiber, then back the electronics up at the far end yourself. What I am saying is "quit yer bitchin" You are getting exactly what you have asked for.

I don't want "POTS over fiber", but the phone company should have the intelligence to offer a solution, such as an UPS, to plug into their equipment if they wish to keep customers. Many, if not most, of the installs in my neighborhood have the phone line coming into the basement. Many of these houses are owned by senior citizens who will find it a pain to go down into the basement to "turn on the phone".
As it is if I rig up my own UPS and anything goes wrong I'm responsible for my equipment AND their equipment.

With management thinking like that the fiber will be black fiber, as other have mentioned it's getting to be about $50 a month, mostly in add on charges for something we choose to use perhaps twice a day at the most. And switching to cellular is extremely easy.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

when I moved here internet was your 56k dialup modem, so it didn't matter where I moved. Lots have changed since then.

 

[k0ua]

Hopefully in your area the cell sites will have battery backup and a generator also at the site.

This summer at the Windstream central office where I worked, a huge transformer blew up in the center of town, and the Central office lost power. This is a fair sized CO and also had a Verizon cell site inside of it too.
Of course everything continued to work phone and cell site wise due to the huge -48 volt battery bank. BUT the stinking generator started and ran for a minute and died. I think the fuel had algae in it or something. Our office lights were out as the generator was not running, so after a few hours when it was determined that the power would be out for hours and techs came and tore into the diesel and could not make it run right away, we were sent home.

I never found out for sure what what was wrong with the diesel, but I know the CO never dropped, just kept on running on batteries. Thankfully those are periodically checked and serviced. This was on a Friday, and when I came back on Monday, all was well.

But as more and more people switch to cell phones, I expect to see less and less money put towards outside plant maintenance. (cable,poles, and outside equipment)