1984-earlier telephones,MA bell era...

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We used to have two landlines. The one with the DSL came out of the Remote Terminal. The original one came out of the CO about 3.5 miles away. When ordering a new line they will by default connect to the CO and not the RT.

In regards to voice quality, a properly done VoIP setup sounds just as good if not better than POTS service. POTS used G.711 and VoIP typically uses that by default as well, so VQ theoretically should be identical and it usually is. I have all the analog phones plugged into an ATA, one that I can adjust all the electrical parameters on and have set it to the same specs the PSTN ran on and have verified with a simple meter that it's working like it should. I even adjusted the receive and transmit volume on the ATA to be identical to the typical POTS line. Most ATA's by default come with the tx/rx cranked way up causing distortion. I am as close to a true landline as I can get on my cheap Obi100 ATA without having an actual landline.
The internet aspect of VoIP is the real tricky part, the public internet was never designed to carry time sensitive live voice packets and can be very fickle about transmitting them without major flaw. It is key to have a decent QoS setup on the home router to at least ensure the VoIP quality isn't being trashed by other data using applications running on the LAN. Once it gets past the router and onto the public internet, anything goes.

If you have cable VoIP or telephone company VoIP like AT&T Uverse voice, it is the same SIP protocol as any other VoIP provider but the traffic stays exclusively on their network where they have full control over it, and when it has to leave their network it travels over the PSTN where voice traffic has its own dedicated pathway. So none of the potential issues one may suffer by using standalone VoIP is an issue with these cable/phone company services.

As for Ooma, it's not the best quality in my experience. They don't use the G.711 codec by default, they use a more compressed codec called iLBC. My experience with it has not been so great. You may contact them and have them lock your device to G.711 (which improved things for me a good bit) by following the steps in the link below. I use an excellent VoIP provider, Callcentric, with my ATA and it works very good. Another VoIP provider that will provide an ATA with their service is VoIPo, it is plug and play. (Callcentric requires you provide and setup your own device).
Also, my best sounding phone is an IP phone.

http://https//dev-www.ooma.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=20380
 
early 1960s GTE EL dialight

there is a ~early 1960s GTE rotary model that had an electroluminescent panel lit dial (blue/green glow) one of those would be nice addition to the collection :)
 
VoIP - get a good phone!

VoIP *done right* is great!

A lot of your experiences of VoIP seem to be badly setup, cheap systems with tons of compression..

I've a Gigaset VoIP DECT phone with several handsets as my "daily driver" and a Cisco desk phone that cost over €200 as I have a home office.

(I also still have an old Nortel Harmony phone from the 1980s plugged in too.)

The Gigaset devices and the Cisco desk phone are as good as any analogue or ISDN phone I've ever encountered. They are extremely solid pieces of kit and sound very good.

You have to remember that before they opened the markets and we used to rent phones from the telephone company, they were seriously well built and expensive pieces of kit that were designed to last for decades and be maintained by the phone co. They had metal chassis and heavy plastic or Bakelite parts, removable and replaceable capsule speakers and mics, modular handset, repairable dial / button modules etc etc ... they probably cost as much as a modern iPhone on the 1960s and the phone co easily made it back with rental fees and very expensive calls compared to today.

Since the markets opened and you bought your phone at the nearest supermarket, they're made for a fraction of the price and they very much feel that way. They're very simple devices (and always were) but they're so simple they've ended up being made very poorly.

I have a small business and work with a few people and we use a hosted PBX service. It gives us the ability to transfer calls between each other (and also to mobiles and actually any number in the world) with all the slick professionalism (including proper music on hold) as we would have had with a physical PBX in an office.

I can configure hunt groups, assign different incoming and outgoing numbers (including in other cities) to any extension or group of extensions. It has umpteen different voicemail options, including speech to text. I can send and receive faxes using email without any extra software which is handy for the very, very rare occasion that someone asks for something by fax.

On top of that it now fully integrated with mobile phones.

You can also use the service from any decent internet connection almost anywhere.

When I'm using it in the office is has proper QoS and uses G.711 sounds as good as ISDN voice.

You’re likely already using VoIP as part of the backhaul of your classic landline anyway. A lot of networks are already using VoIP based trunks and core switching. Even if you’re still using an old Class 5 central office switch, it’s very possible that’s talking over IP networks back to a soft switch.

Whether you’re using TDM and ATM or VoIP, the quality should be very similar. If it’s some crappy equipment linking together using bad quality internet connections, it will sound awful. That’s nothing to do with the technology choice.
 
I had telephone service with AT&T for 43 years and I finally got tired of their regular price increases and their terrible DSL service, so 2 years ago I switched to VOIP with Comcast. The service is 10 times better than AT&T ever was, especially the WiFi. And I don’t know how I ever got along without caller ID and all the other enhancements that are included with Comcast Voice. AT&T wanted extra for EVERYTHING, and I wasn’t willing to give one them dime more!

And since our home has prewired phone jacks in every room I wanted to still be able to use our old corded phones and not be limited to cordless only. So, I checked out several You Tube videos on how to set this up, and its really easy. I just opend up the old Bell System service box on the outside of the house and disconnected the AT&T telephone wire connections and posted a note inside that house is connected to VOIP and to NOT RECONNECT the AT&T service wires. Then I backfed the voice signal from the modem/router into the nearest phone jack inside the house, using a splitter so I could also use the jack for a corded phone. Now all the phone jacks have active voice signal. And since the modem/router has a battery backup, if the power goes out, as long as the cable signal is still active we have phone service.

I will never go back to AT&T POTS. They treated me like a customer that they didn’t care about after 43 years of loyal patronage, and 43 years of paying the bill, in full, every month, on time. They are dead to me!
Eddie[this post was last edited: 11/12/2017-13:09]
 
Well Eddie, I don't want to burst your bubble, but you played right into AT&T's hands.  I don't think there's a telco on the planet that wants to provide residential POTS, and that's nothing new.   Residential POTS has always been a losing proposition for them.  Business service has always been how telcos make their money. 

 

Since the advent of wireless service, they're all lobbying with the FCC and state PUCs to allow them to phase out residential POTS as we know it by not requiring them to maintain the copper network.  If they get their way -- and there's little reason to think they won't -- what we know today as POTS will be a wireless hybrid that doesn't require running copper from the CO.  If that level of deterioration in transmission quality doesn't make people switch to VOIP, I don't know what will.
 
Ralph, I did what was best for us at the time. Even if we had stayed with AT&T it wouldn’t have had any influence over their eventual dismantling of the POTS. For the last year that we had them they we constantly on my ass to switch to their Uverse, which I had no desire to do. And not only that, they wanted us to pay for all the installation fees to make this change that would have benefitted them. So, you haven’t burst my bubble, I’m perfectly happy with my decision and I’m not looking back. It is too bad though that a system that worked so well for over hundred years is going to be history.
Eddie
 
AT&T charge for Caller ID?!

I’m surprised at that, particularly as most of those services drive more traffic and thus generate money!

Caller ID and Call Waiting, 3 way calling and Call Forwarding and often voicemail are free here.

The telcos LOVE voicemail because it means more calls connect, no busy tones which means more revenue.

In some cases the mobile networks even make it difficult to remove voicemail for that reason.

The * # “PhonePlus” services were introduced here beginning in 1980 as COs moved to digital tech. Initially they charged both a quarterly rental and also a per use charge for setup / cancelling.

The full list of landline services active on POTS lines here: Call Waiting, Three Way Calling, Call Forwarding Unconditional and Conditional, Hotline (call a preprogrammed number by picking up the phone for 5 secs), Abbreviated Dialling. (Store numbers that you can speed dial wirh XX# like 01#. Alarm Clock Call, Call Return (1471) and Ring back (let’s you know when a busy number is free).
Caller ID is active by default.

You can also activate anonymous call rejection for free on a lot of plans.

The charging for services business model changed sometime in the very early 2000s they just began to turn everything on by default, particularly “Caller Display” (Caller ID) and call waiting.

A lot of the other services like abbreviated dialling and hotline aren’t reallly actively marketed anymore but are active.
 
Eddie, I used to get the same thing from AT&T when I had DSL.  They'd tell me U-Verse is available in my area, but it's not the real thing.  It's just VOIP bundled with Direct TV, and the same low speed internet access as I got with DSL, a whopping 1.2 MBPS.   Every time I'd ask them if I decided to go with U-Verse, would my internet speed be faster than 1.2 MBPS, the answer would be no, and invariably the rep had a tone of disbelief in their voice when they'd say so. 

 

Now that I no longer have DSL, I don't call their repair service for assistance anymore, and that was when they'd make their U-Verse pitch.  I switched to Comcast for high speed access and haven't looked back.  However, if AT&T leapfrogs into fiber service here, I might consider it, as from what I've heard it's much faster than Comcast's best offering and far more reliable.
 
AT&T DSL

was good at first when I switched over from dial-up about 15 years ago. We had to wait a long time in my neighborhood for DSL. However, service really went downhill after they started pushing U-Verse, which I didn't particularly want.

I worked part of the time out of a home office for my company and I relied on that DSL. It went down one day and I waited SEVENTEEN DAYS for it to get back up! Oh, they'd blame it on my house, they'd blame it on this and that, they blamed it on some switching up in Houston, etc. Finally, on the 17th day they discovered that some ass had flipped a switch in my city's local station and it came back on. I lived on my 'smart' phone for spreadsheets, wp, etc., for that time.

As soon as it came back up I switched to high speed Comcast. They are much, much more reliable than they were here in the 80's and 90's and when they go down it tends to get back up within a few hours.

AT&T has an awful reputation in the city where I live, I know so many like me who left due to poor service and their tendency to nag the crap out of the customers. I still get their flyers for U-Verse in snail mail...
 
Regulated Service

POTS is a Regulated Service and has a lot of taxes and regulations associated with it. My ATT bill includes $7.10 in taxes per month. Until recently my cell bill had no taxes but finally added $3.45 per month. I think that VOIP still avoids some of the taxes. Probably by the time I finally get VOIP the taxes will be there and it will not be any cheaper. It is good to hear that sound quality is possible with the system. I know it is possible with cell service also. I just think customers have not demanded it. It is so nice to be out of your home and be able to get any phone service that most of us didn't care about the voice quality.

I think there is some rule that all phone services must connect to receive a call for free. Except cell which charges for those minutes. So if you are calling using a VOIP you will be connected to all phones. With the regulated system all those charges were included if everyone participated. When all POTS regulated services are gone, the ones left will have to share the cost to run everything. Just seems that the copper lines were expensive to keep up but so is the whole internet, if not more so.
 
My sister and a friend of mine both had AT&T U-Verse and everytime I spoke with either of them on the phone the reception was terrible. And they both had problems with repeated outages, from what I could tell I believe these outages were mostly due to the inferior quality of the U-Verse equipment installed in their homes. And they both had LONG waits for someone from AT&T to get out to repair the problems.

Since I switched to Comcast, anytime I needed a tech, which has been twice, they were out the next day. And I’ve received generous credits on our acct. twice when there were some problems with the X-1 box. Comcast usually answers their phone right away and I can reach a human being with a whole lot less hassle than AT&T, and I always end up with a satisfactory resolution to whatever problem I may be having. Sure, Comcast isn’t perfect, these days perfection from any service provider is almost unknown, but they sure are a whole lot better than AT&T.

And it pains me to have to feel this way about AT&T. I worked for PT&T for 3 years during the 70’s, and I was always very proud to work for them. Back then the customer was always king, and we all took pride in the work we were doing. Now dealing with AT&T as a customer is a constant run around, and the customer is anything but king.
Eddie
 
I axed our last POTS line after it developed a loud hum and any time they swapped F1 pairs it would still hum, some splices underground became compromised. That was in 2014, I made the move over to Comcast voice but kept having issues with choppiness. Finally after a few months of that I just ported the number out to Callcentric and have been using standalone VoIP since.

My IP desk phone is a Yealink, and I have a Gigaset cordless IP phone still sitting in the box waiting to be set up. Right now the cordless phones in the house are all analog Panasonic's.
 
I've had Ooma now for 3 or 4 years with no problems. I've even talked a few friends into getting it as well and so far so good they're  happy with it as well,, and the big savings.   I keep reading on here all the complaining about robo-calls and can't quite figure out why after telling people that Ooma gets rid of 99 percent of them, they won't buy one..     Ooma could also do with better advertising I guess.   
 
petek

My Ooma box died, I called them and they had a replacement by FedEx the next day at no cost to me. It was definitely out of warranty, maybe they liked my lilting voice. I'm very, very pleased.
 

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