AT&T wants to get rid of landline telephones

[wdwfan16]

This is a great move. About 6% of AT&T landline customers drop their landline each year.

 

[happygirl]

I think this is a bad idea. I know several elderly people who would never get a cell phone.

 

[MIGrandma]

I would love to get rid of our landline (Verizon and AT&T). I hate paying $50+ per month just to have the landline. But, DH needs it for the fax machine for his job.

I would be thrilled to just have our cell phones. DH uses his a lot, but I rarely talk on mine. My mode of keeping in touch is e-mail or Facebook.

 

[Duckfan-in-Chicago]

A guy I work with just got an e-mail yesterday that he qualifies for U-verse so I'll know pretty quickly how they're doing this in this area-he's in Chicago too.

For sure AT&T is pulling new fiber in the alleys and back yards. According to an article in 2007 when they first announced this upgrade, they were going to use existing copper inside the homes saying this was sufficient for the new technology. This guy is under the impression though that they are pulling new fiber drops into every home.

 

[bicker]

I think this is a bad idea. I know several elderly people who would never get a cell phone.

For sure AT&T is pulling new fiber in the alleys and back yards.

Reiterating what FireDancer outlined: This change has nothing to do with people switching to cellular or even whether service rides on copper versus fiber.

 

[MrsPete]

I know more and more people who are dropping their house phones -- it's a sensible choice. Of course, before this becomes "standard" for everyone everywhere, the phone company's technology's going to have to make it possible for everyone everywhere to get good reception all the time.

However, I've never heard of ANY BUSINESS doing away with its landlines, and the phone companies are going to continue to provide services to them! Many businesses still need elaborate phone set-ups that allow for a receptionist who can answer/transfer calls, etc. Cell phones -- at least with today's technology -- are set up for the needs of an individual, not a business.

Years ago there was a law that required phone companies to provide affordable phones to individuals, to homeowners. They were not required to make phones affordable for businesses. I wonder if eventually this'll turn around a bit so that phone companies are required to provide affordable CELL PHONES to individuals, but businesses and people who still want/need landlines will have to pay through the nose.

 

[bicker]

Years ago there was a law that required phone companies to provide affordable phones to individuals, to homeowners.

POTS is rate-regulated, even today. What is interesting, though, is that I do not believe that rate-regulation applies to VoIP -- does anyone know?

I wonder if eventually this'll turn around a bit so that phone companies are required to provide affordable CELL PHONES to individuals, but businesses and people who still want/need landlines will have to pay through the nose.

Again, this article has nothing to do with cell phones.

 

[sue1013]

I know more and more people who are dropping their house phones -- it's a sensible choice. Of course, before this becomes "standard" for everyone everywhere, the phone company's technology's going to have to make it possible for everyone everywhere to get good reception all the time.

However, I've never heard of ANY BUSINESS doing away with its landlines, and the phone companies are going to continue to provide services to them! Many businesses still need elaborate phone set-ups that allow for a receptionist who can answer/transfer calls, etc. Cell phones -- at least with today's technology -- are set up for the needs of an individual, not a business.

I know a few people that work for AT&T in the Business VOIP set up. They are very, very busy. I think you are not reading it does not mean all cell phones and nothing else.

 

[1957]

We have to have a land-line, as it is connected to our security system (which came with the place when I bought it). I only pay the absolute minimum (no long-distance, caller ID, voicemail, etc.). Use the cell phone exclusively. We tend to have a lot of power outages and tower outages in our area, so I have a 30-year old Princess corded phone. It used to be white, but now it is sort of a brownish/yellowish/grayish color. A few years ago, we had some severe tornado damage near our area, and no power or tower for about four days, so I had neighbors streaming in to use this antiquated phone!

 

[FireDancer]

OK, the article is not (nor is AT&T suggesting) going to a cellular only system. They are talking about an underlying technology change and nothing more. This change is both technology and financially (as bicker pointed out) driven.

How exactly AT&T or any other carrier carries out this change is anyone's guess as it can be done in many ways. It could be that they run fiber to every curb, to every neighborhood node, or just installs a new backbone. In all of these scenarios it is likely (at least in the foreseeable future) that part of the copper PSTN backbone can be reused.

If you have vonage service at your home you are sending voice data out of your house in IP packets. If the person you are calling has a standard land line telephone they can still hear you, right? Well, that is because somewhere along the way that VoIP packet is being converted to a copper 2-wire analog circuit and sent to the person you are calling. At it's most basic description what AT&T would like to do is change where and how often this is happening.

None of this isn't saying that wireless technology can't be used as part of this backbone. This doesn't mean cellular phones but wireless technology. Just like it doesn't matter if that voice call comes out over a copper wire or fiber it also doesn't matter if it comes out over wire or wireless. This is not the same as using a cellphone. It would be using wireless technology to expand the reach of landline. Imagine that you are in a rural area and all you have now is dial up. Running fiber out to rural Nevada or Wyoming is cost prohibitive but running fiber in a small neighborhood and then using wireless to bridge the gap or set up a relay back to the telco is possible. As LTE and competing technologies advance the home phone can become wireless in a very different way than the cellular phone is. Again, this is not in anyway replacing home phones with cellular, it is merely using a wireless medium to transmit the call. It is very different.

Much of my theory comes from other articles and from being in the industry so this isn't necessarily all in the quoted article. Getting rid of the PSTN or POTS line has no more to do with getting rid of land line telephones than getting rid of ponies got rid of the post office.

 

[honugirl]

I guess my question is, if they go to more wireless technology, what happens in a disaster? The airwaves have proven to be very difficult, if not impossible to use. The cell phone grids have crashed time and time again. In my emergency training we were told to only text with our cellphones because it takes up less bandwidth.

How will wireless phone service work with a power interruption? I imagine it needs a power source to continue transmitting.

Right now with my wired phone I have service just about no matter what (barring a cut cable). Power or no power, I have phone service. For some of us, this is imperative. If they're going to change the system, I want assurance that no matter what I will be able to have phone service if I just plug my phone into the wall.

 

[wdw4us2]

I agree with what the previous posters have said about the unreliability of cell technology during emergencies/disasters.

Back in 2004 when we were slammed with two hurricanes in three weeks (Frances & Jeanne) it was impossible to get a call through on a cell phone. If, by some miracle, the call went through it was dropped in a matter of 30 seconds. Our landline worked fine through both storms and the aftermath which is why we still have it even though we have cell phones, too.

 

[FireDancer]

I guess my question is, if they go to more wireless technology, what happens in a disaster? The airwaves have proven to be very difficult, if not impossible to use. The cell phone grids have crashed time and time again. In my emergency training we were told to only text with our cellphones because it takes up less bandwidth.

How will wireless phone service work with a power interruption? I imagine it needs a power source to continue transmitting.

Right now with my wired phone I have service just about no matter what (barring a cut cable). Power or no power, I have phone service. For some of us, this is imperative. If they're going to change the system, I want assurance that no matter what I will be able to have phone service if I just plug my phone into the wall.

There would never be a guarantee that there would be service just like there is no guarantee now. Land lines have many points of failure. It isn't just a cut line but a power outage can cause a service disruption if it happens at the right place. A call across the country or to Europe has to be multiplexed and that requires power. In many ways using an Internet based backbone would bring with it redundancy and the ability to route around broken connections even better than the current system does.

If emergency services are in the town where you live and the wireless bridging is done to get back to the closest large city for high speed reasons the call would be routed before ever even becoming wireless. If the city you live in now has cable run to it I doubt it will be dug up. Any city using a wireless relay would probably still use the existing copper as a fail safe. Changing the way the call is handled wouldn't mean the call couldn't be sent over the copper that is already there. It just means that instead of a wire carrying analog voice traffic it would carry digital voice traffic in the form of IP, MPLS, or ATM packets. The use of wireless would be more a means of expanding the current system then replacing it in this regard.

I think the use of 4th generation wireless will also be used to get phones to places where none exist today. If none exist today they can't make any calls so even if the new system is prone to outages it would be less than the 100% outage they experience by having no service at all.

If done right using the new technology will minimize the failure points because the protocols used come with much more robust fail over solutions the the PSTN. The areas of vulnerability for using wireless as part of a communication backbone are not the same as the cellular system. It is hard to really communicate everything here as this topic was an entire semester class for me in college. Just keep in mind that the reporting done my the mainstream media will be at best incomplete and most likely a misrepresentation of the facts in a way to generate hysteria. There are very smart engineers working on the communication in this country and world if for no other reason than our economy depends on a reliable communication infrastructure and money talks.

I agree with what the previous posters have said about the unreliability of cell technology during emergencies/disasters.

Back in 2004 when we were slammed with two hurricanes in three weeks (Frances & Jeanne) it was impossible to get a call through on a cell phone. If, by some miracle, the call went through it was dropped in a matter of 30 seconds. Our landline worked fine through both storms and the aftermath which is why we still have it even though we have cell phones, too.

Hopefuly some of your concerns were addressed in my posting above. Cellular technology is a subset of wireless and comes with a different set of failure points.

I was the director of I.T. for a company based in Palm Harbor FL during the hurricane season of 2004. When Jeanne came through we lost all data and voice to the enterprise so we could not make even land line calls. Our data provider had their wireless data service restored hours after the storm and we used them to relay our calls out. They were up before our phone service was restored. The office that was effected used only POTs lines on the PSTN and those were the last to come up.

Again, this was not the cellular system but a dedicated wireless data network. The lines were vulnerable all along the way and when cut the exact cut had to be found. A wireless relay is only vulnerable at 2 locations (the transmitter and receiver) so there is a trade off.

The most important thing to remember is that cellular is only a subset of wireless. Often times the issue you spoke about is not connection based but capacity based and the wireless backbone would be much much much more scalable than the cellular network, at least in the way I envision it and technology analysts talk about it.

 

[WebmasterAlex]

I know more and more people who are dropping their house phones -- it's a sensible choice. Of course, before this becomes "standard" for everyone everywhere, the phone company's technology's going to have to make it possible for everyone everywhere to get good reception all the time.

However, I've never heard of ANY BUSINESS doing away with its landlines, and the phone companies are going to continue to provide services to them! Many businesses still need elaborate phone set-ups that allow for a receptionist who can answer/transfer calls, etc. Cell phones -- at least with today's technology -- are set up for the needs of an individual, not a business.

I know a few people that work for AT&T in the Business VOIP set up. They are very, very busy. I think you are not reading it does not mean all cell phones and nothing else.

Actually a lot of business's have, we have where I work, all our phone lines go out over our T1 data lines. It doesn't mean everyone still doesn't have a phone on their desk.
What they are talking about getting rid of is the copper lines that go from the phone to the house. The alternatives are VOIP over cable, like comcast or time warner, Fiber Optic, like FIOS or wireless service to a tower as exists in some areas. From a user point of view there's not going to be a huge difference. I do wonder about reliability, lets face it plain old telephone service is ROCK solid, internet connections not so much.
I think once this gets rolling it will happen a lot faster than everyone thinks. supporting the old POTS infrastructure is hugely expensive

 

[bicker]

I guess my question is, if they go to more wireless technology, what happens in a disaster?

Nothing different from today, except you'd just pick up your VoIP or other broadband Internet-based phone line instead of a POTS phone line. You wouldn't even notice the difference.

How will wireless phone service work with a power interruption?

No different from today.

If they're going to change the system, I want assurance that no matter what I will be able to have phone service if I just plug my phone into the wall.

I think you misunderstood the article; you could still have a telephone that you plug into the wall.

 

[WebmasterAlex]

I would love to get rid of our landline (Verizon and AT&T). I hate paying $50+ per month just to have the landline. But, DH needs it for the fax machine for his job.

I would be thrilled to just have our cell phones. DH uses his a lot, but I rarely talk on mine. My mode of keeping in touch is e-mail or Facebook.

You don't need a line just for fax, there are plenty of online fax services, all you need is a scanner to send faxes

 

[WebmasterAlex]

Nothing different from today, except you'd just pick up your VoIP or other broadband Internet-based phone line instead of a POTS phone line. You wouldn't even notice the difference.

No different from today.

I think you misunderstood the article; you could still have a telephone that you plug into the wall.

I'm not sure I totally agree with this. The theory is correct but the POTS service we have today is ridiculously reliable. Very few internet connections are as solid. A lot of people posting on this thread probably are off of POTS lines already, if you have comcast triple play or FIOS and you use that for your phone your POTS service is already gone. I have not found those VOIP service to be quite as reliable.

 

[FireDancer]

You don't need a line just for fax, there are plenty of online fax services, all you need is a scanner to send faxes

I am surprised how many people still use standard fax. Here at work we used to have people in the remote offices fax to corporate all day until we installed a scan/email solution that looked to the end user as a fax.

All a fax really does is send an image over a PSTN line as analog data. The fax could be treated the exact same as email by the phone system and even if it is still sent to a fax machine instead of an email client it would be transmitted the same.

I promise it will end up being much less apocalyptic than it seems. Think the way Y2K turned out as opposed to the way Y2K was envisioned.

 

[bicker]

I'm not sure I totally agree with this. The theory is correct but the POTS service we have today is ridiculously reliable. Very few internet connections are as solid.

And there is not going to be the impetus to make broadband ubiquitously available and rock-solid reliable until it is the standard. That's pretty-much exactly what AT&T said in its input to the FCC.

A lot of people posting on this thread probably are off of POTS lines already, if you have comcast triple play or FIOS and you use that for your phone your POTS service is already gone. I have not found those VOIP service to be quite as reliable.

VoIP, like Vonage, is quite a bit from what FiOS offers here in Burlington. FiOS provides me POTS, plain-and-simple, the only difference is my connection from ONT to CO, which is fiber instead of copper. Otherwise, in every way, it is POTS. The only weaker point of the whole system is that, within my home, I have to provide power to my telephones (and they installed a humongous UPS to address that issue).

 

[FireDancer]

The only weaker point of the whole system is that, within my home, I have to provide power to my telephones (and they installed a humongous UPS to address that issue).

This is also a very large weakness in the current cellular set up. If the backbone was partially wireless the phone in the home would be the same one you use today and would require not power. The first area of power reliance would be the bridge that takes the calls and makes them wireless. This is the same failure point now in part of the POTS system when the call is multiplexed and sent over fiber. These stations have very robust power backups and also have way more failovers than the cellular handset you are holding or the VoIP phone you have in your house.

I think before the Internet we think of today is merged with the Internet that carries calls as IP they will be separate/segregated systems. AT&T already has a separate segregated IP backbone for calls only. This isn't to say the systems can't exchange information but the use of a segregated voice backbone will get rid of a lot of the unreliability now that a TCP/IP packet carrying a your call has to compete on the same level as a TCP/IP packet carrying the PTP traffic of your neighbor downloading a movie.