Home Phone Service Advice Needed

[iej]

It's more about lack of regulation than technology

The major issue with the move towards IP-based telecommunications systems is that the regulators are not requiring the telcos to ensure that there is 'always-up service.' Traditionally, most telephone exchanges (switches/central offices) had pretty huge battery back up and most telcos tended to have diesel generators at key sites too should the power go down.

These buildings were mostly designed in the days of crossbar and step-by-step switching after WWII and during the cold war. They were also designed to house technologies that didn't really allow for much distribution of switching. They would typically use longer lines and fewer central offices.

As technology improved, the idea of distributed switching starts to emerge. So, by the late 1970s when digital telephone exchanges were popping up, one of the major advantages of them was that you could install more, smaller nodes, closer to the customers. This meant less complicated wiring systems (i.e. shorter lines) and easier upgrades as demand increased.

So, from the 1980s onwards you started to see what's referred to over here as "RCUs" (Remote Concentrator Units). Here in Ireland, the switches would have mostly been Ericsson AXE or Alcatel E10 equipment. The typical layout from the 1980s onwards was a local exchange with quite a large number of RCUs in individual suburbs/towns/villages all managed from a central location. These were linked back by fibre (or in the earlier days microwave) to their local main node.

The downside, is that they're often tiny units, sometimes only a few outdoor, weather proof cabinets, and their battery back up is pretty limited.

Then you'd the growth of mobile networks in the 1980s too.
Cellular coverage requires lots of distributed technology too. As the number of users and the expectations of perfect coverage went up, the networks added more and more microcells and picocells to fill in gaps in coverage and increase capacity. These sites are usually just on the sides of buildings, hidden in fake trees and generally camouflaged into the environment. In hard to cover areas like streets with high buildings, campuses, shopping malls etc, metro systems, tunnels, etc they'll add picocells which are not much bigger than your home WiFi hub. They're just a little panel on the wall.

The smaller these things get the less likelihood of battery backup. So, when the power goes down, you can be left with just the major towers on air which results in poor coverage.
If you ever do lose power and your mobile coverage goes down, switch to 2G and stand outside to get a signal. It's likely that your network's major locations are still on air as they typically have significant battery backup.

With the move towards VoIP replacing POTS for landlines, there are a few ways of providing it.

You can keep the copper wiring in place and just convert the central offices to IP technology. That's happening in a lot of places. However, the speed at which people are adopting other technologies is making the business case for retaining POTS central offices very difficult to justify.

For example, our local telco here in Ireland originally planned to place POTS/ISDN cards into the FTTC cabinets that they provide VDSL from and close central offices. However, people don't seem to want POTS service anymore and residential users are quite happily switching over to using IP phones and ATAs to connect to VoIP services without any need for line cards. I'm sure that's the same in most other countries too.

What we're seeing is a mixture of managed IP telephony services using home gateways (i.e. the type of stuff you plug into the back of the box your cable TV company or ISP provides). These can provide end-to-end managed VoIP and ensure full quality of service.

The other part of the market that's growing quite quickly is "Over the Top" VoIP services which just use the public Internet and have nothing to do with the ISP or telco. For many people this is perfectly adequate and as broadband speeds and reliability increase, it's a very viable alternative to services from telcos and cable cos.

Then you've got a huge shift in the way businesses are connecting their telephone systems. In the past they generally (here in Europe anyway) tended to use ISDN to connect to their PBX (office system). This is what allowed all the direct-inward-dial extensions and all of those things. Now, that's largely being replaced by VoIP technology mostly using SIP trunks.

Many small businesses are moving towards using cloud-based hosted PBXs which require no equipment on site at all. You just connect every extension to the internet and the whole thing is hosted on a soft switch somewhere else.

So, basically the entire voice telephony market is being turned upside-down and inside out.

...

The other aspect is that the telcos have no option but to retire PSTN/POTS switching equipment as the manufactures are no longer supporting it. You're talking about 1970s/80s technology that's reaching the end of its life.

In the USA and Canada most local landline companies were using 5ESS switches built originally by Western Electric / Bell Labs (now part of Alcatel Lucent) for AT&T, DMS 100 switches made by Nortel (no longer exists) or in some cases Ericsson's AXE platform (major European system) which is still supported.

In Europe, you've a similar scenario:

Ericsson AXE - by far the biggest digital TDM switching platform in the world, is moving towards being a 'soft switch'. The old gear is still supported, but they're pushing people onto new IP-based systems.

Alcatel E10 and S12 - Alcatel Lucent is also moving everyone onto IP and consider these systems "End of Life"

Siemens EWSD - Huge platform that's used in many European countries, also 'end of life'. Nokia Networks now owns the technology and are pushing users onto IP too.

In Britain, there's an even more serious problem. British Telecom's digital network is largely made up of a UK system called "System X" which was originally a government-driven project in the 1970s/80s that was delivered by a consortium of British telecommunications equipment markers : GPT, Plessey and STC. It ended up as part of Marconi's stable of products, but it was quite late to market and it never achieved export sales. Basically it's is only used by BT in the UK. Marconi vanished a few years ago and various bits of the company ended up in Siemens and Ericsson. However, the System X switching system didn't. The result is that it's basically being managed as 'end of life' and I would assume that BT will want to find an alternative solution as soon as possible and I know some of those switches are being replaced by IP-based technology. However, they're possibly maintaining dial tones for now.

Basically, to cut a long story short, PSTN/POTS service will not be around for more than another decade at most. The technology's literally dying out.

In most scenarios, large chunks of the POTS network have already been replaced with soft switches and IP-based systems. They'll eventually get down to ripping out local exchanges and that'll be the end of 100+ years telephony delivered over an analogue interface to your home.

 

[iej]

I forgot to add : Buy a UPS !

The biggest issue is actually loss of local power in your own home. In urban areas this is (hopefully) a very rare event, but in rural areas if you've overhead lines it can happen during high winds.

In general cable, FTTC, FTTH and cellular services do have at least a few hours backup using packs of batteries in the local cabinets or even sometimes natural-gas powered generators. However, if you need a device powered in your own house to access these like a 'router' (home gateway) with an ATA to provide your phone service, or if you can't charge your mobile phone they're not much use.

You can buy a small UPS to keep your networking equipment alive during a power outage. They're not that expensive and they can keep things up for a few hours (especially low power devices like routers).

Likewise, you can charge your mobile from a UPS without any issues.

If you're in a rural area that suffers from frequent power outages, it might even be worth investing in a backup generator. A small one will be plenty to keep the lights on, the fridge running and enough power to charge your mobile and keep your network gear up.

You don't need enough power to run the stove and the tumble dryer, but just enough to tide you over should there be a major storm. Also, bear in mind that in most homes the heating system requires power to run control systems, pumps, ignitors etc even if it's not using electricity to heat your home. So, if you're in a remote, cold place, you probably should have one.

A lot of rural homes here have moved over to using microwave links instead of landlines.

Also, in rural areas, if you're hit by a storm it's likely you'll lose phone service too even on POTS lines if they're overhead. So, it's always handy to have a backup

@Laundress:

When you dial "10" (Operator) here you get : dooo dee dooo.. We're sorry the number you have dialled has not been recognised!

There's no longer any type of operator service, if you want help, you call your supplier's helpline and speak to the evil robot who will eventually (if you answer all of its riddles correctly) connect you directly to a customer frustration specialist.

I've found the best way to get their attention is to go onto their help forums and make a public nuisance of yourself [this post was last edited: 8/7/2014-10:30]

 

[iej]

@Laundress

When you dial "10" (Operator) here you get : dooo dee dooo.. We're sorry the number you have dialled has not been recognised!

There's no longer any type of operator service, if you want help, you call your supplier's helpline and speak to the evil robot who will eventually (if you answer all of its riddles correctly) connect you directly to a customer frustration specialist.

I've found the best way to get their attention is to go onto their help forums and make a public nuisance of yourself

 

[retropia]

Power lines here are still mostly overhead, almost everywhere. Thus, power outages are common in high wind storms. When the hurricane blew through, power was out for five days on our street. We do have a natural gas powered backup generator, and that helped us.

A problem, as mentioned, is that the backup batteries for the internet service provider stations and cell towers don't always last for very long. I think we had internet for a day, and then it was down the rest of the week until power for the entire neighborhood came back on.

We had cell service the entire time I think, so perhaps our local tower has a backup generator. Service was spotty, though, due to too much call volume.

Maybe lawmakers will have to mandate more robust backup batteries and/or backup generators, once wired phone lines go away.

 

[iej]

Most services tend to be underground in urban areas (with a few exceptions), so you don't tend to get any issues during high winds.

Rural areas are a different story entirely where most things are overhead, although they tend to only do the final drop of phone lines overhead. The main lines are all in buried ducts.

As for battery backup, the only way they'll achieve that is with legislation. I can't see the phone companies adding a load of extra equipment unless they're forced to.

Their local cabinet backups seem to be generally only enough to keep things going for long enough to cover a planned maintenance outage / short local problem. Anything beyond a day seems to be way too much for them.

They should at the very least mandate mobile phone companies to have full back up power at major sites so that in an emergency you could at least ensure some service, even if it's not every small cell.

The old central offices are kind of morphing into data centres these days. They're being gradually repurposed to host various routers and interconnection facilities for ISPs using FTTC/FTTH infrastructure as they're ideal secure locations with plenty of connectivity and backup power.

Found an image of a backup generator in a suburban Dublin, Ireland telephone exchange:

SLIGHT difference between that an a small bunch of batteries in a cabinet!

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[davey7]

Most services tend to be underground in urban areas

Unfortunately, only true in Europe (in US vs Europe equation). Parts of Chicago lose power with big storms frequently - we still have above ground wires except in very dense areas of the city and downtown. New York is mostly underground, but in the suburbs it's above ground (I suspect underground in most new subdivisions as it is in the Midwest) - Long Island is notorious for it's above ground power lines iirc.

 

[circlew]

Several of my friends live in areas that have power lines above ground, yet their phone lines are underground in conduits. I see the manhole covers embossed with a Bell, and C&SBTC (Cincinnati & Suburban Bell Tel. Co.) on them. They are older areas with houses built mainly from the 20's to early 40's. The central office building is a few blocks away, and the original section of it appears to be from the 20's (a beautiful brick building).

 

[rp2813]

It Depends On Where You Live

My sister lives in an older section of Los Angeles where most homes were built in the 1920s.  The Pacific Telephone/Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T outside plant infrastructure in her neighborhood is in a poor state of repair.

 

She was using Vonage VOIP for a couple of years, but her internet connection is constantly dropping, and as a result, so were her calls.  She has kept meticulous records on the 15 repair calls that have been made to try and fix the problem.  No one at AT&T will admit that the facilities simply can't reliably support an internet connection.

 

She finally went back to AT&T for a regular land line just a couple of weeks ago, but that only solved part of the problem.  VOIP simply isn't an option for anyone in her neighborhood who gets their internet access through AT&T.  She and her neighbors are fed up with AT&T, but at the same time aren't interested in feeding the cable monster.

 

She has been advised that U-Verse will be coming to her area in approximately six months.  It's not the first time she has heard this from AT&T, and nobody is holding their breath.

 

[cadman]

Just wanted to add a followup....

Based on recommendations earlier in this thread, I did some investigating and decided to give the Ooma service a try. Monthly service is free; all you pay for is the equipment and monthly access taxes/fees which is around $3.

Where I live, POTS isn't available due to my rural location. In fact, we only recently got internet via Ubiquiti wireless transceivers to a pole up at the road. Here in this pic is an Apple Airport Express receiving my local network Wifi signal, connected to the Ooma. The Ooma, in turn, connects to a Panasonic 308 PBX which allows rotary dialing. The second pic is the 'house phone' that's now connected.

Audio quality is pretty decent, and it's nice to hold an actual phone receiver instead of a little black square against my head. Another perk is that my cell will ring in tandem with the house phone if I'm out in the yard. Pretty slick! -Cory

 

[danemodsandy]

Cory!

You're not that darn rural, LOL.

We just hop the Cannonball out of Pixley, and we're there....

 

[rp2813]

WOW!  An explosion-proof phone! 

 

Just what sort of catastrophe are you expecting?  ;-)

 

[cadman]

I like to be prepared, Ralph!

 

[iej]

Just to give you an idea of how the infrastructure looks elsewhere in the world.
That's an Irish FTTC (Fibre To Curb) and possible FTTH (fibre to home) node.

The newer looking green cabinet is a VDSL2 DSLAM with a fibre connection back to the central office. That typically provides up to 100Mbit/s down and 20Mbit/s up over your copper line to the house (max line length is 1km and speeds are more like 70mbit/s down 20Mbit/s up for a lot of people e.g. my line's about 650m long).

The wider older looking green cabinet is where all the underground connections to individual homes come up and are patched to the underground line back to the local exchange (central office). Basically, the telco just installs that second cabinet and they interconnect lines with the VDSL2 service in the 2-door cabinet next to it.

The small galvanised steel thing is just the electricity services and power meter for the fibre node.

That node serves up to 192 homes, but in general in Ireland anyway they might only have say 50-100 customers per cabinet, so you'd have those dotted around street corners in cities, towns, villages all over the country.

They've been installing thousands of these over the last couple of years and should cover 70% of homes in the state by next year. (the rest mostly being really rural).

We've quite low population density compared to most of Europe with <4% of people living in apartments so, it's quite like less dense parts of the US or Canada in most respects - individual homes spread quite thin.

Using FTTC nodes with a noise-cancelling technology called 'vectoring' has proven to be a pretty decent step towards improving coverage though. We've now got a lot of people getting up to 100Mbit/s over a single copper pair which is pretty damn impressive given it's just a short phone line to a street cabinet.

Cable's pretty widespread in most bigger urban areas (by big urban in an Irish context I mean like towns of >15,000 people). They can get up to 200Mbit/s at the moment on residential services and 250Mbit/s on small business services using EuroDOCIS 3.0 and lots of fibre in the network.

Genuinely rural areas are often reliant on fixed-point wireless service though. Some of that's good, some isn't. There's a major rethink going on about how we're going to fund that in the coming years. So far, it's actually received relatively little state aid, but that's probably going to change this year with a plan to ensure that no home has less than 30mbit/s and most will have >100mbit/s...

We still get a lot of people here making somewhat ridiculous comparisons though and making claims like EVERY other country has fibre to rural homes or comparing their rural broadband in a remote house in the commuter belt of a town with 102 people with what you can get in downtown Tokyo and then concluding Ireland's behind the times.

The node in the picture below would give you access to services from up to 15 different ISPs as the incumbent telco has to let other companies use its local access networks. So, you can pick from quite a few data and voice services even if you don't have access to cable in your area.

 

[fester]

Rotary phones

I have two 40s - 50s rotary phones and when I got home phone service with cox I was told they wouldn't work without some sort of box being connected in line, so I never plugged it in. Skank of the week was cleaning up, found the plug and thinking she had knocked it loose with the vacuum, plugged it in. The phone rang that night and I liked to nut up. I've since switched to LUS fiber and they still work. The techs advised me that I may need to put a booster on the line to power the ringers if I add any more. Apparently it takes less signal juice to make a cordless bleat like a sick sheep than to ring the bells on the rotary, but they work coming and going.

YMMV
FEster

 

[iej]

They used to calculate phone lines with an "REN" (Ringer Equivalency Number) value.

A value of 1 = the amount of power required to make one old-fashioned 1960s dial phone's bell set ring.

In Europe that's calculated as : 1 REN to be greater than 16 kΩ at 25 Hz and 50 Hz.

In the US (and probably Canada) : 1 REN is calculated as an impedance of 7000Ω at 20Hz (type A ringer), or 8000Ω from 15 Hz to 68 Hz (type B ringer).

....

I think the guideline was up to a REN value of 4 in Ireland and Britain. In reality it depends how long the line is as there's a voltage drop on the ringing current the further you get from the exchange (central office).
Also, there are slight differences in the specific switching equipment in use too.

A modern phone might have a REN value between 0.1 and 0.3 so, you could plug in a very large number of modern handsets before they'd fail to ring.