Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 09:23:18AM -0500, Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:
> The main phones in the house are cordless. The handset will still operate
> during a power failure but the base would not. For that reason my family
> also has one old style phone powered from the CO just in case we need to use
> a phone during a power failure.
> 
> It also means that none of our phones are of the type that can receive any
> text messages so all these sites that assume one has a cell phone that can
> receive messages as part of a 2FA process. I recently copied all of my
> source code repositories from github to gitlab due to the problems of 2FA.

My cordless phones have a charger for one of the handsets on the base,
and during a power failure that handset will power the base station.
The phone shows a message on it's screen to not remove it due to it
powering the base station when the power is out.  Pretty handy.  A dumb
old phone as a backup is still good to have around though.

-- 
Len Sorensen
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[Alvin Starr via talk]

On 2024-01-16 23:20, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 2:00 PM James Knott via talk  
wrote:


On 1/16/24 07:16, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> CO-powered phones are still available

Are they still CO powered?


My home internet is still metered and charged as a DSL line (by 
Teksavvy), though I know my neighbourhood has fibre. (I watched it 
being laid.)
The line coming in is an RJ-11 cable that split between my home's 
internal phone wiring and the DSL modem. No telco-supplied UPS on 
anything.


I don't know whether my dumb phone is powered by the CO or an UPS in a 
neighbourhood Bell box.
I just know it's powered from outside the house, functioning the same 
way as it has for decades, and it has done well during extended power 
outages.




A phone line with a dial-tone will connect back to a CO or a Remote CO.

DSL is some times served from the CO or Remote but more often in 
populated areas it is served from a little box close to the curb.


If its from the little box then what happens is that the line to your 
house from the CO is split and the DSL is added in at that point along 
with filters to allow the phone signal from the CO to keep going to your 
home.


As a general rule the CO will have batteries and a generator whereas the 
Remote COs will only have battery.


DSL has distance limitations so that once you start getting more than 
2km from the Bell end you start having links that are speed limited and 
at distances of 4km or so you are lucky to get 1Mb.


Also this is cable distance and not point to point distance so with all 
the right angle streets and infrastructure the distance can add up fast.


The distance reason is why Bell and the other Telcos rolled out fibre 
into neighborhoods and placed the little boxes all over the place.


When DSL first started you could easily be 5-6KM from a CO while still 
being in downtown Toronto.


--
Alvin Starr   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc.   ||   Cell:  (416)806-0133
al...@netvel.net   ||
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[Kevin Cozens via talk]

On 2024-01-16 07:16, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 2:46 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk > wrote:


(The old Bell system had large lead-acid batteries in the COs. 
Oldhandsets were actually powered by the CO.  Modern ones have their

ownpower for many functions.  So we used to expect the phone to
workduring "hydro" failures.)


I still do.

While I have some cheap Vtech phones with message recorder plugged into the 
landline, I still maintain one plain touchtone phone in the living room that 
has no external power and still runs fine.


The main phones in the house are cordless. The handset will still operate 
during a power failure but the base would not. For that reason my family 
also has one old style phone powered from the CO just in case we need to use 
a phone during a power failure.


It also means that none of our phones are of the type that can receive any 
text messages so all these sites that assume one has a cell phone that can 
receive messages as part of a 2FA process. I recently copied all of my 
source code repositories from github to gitlab due to the problems of 2FA.


--
Cheers!

Kevin.

https://www.patreon.com/KevinCozens | "Nerds make the shiny things that
| distract the mouth-breathers, and
Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172  | that's why we're powerful"
#include  | --Chris Hardwick

---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[Evan Leibovitch via talk]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 2:00 PM James Knott via talk 
wrote:

> On 1/16/24 07:16, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> > CO-powered phones are still available
>
> Are they still CO powered?


My home internet is still metered and charged as a DSL line (by Teksavvy),
though I know my neighbourhood has fibre. (I watched it being laid.)
The line coming in is an RJ-11 cable that split between my home's internal
phone wiring and the DSL modem. No telco-supplied UPS on anything.

I don't know whether my dumb phone is powered by the CO or an UPS in a
neighbourhood Bell box.
I just know it's powered from outside the house, functioning the same way
as it has for decades, and it has done well during extended power outages.

- Evan
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[James Knott via talk]

On 1/16/24 11:27, mwilson--- via talk wrote:

Help-desk people are forbidden to hang up, but if the customer terminated
the call it would count as a problem resolution, and therefore a good
thing.


Several years ago, I was doing some work at a Bell customer, hooking up 
an Adtran router to Bell ADSL.  One site went well, but I couldn't get 
the other site going.  I called Bell's support and got someone who 
insisted I click on the Start button.  Last I checked, Adtran routers 
didn't have a Start button.  The guy (in India) couldn't get off his 
script and do anything, so I asked to escalate.  He then hung up on me.  
The customer called her Bell rep, who said to call Bell's French line 
and I'd get someone in Canada, who could likely speak English.  I was 
then able to resolve the issue.  It was a Bell wiring error and I was 
able to finish the job, after they corrected the error.


BTW, I used to do both 1st & 3rd level support at IBM.

---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[James Knott via talk]

On 1/16/24 10:21, Steve Petrie via talk wrote:
My last Rogers interaction last week, had a Rogers sales rep ending 
his call to me, by shouting that I had just wasted his valuable time 
(because I had told him the technical reasons why I would rather pay a 
$18 / month Bell Canada premium, over the Rogers monthly service 
price, to keep my ROCK-SOLID RELIABLE Bell Canada service.


Why do you think it's rock solid?  The days of CO powered phones are 
pretty much long gone.  You probably have a pair of wires going out to 
somewhere in the neighbourhood, where it converts to fibre. Those have 
been around for years.


Also, I suspect that Rogers guy was likely working for a contractor.  I 
can tell you a story or two about Bell "employees", who were in India.


BTW, I have worked mostly in the telecom industry, going back to 1972 
and have done work for or with Bell, Rogers, Telus, MTS and others.  
Most recently, I was doing some work in the Rogers office, on Wolfedale 
in Mississauga.
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[James Knott via talk]

On 1/16/24 07:16, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:

CO-powered phones are still available


Are they still CO powered?  Both Rogers and Bell are moving to VoIP over 
fibre to the neighbourhood.  There's an old Bell box near me, where the 
lines for the homes could connect to the cable.  It's been busted flat 
for years.

---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[James Knott via talk]

On 1/16/24 02:45, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:

They try to hide the fact that their "home phone" service is over
VOIP.  For one thing, I think that they have dedicated bandwidth so
saturating your internet service won't break your phone service.


Compared to the bandwidth customers have, VoIP doesn't even amount to 
trivial.  For example, I get 1 Gb down and 50 Mb up from Rogers. A "toll 
quality" call requires 64 Kb in standard TDM systems (1 DS0).  With 
VoIP, the CODEC can require less bandwidth.  G.729a requires only 8 
Kb/s, though I doubt they're using that much compression.  Also, voice 
calls can be given priority over regular data.


By comparison with my 50 Mb/s upstream, the old TDM phone system had 24 
DS0s in a DS1 (T1) and 28 DS1s in a DS3 (T3) for about 45 Mb. That's 672 
phone calls!


With cell phones, the trend is the other way, with better than toll 
quality CODECs, often called HD voice.  VoIP phones can also use the 
better CODECs.
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[mwilson--- via talk]

From: "Steve Petrie via talk" 
> [...]
> This same brain-dead abusive Rogers sales loser, actually ended our call
> by shouting "F**k You !!" at me, before he ended the call. Charming :)
> Seemed to me his vituperative manner could have been a reflection of a
> possibly desperate Rogers.

I've read about this kind of thing.  There was a post-mortem study after
Hydro One had replaced their billing system around 2011..2013 (?).
The link to the study may be buried somewhere deep in my old mail here,
but there's a taste at
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/hydro-one-on-billing-problems-we-ve-come-a-long-way-1.2947526

Management forecast that trouble calls would tick up by 20% or so
fallowing the switchover, and hired more help-line people accordingly. 
Instead, trouble calls were up by hundreds of percent, and the problems
themselves were very gnarly and hard to diagnose.  Management responded in
a few ways, unfortunately one way was to strongly incentivize the help
desk people to end trouble calls faster, and get more calls completed. 
The word got around that an effective method was to use profane and
obscene language to get the customer to hang up.
Help-desk people are forbidden to hang up, but if the customer terminated
the call it would count as a problem resolution, and therefore a good
thing.  Taking too long could cost a rep a job.

Looks like Rogers could be managing its people the same way.

Cory Doctorow posted a relevant article today:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Money quote:
"while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're
certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and
replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job"




---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[Steve Petrie via talk]

 Original Message 

| From: Alvin Starr via talk 

Rogers has or had UPS built into the home phone box.  And they have
batteries on their neighbourhood boxes.  (During a long power failure,
they even brought a generator for the one near us.)

[Steve Petrie]
Nice to read something positive about Rogers.

My last Rogers interaction last week, had a Rogers sales rep ending his 
call to me, by shouting that I had just wasted his valuable time 
(because I had told him the technical reasons why I would rather pay a 
$18 / month Bell Canada premium, over the Rogers monthly service price, 
to keep my ROCK-SOLID RELIABLE Bell Canada service.


This same brain-dead abusive Rogers sales loser, actually ended our call 
by shouting "F**k You !!" at me, before he ended the call. Charming :) 
Seemed to me his vituperative manner could have been a reflection of a 
possibly desperate Rogers.


Bell Canada execs may surely be cruel and ruthless greedy squeezers, but 
still, Bell does seem to value service reliability as a core corporate 
value.


* * *
* * *

[Alvin Starr]
Bell had a UPS built into their home internet+phone boxes.  But not the 
latest ones.


(The old Bell system had large lead-acid batteries in the COs.  Old 
handsets were actually powered by the CO.  Modern ones have their own 
power for many functions.  So we used to expect the phone to work

during "hydro" failures.)

[Steve Petrie]
My friend who lives in her house in the Bloor West Village / High Park 
area, has an ancient wall-mounted Northern Telecom analogue phone in her 
kitchen. So far as I know, this indestructible NT museum-piece is still 
powered from the Bell CO.


Whenever she occasionally has a Bell service outage, she's at the bottom 
of Bell Canada's repair priority list.


She tells me that the Bell technician despatched to fix her dead 
copper-pair service, is invariably contemptuous and surly to her. Seems 
like like internal Bell ethos is to consider all 
twisted-copper-pair-connected service holdouts, as hopelessly outdated 
dispensable ancient codgers. Probably some obscure CRTC ruling prevents 
Bell Canada from forcing the few remaining copper-pair holdouts onto 
Bell Fibe.


Bell Canada has run a fibre line to a Bell box fastened to the exterior 
brick wall of her house, but so far, my friend is a relentlessly frugal 
Bell CO-powered bastion of senior citizen obduracy. It just occurred to 
me, that she probably saves a couple of cents every month, by drawing 
her phone-power from the Bell CO, instead of getting her phone power 
through her metered Toronto Hydro power service.

---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list 
https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[Evan Leibovitch via talk]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 2:46 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
wrote:


> (The old Bell system had large lead-acid batteries in the COs.  Old handsets
> were actually powered by the CO.  Modern ones have their own power for
> many functions.  So we used to expect the phone to work during "hydro"
> failures.)
>

I still do.

While I have some cheap Vtech phones with message recorder plugged into the
landline, I still maintain one plain touchtone phone in the living room
that has no external power and still runs fine. Two years ago, when my
street's power transformer blew and we had no electricity for days while it
was replaced, that phone worked just fine throughout. Between that and the
UPS I used for charging my mobile devices, I made many new friends among my
neighbours. (Having a gas stove was also very helpful at the time...)

CO-powered phones are still available and their simplicity keeps them cheap.


- Evan
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

[GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Alvin Starr via talk 

| Bell and Rogers are now both offering VOIP based home phone services.
| I assume that they have batteries to keep things running in the event of a
| power outage but It would be interesting to have someone on list confirm that.
| I remember many years ago working with an ISDN ATA device from Bell that had
| NiCad batteries that did not last all that long and had real degradation
| problems.

They try to hide the fact that their "home phone" service is over
VOIP.  For one thing, I think that they have dedicated bandwidth so
saturating your internet service won't break your phone service.

Rogers has or had UPS built into the home phone box.  And they have
batteries on their neighbourhood boxes.  (During a long power failure,
they even brought a generator for the one near us.)

Bell had a UPS built into their home internet+phone boxes.  But not
the latest ones.

(The old Bell system had large lead-acid batteries in the COs.  Old
handsets were actually powered by the CO.  Modern ones have their own
power for many functions.  So we used to expect the phone to work
during "hydro" failures.)
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk