Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 11:08:49AM -0600, Jack Bates wrote: 911 services are heavily used when a geographical area has an emergency, and that emergency usually includes not having power. Yes, and it usually involves several thousand people all phoning to report the same damned thing, clogging up the emergency service's lines so that *other* emergencies (like, say, someone having a heart attack) don't get dealt with. Unless you live in a natural disaster prone location. So don't do that. It's really rather silly. I've always thought that people who choose to live on flood plains or on the side of active volcanos etc are at least a little bit crazy. Of course, if they're so poor that they don't have any choice (Bangladesh, perhaps) then they can't afford the non-existent POTS infrastructure anyway - but someone in the village might have a mobile. Or if your grandmother's alert bracelet requires a phone line for notification. That's no reason for almost anyone to have a POTS line, because almost everyone doesn't live with their grandmother, and almost all grandmothers don't have alert bracelets. -- David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david comparative and superlative explained: Huhn worse, worser, worsest, worsted, wasted
RE: [SPAM-HEADER] - Re: Telecom Collapse?
Folks, I doubt the incumbents are the most vulnerable in this situation. It is debt-laden competitive providers that face the greatest difficulty. Look at balance sheets and who is struggling to generate a profit or who has never generated a profit. Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 13-15, rue Sedaine, 75011 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. French Landline: 33+1+4355+8224 French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Dec 5, 2008, at 9:01 AM, David Cantrell wrote: On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 11:08:49AM -0600, Jack Bates wrote: 911 services are heavily used when a geographical area has an emergency, and that emergency usually includes not having power. Yes, and it usually involves several thousand people all phoning to report the same damned thing, clogging up the emergency service's lines so that *other* emergencies (like, say, someone having a heart attack) don't get dealt with. Unless you live in a natural disaster prone location. So don't do that. It's really rather silly. I've always thought that people who choose to live on flood plains or on the side of active volcanos etc are at least a little bit crazy. Of course, if they're so poor that they don't have any choice (Bangladesh, perhaps) then they can't afford the non-existent POTS infrastructure anyway - but someone in the village might have a mobile. There is literarily no place on the planet that is safe from natural disaster. It's just that the recurrence times differ, and can be rather long in places, giving an illusion of safety. For example, for the recent tsunami in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, the recurrence time is estimated to be ~1000 years. Most people would think that they do not have to worry about a once per 1000 year danger, until the water starts entering the second story. Regards Marshall Or if your grandmother's alert bracelet requires a phone line for notification. That's no reason for almost anyone to have a POTS line, because almost everyone doesn't live with their grandmother, and almost all grandmothers don't have alert bracelets. -- David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david comparative and superlative explained: Huhn worse, worser, worsest, worsted, wasted
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 09:21:53AM -0500, Marshall Eubanks wrote: On Dec 5, 2008, at 9:01 AM, David Cantrell wrote: On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 11:08:49AM -0600, Jack Bates wrote: Unless you live in a natural disaster prone location. So don't do that. There is literarily no place on the planet that is safe from natural disaster. A natural disaster prone location would, by a normal person, be taken to be one where there is a high probability of being visited by nature's Fuckup Fairies. Such as flood plains (eg much of the Thames estuary) and the sides of active volcanoes (Naples). Most places have a very *low* probability of being visited by the fuckup fairy. -- David Cantrell | Godless Liberal Elitist Safety tip: never strap firearms to a hamster
Re: Telecom Collapse?
David Cantrell wrote: A natural disaster prone location would, by a normal person, be taken to be one where there is a high probability of being visited by nature's Fuckup Fairies. Such as flood plains (eg much of the Thames estuary) and the sides of active volcanoes (Naples). Most places have a very *low* probability of being visited by the fuckup fairy. Yeah, I've been telling them for years that everyone should just vacate Oklahoma, and Kansas. Between tornados and severe storms, these states should be off limits. Of course, we all know people on the west coast are nuts. Must be the earthquakes shaking their brains around. Jack
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Also, where I live, if the power goes out hard (for example, during the last Hurricane), the cell phone will not have service either. hello What about GPS ? simply sending such data would help more then a unreliable mobile phone call right ? (we have enough places where i live and its not a small city , there is no connection like the whitespots on the german DSL map. ) regards Marc Let -- web: http://www.let.de Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise). Please note that according to the German law on data retention, information on every electronic information exchange with me is retained for a period of six months.
RE: Telecom Collapse?
That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. -Russell -Original Message- From: Mike Lyon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:11 AM To: Alex Rubenstein Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... -Mike On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Dec 4, 2008, at 7:47 AM, Russell J. Lahti wrote: That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone Also, where I live, if the power goes out hard (for example, during the last Hurricane), the cell phone will not have service either. Regards Marshall around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. -Russell -Original Message- From: Mike Lyon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:11 AM To: Alex Rubenstein Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... -Mike On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke.
RE: Telecom Collapse?
In the past, an inactive cell phone could still dial 911. I'm not sure if that's still the case, but it used to be, at least with some carriers. Chuck -Original Message- From: Russell J. Lahti [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 7:47 AM To: 'Mike Lyon'; 'Alex Rubenstein' Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Telecom Collapse? That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. -Russell -Original Message- From: Mike Lyon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:11 AM To: Alex Rubenstein Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... -Mike On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Once upon a time, Paul Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ One thing doesn't make sense in that article: it talks about POTS being subsidized by other services, and people cutting POTS lines. Wouldn't that be _good_ for the companies and their other services? The way the article describes things, fewer POTS lines = smaller subsidies taken from other services = better profits for other services and the company. -- Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
RE: Telecom Collapse?
A Marine VHF works under almost any circumstances, and anywhere coastal in the world. You can almost always reach the Coast Guard. -Original Message- From: Marshall Eubanks [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 4:56 AM To: Russell J. Lahti Cc: nanog@nanog.org; 'Alex Rubenstein' Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? On Dec 4, 2008, at 7:47 AM, Russell J. Lahti wrote: That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone Also, where I live, if the power goes out hard (for example, during the last Hurricane), the cell phone will not have service either. Regards Marshall around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. -Russell -Original Message- From: Mike Lyon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:11 AM To: Alex Rubenstein Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... -Mike On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke.
RE: Telecom Collapse?
If they had made any decent investment in plant, or had not run the DSL CLECs out of business, they could make money on DSL and Video services, or by leasing the unused copper. There's no sympathy for companies that have been nothing more than obstacles to progress. -Original Message- From: William Warren [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 7:02 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? Chris Adams wrote: Once upon a time, Paul Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ One thing doesn't make sense in that article: it talks about POTS being subsidized by other services, and people cutting POTS lines. Wouldn't that be _good_ for the companies and their other services? The way the article describes things, fewer POTS lines = smaller subsidies taken from other services = better profits for other services and the company. the lines are still there and still require maintenance so they loose money on it.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On 2008-12-04, at 09:47, Josh Potter wrote: I believe there is a law that requires just that, even if you don't have an active service plan the phone must still be able to access 911. With GSM phones you don't even need a SIM in the phone to call 911 (and equivalent numbers in other regions). I have two children at home, and I haven't had dial-tone on copper for years. I don't lose any sleep over it; that's just one of a thousand highly-improbable disasters that could happen, albeit one that apparently enjoys better marketing than some. If I *was* concerned, I think I'd buy a cheap GSM handset with no SIM and leave it chained somewhere the kids could find, plugged in. I seem to remember when I *did* have dial-tone from Bell Canada I'd pick up the handset and get dead air a disturbing proportion of the time. The idea that copper wire-line providers are the only ones who can provide stable telephony doesn't ring true, for me. There's a reason why the five nines don't include the last mile. Joe
RE: Telecom Collapse?
Well put Joe... I haven't had a landline in quite a bit neither and rely on VOIP today. This doesn't mean that it's never gone down but for the few times it ever has it has never worried me. There's at least two cell phones in our house whenever the family is home and I have neighbors within quick walking distance. What worries me the most is a power outage longer than say 8 hours. This is the typical battery time at most cell sites, telco remotes and many telco CO's. Beyond those 8 hours, it's quite probable that the site will go down and you'll have no cell or landline anyways. This is purely geographically related as the larger centers have generators attached - one could argue that portable generators would be used to keep these battery sites up but in a large scale outage lasting more than 8 hours I don't know a company out there that has enough portable generators to keep ALL their sites up. Have I seen my cell go down in a power outage? Yes Have I seen my landline go down in a power outage when I had them? Yes Take care, Paul -Original Message- From: Joe Abley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:33 AM To: Josh Potter Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? On 2008-12-04, at 09:47, Josh Potter wrote: I believe there is a law that requires just that, even if you don't have an active service plan the phone must still be able to access 911. With GSM phones you don't even need a SIM in the phone to call 911 (and equivalent numbers in other regions). I have two children at home, and I haven't had dial-tone on copper for years. I don't lose any sleep over it; that's just one of a thousand highly-improbable disasters that could happen, albeit one that apparently enjoys better marketing than some. If I *was* concerned, I think I'd buy a cheap GSM handset with no SIM and leave it chained somewhere the kids could find, plugged in. I seem to remember when I *did* have dial-tone from Bell Canada I'd pick up the handset and get dead air a disturbing proportion of the time. The idea that copper wire-line providers are the only ones who can provide stable telephony doesn't ring true, for me. There's a reason why the five nines don't include the last mile. Joe The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and/or privileged material. If you received this in error, please contact the sender immediately and then destroy this transmission, including all attachments, without copying, distributing or disclosing same. Thank you.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. Network reliability is certainly one aspect. However, in some areas, copper is being stripped (and I don't mean stolen, though that's a problem too), see the typical Verizon FIOS install for example. The reliability of having a battery-backed CPE of some sort is questionable. In an inside-CPE environment, replacing the battery is a rough proposition. You can't expect customers to do it, look at how hard it is to get smoke detector batteries replaced, and this would be a more complex SLA-alike less frequently. You can't get workers to do it, just think of the logistics. In an outside-CPE environment, you could do it, probably. But then you might well be better off just running DSL to the home and centralizing the battery, and um, does that bring us back to U-verse? (Did I just make an argument for U-verse?) It would be nice to see a program like ATT Lifeline that was oriented towards maintaining copper for emergency purposes, except that I suspect that this would raise a whole new set of issues, such as periodic testing. Regular use of a landline ensures that it works. This raises other issues as well; E911 services are probably experiencing an ever-higher volume of test calls, for example, and testing of copper- only emergency POTS lines would raise that further. I suppose this could be addressed with an automated system fronting the 911 call (You have reached 911. To report an emergency, please press 1 or wait on the line. For test functions, press pound.) I'd personally like that, it would be better for testing purposes. Fun pics: http://www.kramerfirm.com/pictures/thumbnails.php?album=2 VoIP service is dodgy on the end of consumer grade Internet connections, though. Around here, the cable TV tends to fail with the power when the power supply/amps on the poles burn through their batteries in an hour or two. DSL may be a bit better, but since everyone's got a cordless phone that requires AC power, ... Really, I sometimes wonder at how readily accessible 911 really is in a regional crisis. You're probably well-covered if you have VoIP *plus* a cell or POTS, but how many people have actually checked with their 911 dispatch to make sure that their VoIP is registering properly? Given the tendency towards wireless, if you don't have POTS, it may be best to just keep an old cell around without a service plan to be able to dial 911. You can probably even teach the kids how to deal with that, at least once they're old enough to know their home phone and address. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again. - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Once upon a time, Paul Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: What worries me the most is a power outage longer than say 8 hours. This is the typical battery time at most cell sites, telco remotes and many telco CO's. Beyond those 8 hours, it's quite probable that the site will go down and you'll have no cell or landline anyways. The ATT (BellSouth) remotes around here installed in the last 10 years or so typically have natural gas generators installed, and the COs have a pair of generators for redundancy. Even many of the cell towers have generators. The telco infrastructure is pretty well backed up (I don't know how well tested any of it is of course). On the other hand, it appears that the cable infrastructure doesn't even all have batteries (I know some people whose cable voice and data services blink with the power). -- Chris Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
People have been digging up fiber thinking it's copper anyways, but yeah that's a big problem. On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Joe Greco [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. Network reliability is certainly one aspect. However, in some areas, copper is being stripped (and I don't mean stolen, though that's a problem too), see the typical Verizon FIOS install for example. The reliability of having a battery-backed CPE of some sort is questionable. In an inside-CPE environment, replacing the battery is a rough proposition. You can't expect customers to do it, look at how hard it is to get smoke detector batteries replaced, and this would be a more complex SLA-alike less frequently. You can't get workers to do it, just think of the logistics. In an outside-CPE environment, you could do it, probably. But then you might well be better off just running DSL to the home and centralizing the battery, and um, does that bring us back to U-verse? (Did I just make an argument for U-verse?) It would be nice to see a program like ATT Lifeline that was oriented towards maintaining copper for emergency purposes, except that I suspect that this would raise a whole new set of issues, such as periodic testing. Regular use of a landline ensures that it works. This raises other issues as well; E911 services are probably experiencing an ever-higher volume of test calls, for example, and testing of copper- only emergency POTS lines would raise that further. I suppose this could be addressed with an automated system fronting the 911 call (You have reached 911. To report an emergency, please press 1 or wait on the line. For test functions, press pound.) I'd personally like that, it would be better for testing purposes. Fun pics: http://www.kramerfirm.com/pictures/thumbnails.php?album=2 VoIP service is dodgy on the end of consumer grade Internet connections, though. Around here, the cable TV tends to fail with the power when the power supply/amps on the poles burn through their batteries in an hour or two. DSL may be a bit better, but since everyone's got a cordless phone that requires AC power, ... Really, I sometimes wonder at how readily accessible 911 really is in a regional crisis. You're probably well-covered if you have VoIP *plus* a cell or POTS, but how many people have actually checked with their 911 dispatch to make sure that their VoIP is registering properly? Given the tendency towards wireless, if you don't have POTS, it may be best to just keep an old cell around without a service plan to be able to dial 911. You can probably even teach the kids how to deal with that, at least once they're old enough to know their home phone and address. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again. - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples. -- Josh Potter
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Joe Abley wrote: I seem to remember when I *did* have dial-tone from Bell Canada I'd pick up the handset and get dead air a disturbing proportion of the time. The idea that copper wire-line providers are the only ones who can provide stable telephony doesn't ring true, for me. There's a reason why the five nines don't include the last mile. Joe Obviously experiences differ. I for one can't remember a single time I've picked up a POTS line and there not be a dial tone. This with living in several different cities along the East Coast. I find it significantly harder for a VOIP service to guarantee availability than a traditional POTS service. And for E911 any increased level of guarantee is better. However, for me it is increasingly more frequent that cell calls don't complete on the first try, or there are bad zones either at home or at work where having a conversation is impossible. Not a huge issue for normal phone calls but in an emergency who wants to be finding that special place where service is clear and the 911 operator can hear you. Personally I'll keep a POTS line in the home, if for nothing more than emergencies, until VOIP and Cell providers can consistently offer the same level of services I've had with a traditional phone. Regards, Chris
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Paul Stewart wrote: There's at least two cell phones in our house whenever the family is home and I have neighbors within quick walking distance. That's assuming they're not doing the same thing you are, are home, or are willing to let you borrow their phone. You're assuming a lot. I find it surprising that many people replying haven't kept a 911 only POTS line. Regards, Chris
Re: Telecom Collapse?
In my experience with a fiber to the home deployment I feel that the trend of moving away from the stability of POTS lines for emergency service is acceptable for most people. Most battery backups allow for around 36 hours of dialtone. The overwhelming majority of power outages last nowhere near this long. In addition, when used for emergencies only, a cellular phone can last for several days. During Hurricane Gustav my home in Baton Rouge was without power for nine days. Between my wife's cellphone and my own we were able to maintain emergency service for the entire duration of the outage. Transitioning off of the POTS grid to newer technologies requires a new approach to how people prepare for and respond to outages and disasters, but I feel that the alternatives to POTS access are acceptible. People generally find a way to be resourceful. During prolonged outages I've had customers who actually hooked up generators to their ONT's to supply their home with not only phone, but internet and video service as well. Of course not everyone has a generator, but the option is still there. During Gustav people lined up at the CVS near my house (which was on generator) to use their electrical outlets to charge their cellphones. These options are of course quite an inconvenience compared to having battery on a POTS line during an outage, but then again maintaining a POTS line just for outages is quite an inconvenience on most peoples' budget, too. -- Paul H Bosworth TraceSecurity CCNP, CCNA, CCDA
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Solar is civil defence - that goes for Node Bs as well as citizens. In the UK, I have absolutely no confidence in the reliability of our major cable op, because everywhere I go I find their street cabinets broken into, presumably by scum looking for copper (how long will they take to respond to the precipitous drop in metal prices?), which this being DOCSIS it doesn't contain. The BT ones, which are full of copper, seem to be more robust.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 10:13:14 -0600 Paul Bosworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my experience with a fiber to the home deployment I feel that the trend of moving away from the stability of POTS lines for emergency service is acceptable for most people. Most battery backups allow for around 36 hours of dialtone. The overwhelming majority of power outages last nowhere near this long. In addition, when used for emergencies only, a cellular phone can last for several days. During Hurricane Gustav my home in Baton Rouge was without power for nine days. Between my wife's cellphone and my own we were able to maintain emergency service for the entire duration of the outage. Transitioning off of the POTS grid to newer technologies requires a new approach to how people prepare for and respond to outages and disasters, but I feel that the alternatives to POTS access are acceptible. What about the cell site? See http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/12/03/ap5776571.html The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday its attempt to require backup power for all U.S. cell phone towers is dead for now, but it will take another stab at the issue soon. The agency told a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that it will honor a regulator's decision rejecting its proposed requirement. Article Controls The FCC proposed in May 2007 that all cell towers have a minimum of eight hours of backup power, which would switch on if a tower lost its regular energy source. ... --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
RE: Telecom Collapse?
The ATT (BellSouth) remotes around here installed in the last 10 years or so typically have natural gas generators installed, and the COs have a pair of generators for redundancy. Even many of the cell towers have generators. The telco infrastructure is pretty well backed up (I don't know how well tested any of it is of course). On the other hand, it appears that the cable infrastructure doesn't even all have batteries (I know some people whose cable voice and data services blink with the power). Yes. In my neck of the woods, there have been a countable number of times in the last few years where when you pick up Vzn POTS, you don't get dial tone. Cellular tends to work well. At least, when combined with Glock, I feel safe enough to rely on it for home safety issue (E911).
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Many proposed regulations are struck down before they become required regulation. Just like the FCC mandates that POTS and fiber have guaranteed battery, the FCC will mandate that cellular towers do the same. This is inevitable. The telco industry is notorious for litigating to death anything that will require an increase in operational expenses but inevitably when a service is deemed to be critical to society it has to comply. On a personal note, when I worked in telecom I never once saw a cell tower that was down due to power loss. Every tower I have worked with had some form of power generation, be it natural gas or diesel. In addition, as a cellular service consumer I have also never experienced an outage due to cellular tower power loss. phb What about the cell site? See http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/12/03/ap5776571.html The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday its attempt to require backup power for all U.S. cell phone towers is dead for now, but it will take another stab at the issue soon. The agency told a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that it will honor a regulator's decision rejecting its proposed requirement. Article Controls The FCC proposed in May 2007 that all cell towers have a minimum of eight hours of backup power, which would switch on if a tower lost its regular energy source. ... --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smbhttp://www.cs.columbia.edu/%7Esmb -- Paul H Bosworth CCNP, CCNA, CCDA
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Chris Adams wrote: Once upon a time, Paul Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: What worries me the most is a power outage longer than say 8 hours. This is the typical battery time at most cell sites, telco remotes and many telco CO's. Beyond those 8 hours, it's quite probable that the site will go down and you'll have no cell or landline anyways. The ATT (BellSouth) remotes around here installed in the last 10 years or so typically have natural gas generators installed, and the COs have a pair of generators for redundancy. Even many of the cell towers have generators. The telco infrastructure is pretty well backed up (I don't know how well tested any of it is of course). The ILECs that use my service have generators at the large sites and a number of generator trucks to make rounds recharging remote battery systems. Quite a few of them have permanent generators installed to power one or more remotes in the field. Some are still using remote power technologies on their remotes. The storm that blacked out northern Oklahoma a couple of years ago left some towns without services for over a month. The phone system itself was impacted in a few of the ILECs, but they never dropped below 80% and most of that was due to actual line damage, not power. A few of the ILECS effected didn't even blink the entire time. That being said, most small ILECs can cope better with the costs. It's easier to manage 10 towns than it is to manage 100+ towns. On the other hand, it appears that the cable infrastructure doesn't even all have batteries (I know some people whose cable voice and data services blink with the power). None of the cable services I know of around here can make 8 hours, much less 1-6 weeks. Such outages are rare, but they do happen and Oklahoma takes more than it's fair share. Lots of modems support battery backup, but the cable plant itself is prone to power outages. Jack
RE: Telecom Collapse?
And it gets better: ATT to reduce workforce by 12,000 - ATT Inc. will layoff 12,000 of its employees, or 4 percent of its total workforce, in response to recent economic pressures. Sprint/Nextel has had negative net income of $326mm, $829mm, and $505mm for the last three quarters. Verizon seems to be doing alright, about a billion in net income each quarter. GBLX has had negative net income of about $70mm each of the last three quarters. L3 has been doing slightly worse. I am sure Q4 numbers aren't going to be great. I hadn't thought about this, but it's going to be pretty interesting the next year or so.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On 2008-12-04, at 11:06, Chris Marlatt wrote: That's assuming they're not doing the same thing you are, are home, or are willing to let you borrow their phone. You're assuming a lot. I find it surprising that many people replying haven't kept a 911 only POTS line. This is straying far from network operations, but I think 911 generally engenders an unnecessary degree of hysteria. As I suggested before, the marketing of this fear from certain quarters has apparently been quiet effective. The probability of any single individual needing to call 911 is already minute. The probably that all available cell and VoIP services also won't work precisely at the moment that a 911 call needs to be made is even smaller. You're probably more likely to accidentally brutally stab yourself in the neck whilst combing your hair. A sense of perspective in these things can be useful, in my opinion. Cries of but think of the children! are merely entertaining, in my opinion. Joe
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Paul Bosworth wrote: On a personal note, when I worked in telecom I never once saw a cell tower that was down due to power loss. Every tower I have worked with had some form of power generation, be it natural gas or diesel. In addition, as a cellular service consumer I have also never experienced an outage due to cellular tower power loss. The nasty Oklahoma outage a few years ago wiped out cellular big time. In some cases it was due to power loss, in others it was loss of the backend fiber/T1's feeding it. I know one town that lost every service except for POTS, though it didn't help much since people were living elsewhere to stay warm. Of course, life gets fun in rural America. Jack
Re: Telecom Collapse?
There will always be exceptions to the rule. Nature can be quite ugly to service infrastructure and the best service providers can do is pull double duty to get services back up as quickly as possible. As you said, cellular was torn up pretty badly, but then again so was the power grid and the hardened POTS infrastructure. You make a good point about the data lines that feed cell towers. Of the cell site outages I have dealt with, every one of them was due to data line loss. phb On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Jack Bates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Paul Bosworth wrote: On a personal note, when I worked in telecom I never once saw a cell tower that was down due to power loss. Every tower I have worked with had some form of power generation, be it natural gas or diesel. In addition, as a cellular service consumer I have also never experienced an outage due to cellular tower power loss. The nasty Oklahoma outage a few years ago wiped out cellular big time. In some cases it was due to power loss, in others it was loss of the backend fiber/T1's feeding it. I know one town that lost every service except for POTS, though it didn't help much since people were living elsewhere to stay warm. Of course, life gets fun in rural America. Jack -- Paul H Bosworth CCNP, CCNA, CCDA
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:59:00 PST, Paul Ferguson said: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ The article goes on to quote some other source regarding Hawaiian Telecom's collapse. The *very first sentence* of the quote: Customers initially had complained about poor service. I quit reading after that, as I could already see where this was heading. pgpo9l0zLegAl.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Joe Abley wrote: This is straying far from network operations, but I think 911 generally engenders an unnecessary degree of hysteria. As I suggested before, the marketing of this fear from certain quarters has apparently been quiet effective. Many will agree with you; unless 911 saved their life. Of course, we could let those people die, I guess. The probability of any single individual needing to call 911 is already minute. The probably that all available cell and VoIP services also won't work precisely at the moment that a 911 call needs to be made is even smaller. 911 services are heavily used when a geographical area has an emergency, and that emergency usually includes not having power. You're probably more likely to accidentally brutally stab yourself in the neck whilst combing your hair. Unless you live in a natural disaster prone location. Or if your grandmother's alert bracelet requires a phone line for notification. A sense of perspective in these things can be useful, in my opinion. Cries of but think of the children! are merely entertaining, in my opinion. I agree. Think of the elderly! Think of the This is where my neighborhood used to be. And not to leave the more stable big cities out, think of the looting and pillaging! That said, I'd keep POTS and Cell available. I don't believe in single homing. ;) Jack
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Large scale Tesla coils would be pretty awesome :) On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 11:13 AM, Justin M. Streiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 4 Dec 2008, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: What about the cell site? See http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/12/03/ap5776571.html The FCC proposed in May 2007 that all cell towers have a minimum of eight hours of backup power, which would switch on if a tower lost its regular energy source. Time for Power over Wireless (PoW), I guess... j/k jms -- Paul H Bosworth CCNP, CCNA, CCDA
Re: Telecom Collapse?
That the old ILECs are having problems due to the fact that few if any of them know how to run a decent business is not exactly news. IMO, it might be best if some of them were finaly placed in the position of figuring out how to come into the 21st century and actually compete for business. But I agree with Alex... If we have another poorly run group of businesses pleading for tax payer money, I think I'm gonna have to go somewhere and lose my mind for a few days. -Wayne On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 10:59:00PM -0800, Paul Ferguson wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ - - ferg -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017) wj8DBQFJN3+vq1pz9mNUZTMRApD5AKCQZPe5Nctn2OkE4kVWiZ7y7rJ4qwCgsQn6 nCNVbqAfPfALdEtbU2p1fg0= =/pUF -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawgster(at)gmail.com ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/ --- Wayne Bouchard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/
Re: Telecom Collapse?
For my own $0.02 worth, I would like to point out the kind of engineering that was done during the days of Ma Bell - when it was THE phone company, and had the world in it's pocket - was quite spectacular and resulted in telecommunications systems that largely stood up and continued functioning despite the worst that could be thrown at it. But today, in our competitive (ahem) marketplace, the kinds of resources that made this level of engineering possible on such a wide scale, are no longer economically possible and is only infrequently done. Besides, most people readily accept failure. Except when it hurts them, that is, and then only after the fact is any kind of examination done and possibly steps taken to address the risk. But until then, people want cheap and that's the only selling point that matters. So your cable voip works until it doesn't, and nobody is responsible to you for it not working when you needed it to. at least it was cheap
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Wayne E. Bouchard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That the old ILECs are having problems due to the fact that few if any of them know how to run a decent business is not exactly news. IMO, it might be best if some of them were finaly placed in the position of figuring out how to come into the 21st century and actually compete for business. I wasn't going to say anything, but as long as you brought it up ... http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/12/fiber-to-the-home-ideal-econom.shtml Outlandish and bizarre, yes, but perhaps no more so than the other things you read in the papers these days?--jim
Re: Telecom Collapse?
I think we've figured out the next get together for the next nanog. Make sure there is a gun range within an hour drive On 12/4/08, Wayne E. Bouchard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That the old ILECs are having problems due to the fact that few if any of them know how to run a decent business is not exactly news. IMO, it might be best if some of them were finaly placed in the position of figuring out how to come into the 21st century and actually compete for business. But I agree with Alex... If we have another poorly run group of businesses pleading for tax payer money, I think I'm gonna have to go somewhere and lose my mind for a few days. -Wayne On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 10:59:00PM -0800, Paul Ferguson wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ - - ferg -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017) wj8DBQFJN3+vq1pz9mNUZTMRApD5AKCQZPe5Nctn2OkE4kVWiZ7y7rJ4qwCgsQn6 nCNVbqAfPfALdEtbU2p1fg0= =/pUF -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawgster(at)gmail.com ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/ --- Wayne Bouchard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/ -- Sent from my mobile device
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Daniel Senie wrote: Mike Lyon wrote: That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... Where we are, the SLC units on the telephone poles have batteries. Until very recently, DEAD batteries. We'd lose power, and the POTS line would go out. We've got our own genset and UPSs to bridge the gap, so we kept power, the cable Internet service stayed running, and the Vonage VOIP. The only thing NOT working was POTS. We run a fixed wireless business and with modern embedded hardware, that is designed to be installed on remote sites, like mast sites, we can for very little money add battery backup for one week (7 days !!) The cost of that is less than $200 pr. site and would power up to 4 routers easily. As the west of Ireland has terrible power in the rural areas (as in daily power cuts), we've implemented the power backup everywhere. A minimum of 2 days. In the regular winterstorms, when tree's fall into our overland telephone cabling, roads get flooded etc., we've had customers telling us, that the only thing that stays working for them, is the broadband from us. Some even ask us, how they can power the kit in an emergency and as our kit runs on anything from 10-28 volt, they can just hook it up to a car battery. As for E911 or similar services, as mentioned before, there is always a cellphone. Any GSM provider is enforced to provide 911/112 services as part of the license, even to phones that have no sim-card in it. And all of the phones allow you to call 911 and 112 without a sim-card. That's for some people, that can't get a phoneline, the only way of having E911/112 services. Pots will often fail during powercuts, especially if you are sitting on a pair gain/multiplexer. Kind regards, Martin List-Petersen -- Airwire - Ag Nascadh Pobal an Iarthar http://www.airwire.ie Phone: 091-865 968
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Wayne E. Bouchard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That the old ILECs are having problems due to the fact that few if any of them know how to run a decent business is not exactly news. IMO, it might be best if some of them were finaly placed in the position of figuring out how to come into the 21st century and actually compete for business. I wasn't going to say anything, but as long as you brought it up ... http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/12/fiber-to-the-home-ideal-econom.shtml Outlandish and bizarre, yes, but perhaps no more so than the other things you read in the papers these days?--jim Yeah, outlandish and bizarre: http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm We already *PAID* for that system. Well, ownership of strands aside, it would have been similar. And the thing is, years later, we have people coming along and thinking that this is in any way visionary or innovative. (That is NOT meant as an attack on you, the authors at New America, or the idea, but rather an attack on the most fantastic bit of spin and propaganda manipulation that has allowed the ILEC's to get away with this, almost completely unnoticed, so that nobody even remembers what was promised. Can you feel the despair?) So, the question is, how do we reclaim these funds from the ILEC's? Or how do we force the ILEC's to produce the system promised, and release it from their monopolies? In an environment where cities are getting ticked off and deploying fiber (Monticello, MN) and then getting sued for doing so (TDS Telecom) even after the carrier initially refused to do such a deployment, I am really very strongly in favor of this sort of self-determination. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again. - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Dec 4, 2008, at 12:20 PM, Wayne E. Bouchard wrote: That the old ILECs are having problems due to the fact that few if any of them know how to run a decent business is not exactly news. IMO, it might be best if some of them were finaly placed in the position of figuring out how to come into the 21st century and actually compete for business. Having finally broken away from the local ILEC and moved to more fertile grounds, I can concur with the above. Concentration these days seems to be on maximizing profit and bonuses for execs while stripping away every possible expense so the books look good and make the company more desirable. One of their latest schemes was to give away additional lines to customers, pumping up the overall access line count. From what I can tell, a higher access line count increases the worth of the company. New technology, or, rather, a mandate for new technology was there, but without a decent budget, there is no way to even come close to meeting that mandate. And that's where they remain today. Unfortunately, I think in the end, the company will be sold and the execs will get their big bonuses, but that seems to be the way of things these days. But I agree with Alex... If we have another poorly run group of businesses pleading for tax payer money, I think I'm gonna have to go somewhere and lose my mind for a few days. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they started begging for a cut. I think everyone these days has bailoutitis.. I'll gladly take a cut.. I'm easy, though. A few million will surely carry me through the next few years.. :) -Wayne -- Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://blog.godshell.com
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 08:48:27AM -0600, Chris Adams wrote: Once upon a time, Paul Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ One thing doesn't make sense in that article: it talks about POTS being subsidized by other services, and people cutting POTS lines. Wouldn't that be _good_ for the companies and their other services? The way the article describes things, fewer POTS lines = smaller subsidies taken from other services = better profits for other services and the company. The marginal cost of POTS service isn't subsidized by other services; at the margin, POTS is profitable. The subsidy covers some of the fixed costs (but not all of them, some of the fixed costs are covered by POTS revenues). So ... every time a POTS line is taken out, the fixed costs that were being covered by the revenue from that line now have to be covered from somewhere else (= More Subsidy). -- Brett
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Joe Abley wrote: This is straying far from network operations, but I think 911 generally engenders an unnecessary degree of hysteria. As I suggested before, the marketing of this fear from certain quarters has apparently been quiet effective. The probability of any single individual needing to call 911 is already minute. The probably that all available cell and VoIP services also won't work precisely at the moment that a 911 call needs to be made is even smaller. We haven't really had a major catastrophe where we've been totally dependent on IP yet, AFIAK. Maybe all of the qos, call gapping and the rest of the stuff the TDM networks do to deal with disasters will be left in the dustbin of Moore's Law, but maybe they won't. One thing is certain: we'll definitely find out one day, and it's not likely to be from a position of having taken the precautions, congratulating ourselves IMO. Mike
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:18:42 -0800 Michael Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joe Abley wrote: This is straying far from network operations, but I think 911 generally engenders an unnecessary degree of hysteria. As I suggested before, the marketing of this fear from certain quarters has apparently been quiet effective. The probability of any single individual needing to call 911 is already minute. The probably that all available cell and VoIP services also won't work precisely at the moment that a 911 call needs to be made is even smaller. We haven't really had a major catastrophe where we've been totally dependent on IP yet, AFIAK. Maybe all of the qos, call gapping and the rest of the stuff the TDM networks do to deal with disasters will be left in the dustbin of Moore's Law, but maybe they won't. One thing is certain: we'll definitely find out one day, and it's not likely to be from a position of having taken the precautions, congratulating ourselves IMO. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10569 is probably worth reading. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
RE: [SPAM-HEADER] - Re: Telecom Collapse? - Email has different SMTP TO: and MIME TO: fields in the email addresses
I am not sure. Business lines are significantly higher priced than residential lines and the conventional wisdom was that there is a cross sudsidy. How it shakes out across all phone lines is unclear to me. A lot depends on the economic realism of depreciation schedule. I'm not familiar with how plant is depreciated. An interesting issue related is the book value of assets. Does anyone believe that the book value of telecom assets approximates its market value? In other words, I suspect at least some of the competitive players are insolvent (negative net worth) since their physical assets would only fetch a pittance in a Chapter 7 auction. And yes, I decline to identify specific cases. :) Regards, Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 13-15, rue Sedaine, 75011 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. French Landline: 33+1+4355+8224 French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
RE: Telecom Collapse?
I find it amusing that: 1. Many assume one is able to get POTS everywhere 2. How some use the term POTS when in reality they're referring to VoIP Pardon the length, but to make the point, here's one of many Canadian examples some of us are intimately familiar with: -Construction conglomerate starts up a CLEC -Construction conglomerate doesn't permit ILEC into new subdivisions it's building in the heart of ILEC's territory, instead all POTS infrastructure including a new CO is built by its money-printing press...err, newly registered CLEC, which begins providing voice and data there -ILEC's mortal enemy, the local cableco, owns minor % of CLEC, and also happens to serve this new subdivision with its cable-based products -A year passes. VoIP over HFC...pardon me, Digital Cable Phone is introduced. Cableco buys out remainder of CLEC. -Cableco decides to throw out all the new equipment the CLEC has and begins forced migrations of customers to its VoIP...sorry, IP Telephony service over the cable network, refusing new POTS orders -Cableco founder dies...oh wait, that's probably unrelated Often MDUs (residential condominiums typically) here will create exclusive agreements with cablecos and others to provide POTS (POTS look-alike is often the result). But wait, cries the poor CLEC, what about my CRTC-given right of access to buildings so I can do the same thing? You don't always have a choice. You just can't get POTS in such cases. If a change such as the one described happens, you simply have no choice but to move. The question then is, is the sole alternative equally as reliable? That seems to vary greatly on an individual basis. If I'm just a user plugging in my 1980s Nortel phone into the same RJ-11 jack I had 10 years ago, it still looks like POTS with the same 911 reliability to me, right? Just because my provider runs the largest HFC network in the province, has at most four hours of battery at the nodes and even less at an MTA, isn't a LEC, doesn't have the ability to get anywhere close to interfacing with the PSAP, relies on a third party to do all 911 prov for them, this party happens to be a CLEC of questionable quality and possessing severely broken OSS, doesn't mean that I'm not perfectly safe nor that I can't call this system POTS, right? How about CLECs who put up a CO in the field (and literally in a field!) and have no clue on how to power it in such a way as to prevent 13 hour voice and data outages? That reminds me I still need to request credit for that Sunday in November. If you guys are on nanog and reading this, just send over the $, eh? :) So it can be argued both ways. Ultimately, it all comes down to marketing and hype. With everything going to IP at both the core and edge (yes, I chose the terms deliberately) and analogue-digital-analogue or TDM-IP-TDM-IP conversation happening so many times, the terms POTS and VOIP are becoming nothing but marketing speak open for abuse. Often, confused by marketing of the big boys, the end users have no clue what they're using, especially when it's CPE-less like VoIP-behind-POTS or hosted PBX or FTTB or cable or even things powered by field equipment. A certain company here tells DSL folks they're on fibre and another one emphasizes to staff to refer to their cable phone service as it's not VoIP, it's IP telephony (I'm not kidding). Regards, -- Erik Caneris Tel: 647-723-6365 Fax: 647-723-5365 Toll-free: 1-866-827-0021 www.caneris.com From: Chris Marlatt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 11:06 AM To: Paul Stewart; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? Paul Stewart wrote: There's at least two cell phones in our house whenever the family is home and I have neighbors within quick walking distance. That's assuming they're not doing the same thing you are, are home, or are willing to let you borrow their phone. You're assuming a lot. I find it surprising that many people replying haven't kept a 911 only POTS line. Regards, Chris
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Erik (Caneris) wrote: So it can be argued both ways. Ultimately, it all comes down to marketing and hype. With everything going to IP at both the core and edge (yes, I chose the terms deliberately) and analogue-digital-analogue or TDM-IP-TDM-IP conversation happening so many times, the terms POTS and VOIP are becoming nothing but marketing speak open for abuse. Often, confused by marketing of the big boys, the end users have no clue what they're using, especially when it's CPE-less like VoIP-behind-POTS or hosted PBX or FTTB or cable or even things powered by field equipment. A certain company here tells DSL folks they're on fibre and another one emphasizes to staff to refer to their cable phone service as it's not VoIP, it's IP telephony (I'm not kidding). Regards, -- Erik Caneris None of the above matters if the supposed POTS lines has a greater availability over the true VOIP phone you use via your residential internet service. If they can trick the customer by providing the analogue-digital-analogue service so well that the customer doesn't realize it then the originating comment that started this tangent is moot. They are providing a reliable E911 service over IP. If they're not providing a more reliable service than we're back to the same point. E911 over ip (and VOIP) are generally less reliable than true POTS. Regards, Chris
RE: Telecom Collapse?
They do. But I'm sure you know the FCC has capped some of the funds, with plans to cap more of it. That may be good or bad, depending if you're a wireless or wireline carrier drawing on those funds or not. Frank -Original Message- From: Justin M. Streiner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:24 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Telecom Collapse? On Thu, 4 Dec 2008, Frank Bulk wrote: The ILEC is the carrier of last resort. The wireless carrier doesn't have to build coverage everywhere. They don't need to serve that hog barn that requires a 10,000 feet copper loop while playing $17/month. They gladly hit you up for an FCC mandated universal service fee on your monthly phone bill precisely to fund those subsidies. I remain unsympathetic to their plight. jms
RE: Telecom Collapse?
The classic problem of the ILECs is that they have a government backed monopoly on the local loops everywhere and they leverage that monopoly to compete with companies that don't have government backing. For my $0.02,there are two good options. 1. Eliminate the FCC Universal Service/Coverage funds and let that farmer pay the full rates for connecting his hog barn. (If we had pursued this option years ago, wireless would be much more mature and ubiquitous by now.) 2. Have the government meddle with the ILECs... er, ILEC (singular) and divide the local loops into a different company that provides a platform for selling standardized products and services at wholesale rates to all CLECs. This resulting company would not be allowed to sell to end users just registered CLECs. I hate government created monopolies. It is obvious to the rest of the world that the US does not follow our own principles of democracy. (More correctly it should be termed a republic). With corporate commercial welfare rampant, the free market does not exist. Lorell Hathcock -Original Message- From: Frank Bulk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:10 PM To: 'Chris Adams'; nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Telecom Collapse? The ILEC is the carrier of last resort. The wireless carrier doesn't have to build coverage everywhere. They don't need to serve that hog barn that requires a 10,000 feet copper loop while playing $17/month. The problem is that whether the take rate for POTS is 75% or 95%, the ILEC still needs to maintain the plant, and capital expenses to maintain the plant are a killer. Either the FCC needs to release ILECs from their coverage obligations so that they can do what CLECs have done and build to the most profitable areas, or subsidize the plant for both POTS and broadband services. Frank
Re: Telecom Collapse?
The Verizon lay-offs article you linked to (Verizon just laid off thousands of people http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E2DE113CF93AA15751C1A9649C8B63) in the blog post is dated December 29, *2002* Cheers, Jayfar On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:36 PM, Jim Cowie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Wayne E. Bouchard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That the old ILECs are having problems due to the fact that few if any of them know how to run a decent business is not exactly news. IMO, it might be best if some of them were finaly placed in the position of figuring out how to come into the 21st century and actually compete for business. I wasn't going to say anything, but as long as you brought it up ... http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/12/fiber-to-the-home-ideal-econom.shtml Outlandish and bizarre, yes, but perhaps no more so than the other things you read in the papers these days?--jim
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Lorell Hathcock wrote: The classic problem of the ILECs is that they have a government backed monopoly on the local loops everywhere and they leverage that monopoly to compete with companies that don't have government backing. Monopoly? Really? I could have sworn someone devised the idea of CLEC. 1. Eliminate the FCC Universal Service/Coverage funds and let that farmer pay the full rates for connecting his hog barn. (If we had pursued this option years ago, wireless would be much more mature and ubiquitous by now.) I might accept this if wireless carriers are required to maintain the same levels of service an ILEC is supposed to carry. Oh, the reports to fill out if you take a substantial outage, and the excuses as to why it was unavoidable. 2. Have the government meddle with the ILECs... er, ILEC (singular) and divide the local loops into a different company that provides a platform for selling standardized products and services at wholesale rates to all CLECs. This resulting company would not be allowed to sell to end users just registered CLECs. What's wrong with the current method? CLEC moves in, borrows plant from ILEC to start service. Over time, CLEC puts their own plant into the ground. Both companies take a hit as they now have fewer customers in the profit zone to cover the cost of plant, and ILEC loses out more due to the hog barns which the CLEC won't dare extend plant to. I hate government created monopolies. It is obvious to the rest of the world that the US does not follow our own principles of democracy. (More correctly it should be termed a republic). With corporate commercial welfare rampant, the free market does not exist. It's not a monopoly when competition is allowed, yet no one wants to compete in a business that won't generate them a profit. Most CLECs stick to highly populated areas and won't even bother with the mid sized towns. If you own a CLEC, please, feel free to lease some lines from ATT in Ardmore, OK while you put some plant in. I'm sure people there would like more choices than wireless, cable, and ILEC. Jack
Re: Telecom Collapse?
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:59:00 PST, Paul Ferguson said: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ The article goes on to quote some other source regarding Hawaiian Telecom's collapse. The *very first sentence* of the quote: Customers initially had complained about poor service. I quit reading after that, as I could already see where this was heading. - As with many articles, there is a lot more here than meets the eye. The article is partially about my employer: Hawaiian Telcom. At least for the small telcos, like Hawaiian Telcom, this is important: ...we could free the phone companies to configure and price their basic phone service more efficiently, let them build broadband networks which can compete with the cable companies or anyone else and free taxpayers to rescue someone else. I never realized how hard core the regulatory hurdles are to ILEC competition until I came to work for one. The cable companies have no such barriers. scott
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 11:10:57PM -0800, Mike Lyon wrote: Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... workgroup: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ecrit-charter.html mailing list archives: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ecrit/current/maillist.html internet drafts, past and present: http://tools.ietf.org/wg/ecrit/ someone else will have to speak to implementations.. -- bill
Re: Telecom Collapse?
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 7:18 PM, Michael Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We haven't really had a major catastrophe where we've been totally dependent on IP yet, AFIAK. Maybe all of the qos, call gapping and the rest of the stuff the TDM networks do to deal with disasters will be left in the dustbin of Moore's Law, but maybe they won't. One thing is certain: we'll definitely find out one day, and it's not likely to be from a position of having taken the precautions, congratulating ourselves IMO. The only disaster I experienced which affected telecoms was the July, 2005 terrorist attack on London. Although the infrastructure wasn't affected, there were significant load challenges for the GSM nets especially. It was widely assumed by the unclued that either one or two GSM operators failed under peak load; by the clued that the Access Overload Control process, analogous to the PSTN's Government Telephone Preference Scheme, had been initiated to deal with the peak load. In fact, it turned out much later that AOC had indeed been declared, but unnecessarily, and against the decision of the lead agency dealing with the emergency. The Metropolitan Police didn't request it, but the (smaller) City of London force did, although the network in question was coping - the entire outage was caused by mismanaging the TDM call-gapping and QoS features. Both the Internet, and our corporate VoIP system including its peering with the wider PSTN, worked throughout.
RE: Telecom Collapse?
Yes, that's correct as far as I know -- though you might not be able to receive a return call from the dispatcher. - S -Original Message- From: Church, Charles [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 9:44 AM To: Russell J. Lahti Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Telecom Collapse? In the past, an inactive cell phone could still dial 911. I'm not sure if that's still the case, but it used to be, at least with some carriers. Chuck -Original Message- From: Russell J. Lahti [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 7:47 AM To: 'Mike Lyon'; 'Alex Rubenstein' Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Telecom Collapse? That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. -Russell -Original Message- From: Mike Lyon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:11 AM To: Alex Rubenstein Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... -Mike On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke.
RE: Telecom Collapse?
No POTS line here. New office is all VoIP, too. For my own use, though, I'm sticking with cell. Don't recall the last time that there was an outage to the point where I couldn't make a voice call in the past few years (though I've seen EVDO data go down for my region and have had to fall back to 1xRTT for an hour or once in the past couple years). Naturally, that doesn't really disprove a negative, but the chances of there being, all at the same time: - a sufficiently localized disaster where I'd have to call 911, and - a sufficiently broad disaster where the cell infrastructure had completely failed for all the CDMA carriers in my area, and - nobody near by who could help or had a landline, and - despite said broad disaster taking out *ALL* CDMA cell networks within range, a condition that still permitted landlines to operate ...seem to be quite vanishing to me. Not impossible, but there's a whole lot more likely concerns to deal with than that, nowadays. The only likely types of situations that might result in that, in general, would probably be things like wide-area hurricane-style events. Those typically provide enough advance warning to get out of harm's way. (Not that I would have to worry about hurricanes in the middle of the continental US, anyway.) - S -Original Message- From: Chris Marlatt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 11:07 AM To: Paul Stewart; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? Paul Stewart wrote: There's at least two cell phones in our house whenever the family is home and I have neighbors within quick walking distance. That's assuming they're not doing the same thing you are, are home, or are willing to let you borrow their phone. You're assuming a lot. I find it surprising that many people replying haven't kept a 911 only POTS line. Regards, Chris
Re: Telecom Collapse?
Skywing wrote: No POTS line here. New office is all VoIP, too. For my own use, though, I'm sticking with cell. Don't recall the last time that there was an outage to the point where I couldn't make a voice call in the past few years (though I've seen EVDO data go down for my region and have had to fall back to 1xRTT for an hour or once in the past couple years). Ditto for my GSM/EDGE/3G service; coverage has simply gotten too good (and too cheap) to bother with a land line at home anymore. And that, more than VoIP, is what is killing the ILECs. Naturally, that doesn't really disprove a negative, but the chances of there being, all at the same time: - a sufficiently localized disaster where I'd have to call 911, and - a sufficiently broad disaster where the cell infrastructure had completely failed for all the CDMA carriers in my area, and - nobody near by who could help or had a landline, and - despite said broad disaster taking out *ALL* CDMA cell networks within range, a condition that still permitted landlines to operate ...seem to be quite vanishing to me. Not impossible, but there's a whole lot more likely concerns to deal with than that, nowadays. The only likely types of situations that might result in that, in general, would probably be things like wide-area hurricane-style events. Those typically provide enough advance warning to get out of harm's way. (Not that I would have to worry about hurricanes in the middle of the continental US, anyway.) And, of course, if such an event _did_ occur, the authorities would certainly already know about it without your call -- if you could even get through to them. Even in everyday conditions, calls to 911 here have hold times of several minutes to get an operator. I wouldn't even bother trying, land line or otherwise, if I had an actual emergency; it'd be faster to drive to the nearest hospital/fire station/police station for help. (Unfortunately, the police and fire depts. have stopped publishing their direct numbers, and if you can still find them somewhere, all you get is a recording telling you to call 911 -- even for non-emergency calls.) S smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Telecom Collapse?
I believe its still the case, but you can order from the local LEC a soft-dial tone. You hear dial tone, however the only calls that can be made are to the LEC's Billing to the PSAP(911). This might be a good option for people w/ kids, etc. without paying the full price of a land line. I used to work for Hawaiian Tel and we had an earthquake. It knock out the power for several days. Most of our CO's stayed up supported PSTN due to generators DC. People who had telephony w/ the cable company lost communications along with their TV. Just a thought. BN On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:47 AM, Russell J. Lahti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That is the one and only thing keeping a land line at my home. I have two young children, and I need to be sure that if something were to ever happen that: 1.) The phone would work even if the power was out, or the Internet connectivity was flaking out. 2.) 911 would function exactly the way it is supposed to, and not be routed to some 3rd party call center which could potentially delay a response. I haven't found the power to be reliable, and the cable Internet tends to go down when the power goes out. There's always cellular, but then you have to depend on there being someone with a cell phone around to make the call, and my kids aren't to the age yet that I would want them toting around their own cell phones. As long as my POTS line is more reliable than VoIP, I'll probably keep it. -Russell -Original Message- From: Mike Lyon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:11 AM To: Alex Rubenstein Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... -Mike On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke. -- -B
RE: Telecom Collapse?
Even disconnected customers due to non-pay have access to E-911 Frank -Original Message- From: b nickell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:12 PM To: Russell J. Lahti Cc: nanog@nanog.org; Alex Rubenstein Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse? I believe its still the case, but you can order from the local LEC a soft-dial tone. You hear dial tone, however the only calls that can be made are to the LEC's Billing to the PSAP(911). This might be a good option for people w/ kids, etc. without paying the full price of a land line. snip
Re: Telecom Collapse?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 10:59 PM, Paul Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ On the heals of the rabble-rousing post above :-) come this from BusinessWeek: ATT Layoffs: The Tip of a Telecom Downturn http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2008/tc2008124_185061.htm I'll stop now. :-) - - ferg -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017) wj8DBQFJONdHq1pz9mNUZTMRAgtEAKCa2Pf8B68JZAD+KPhNGaXYtU/xrACg3Dgi 77xojrrjCLLAs/9+9b4hqDs= =3Umj -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawgster(at)gmail.com ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
RE: Telecom Collapse?
I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke.
Re: Telecom Collapse?
That makes two of us... Anyways, for residential VOIP, where are we these days with E911? Are providers like Vonage and such providing reliable E911 when people call 911? That is one of the major problems I see with the residential realm going with VOIP offerings... -Mike On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I deliberated for a while on whether to send this, or not, but I figure it might be of interest to this community: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/04/telecom-collapse/ Good god. If there is even the mention of a LEC bailout, I am going to go insane and probably shoot someone (those who know me know this is a actual possibility). If the phone companies had actually focused on providing good, competitive service, this would have never happened. Instead, they spent money and time on figuring out ways to screw with their competition, and have legislation passed that protects them. People (at least the ones I know) are fed up with dealing with these companies, and many people I know don't have land lines and never intend on having them again. Let them collapse. It's good for them, us, and the capitalist in you and me. Go buy a cell phone, and have a coke.
