On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 4:55 PM, t.piwowar <t...@tjpa.com> wrote: > OMG. RAID and POTS. Some of us are not aging well. I'm really surprised at > the high degree fear of change on what is supposed to be a discussion for > techies.
I believe the only real fear of change as per this discussion is the almost taken for granted thought that at&t, and probably other landline telephone providers, will find a way to stick it to the public. > I think anyone who is tech aware has to to admit that the days of POTS (a > switched telephone network) are numbered. It just does not make > technological sense. We know how to perform this function much better and at > lower cost. Saying that we should have an orderly plan for its demise i just > good common sense. Well there, you have said it yourself. An orderly plan. That is most assuredly what will be missing from the equation. When, as you say, the time comes, there will have been many vague promises and assurances made by the telcos about ensuring coverage and service to all that will not be met...guaranteed. > That does not mean that twisted copper pairs are going away. In some areas > twisted pairs will go away. In other areas that will be around for a long > time. What will change is the signaling that travels over the lines. It is > going to be purely digital. That is inevitable and it will be happening > soon. Not so fast here. None of us really can know what the eventual outcome will be, and what that time frame will be. At&t sez they want out of the copper business...period. They flat out do not want "wires." Back in 2007 at&t was rattling their wire cutters in public over the issue of twisted pair service. It didn't get much public notice, but various announcements and press releases made it clear that at&t was going to primarily focus on wireless services and was going to back out of wired services. It is just that they kinda formalized that position the other day over at the FCC, a somewhat necessary step to clear bureaucratic procedures on the path to a realization of their plans. What they have not done is to convince ANYBODY that they can meet their goal in a manner that does not screw a lot of the public. In fact, in providing the FCC with their vision of replacing all landline service, at&t failed to offer any suggestions whatsoever about how to serve the estimated 20% of U.S. households that cannot get wireless service, many of them being within areas served by at&t's own system. My position is that they must FIRST be made to provide an alternative and reliable telephone system to every customer who would lose landline service BEFORE the wires are cut. No promises. They MUST do that FIRST. > Digital does not have to mean poor quality. Analog POTS lines support a > frequency domain from 200 to 2000 Hz at best. Transmitting that digitally is > no big deal. It is true that some crappy carriers try to push quality below > this, but I don't think it is prevalent. The crappy quality of cell phones > is more likely the fault of having a crappy cell phone. There are lots of > those out there. Limiting audio quality is actually very common with carriers. That is a primary means of retaining bandwidth. As bandwidth requirements increase, audio quality will progressively suffer. Yes, the phones also have crappy sound reproduction if for no other reason than you just cannot get anything to sound good coming out of such a tiny flat speaker coupled with such meager audio amps that all these infinitesimal phones have. I figure that most cell phones can't really claim less than around 60% distortion rates at typical listening levels, incoming distortion figures included. Steve ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
