Posted on 11/21/2013 1:20:49 PM PST by ThethoughtsofGreg
merica’s traditional phone system is not as dependable as it used to be. Just last month, the Federal Communications Commission told phone companies to start . According to one estimate, as many as 1 in 5 incoming long-distance calls simply doesn’t connect.
The problem may be in the way those calls are being routed — often via the Internet, which is cheaper. It may also have something to do with the gradual decay of traditional landline infrastructure.
Dan Newhouse, a farmer in eastern Washington state, hears that decay on his home phone every day.
“We live out in the country, it’s a landline, and it’s as good as it gets,” he told me over the phone. “Anytime it rains, we wouldn’t be able to have this conversation, because water gets on the lines and it gets way worse.”
Repairmen have told him that the wires are just old, and they’re too expensive to be replaced. He says the phone company seems to be allowing the whole system to deteriorate.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanlegislator.org ...
After Hurricane Rita, (destructive CAT 3 storm), we were very popular since our land line was the only way for many to communicate to the outside world.
Landline is dying because of Al Gore (and others) Federal taxing of them. My landline has $30 of taxing on $30 in monthly services. $60 a month total. So someone else can have a free internet and free Obamaphone.
Phone companies of all sorts have been ripping us off for decades.
My only concern is if the competition from land lines is dropped, the cable companies and most importantly cell phone companies will jack up their rates even more than they have been.
I get TV (2 sets dvr), internet (5 PCs), and yes phone (3) for LESS money than my cell phone (3 only 1 is a smart phone) bill.
My school tax bill is a little less than my cell phone.
My property tax bill is a little less than my cell phone.
I heat my house for less than my cell phone bill I a live withing 30 miles of Buffalo, NY
My electric bill is less than a third of my cell phone bill.
Seems I can do a hell of a lot more with other utilities for a lot less money than a cell phone with crappy connections.
Question: While a text requires significantly less system resources than a long phone conversation why are the text charges so much higher?
I am not sure how this will work out for businesses.
I use to sell telephone systems to businesses that had as many as five lines in a rotary. They had hold and call transfer capabilities. Can cellular systems in the US duplicate this now?
Copper easily corrodes. Even temperature changes with the seasons can cause problems with connections between the Phone Company equipment and a customer.
Most of all, the issues come from the phone company doesn’t like properly maintaining their ‘outside plant’. This leaves the poor Service Techs applying ‘band-aids and duct tape’ type fixes to problems, rather than fixing them.
The phone companies also arrange the workloads for technicians to where they aren’t allowed time to properly fix anything. When a cable pair is bad, its quicker and easier to simply put the customer on another pair, rather than tracing out and resolving the issue, because they most likely have 10-15 other jobs to go and do for the day. When repeated year after year, you end up with a big cable nearly full of bad cable pairs.
Lightening is also the worst thing for the old infrastructure. Not much can be done about that.
I could go on for hours about all of this.
We keep 2 non cordless phones plugged in besides our cordless phones. Power went out a few days ago because of that big midwest storm. Had to loan one of those non cordless ones out to a neighbor becasue they had none.
We have one for use in power outages. After, and sometimes during, every storm there is a tech out at the control box on the corner. Our carrier is Frontier.
Rita was the end of a landline for me. I had damage and just never brought it
back into service when I finally got rebuilt.
I agree than cell service is only as good as the cell companies provisions
for back up generation to their assets, etc.
I just bought a new phone today. It was a classic bell systems phone with a rotary dial that was in real good shape. On the bottom there was a label, “Property of bell telephone - not for sale”
I bought it because I don’t think the grand kids have ever seen one...
It shouldn’t be dropping calls. It should still be on the PTSN. All digitization since the 1960s uses sampling that’s pretty good and hasn’t changed since. Once the old copper long lines went, everyone’s been using 300-3.4khz voice rang sampled 8000hz. It creates a very unique sound that everyone recognizes when they hear a human voice transmitted as such.
Now the end units, those have gotten trashy. The old landline handsets were solid and did a phenomenal job at receiving and transmitting the analog sound. Nowadays, the Chinese made junk phones have the smallest mic and earpiece possible. They use cheap radios which lower signal quality. All that affects quality of the call. I wish electronic places would have a kiosk where you can hear how each handset sounds akin to the televisions.
If you call quality sucks outside of hiss and crackle, I’d look at the handset. The main reason why I say that and not the equipment, outside of the digital switches, there’s been virtually no hardware changes in the digital equipment from the 1970s to 2000s. SLC96 led to Series 5 which led to Lightspan and DISCS which led to Tellabs 1000. Only a few generations of equipment all based on the same sampling and hardware design. All the same quality of reproduction.
Now, as to the failing landlines, it’s called “managed expectations”. The telcos want people to accept the quality of cell phones as a standard. The idea of a crisp and clean audio transmission that works 99.999% of the times you try and use it is “old fashioned”. Too expensive. Not enough profit.
Because they operated as one company they could afford to keep sizable crews in residential and commercial installation as well as maintenance and repairmen. My dad retired as a Special Services {Data Circuit Tech} for Bellsouth in about 1993 with 45 years service. When the split up come he had two choices. Stay with then South Central Bell or go to AT&T. He chose wisely and kept his job. Most who chose AT&T were out of a job in less than five years. Because AT&T owned the office he worked in called the old 4-A which was long distance switching and it was changed to ESS {Electronic Switching} he went back outside till retirement.
The Land Line Gris is not being maintained like it was. Used to anytime you went out especially into town you'd see one or several phone company trucks. Now they are rare with a handful of techs covering large areas. Which brings up several other issues. In the event of natural disaster it is harder to pull crews from point A and sent them to the disaster. This was Ma Bells strength. Used to you never saw sloppy work. For example if a buried cable podium {box} on the side of the road was damaged it was fixed ASAP. I've seen them stay wide open for months.
Used to be local workers took local trouble reports and all trouble shooting used local employees. A major outage such as all phones on a road being out brought an immediate response. Now Immediate response is a few days and the call center in wherever is oblivious to the fact that an entire community may be out.
Ma Bell did need some modifications such as allowing extension phones without charge but they had a reason at the time for it. Ringers on phones before the split took considerable current to ring the bell and they had to compensate for it. The old bell type ringers required a capacitor sitting accross the ringer. That was how they knew you had an extension phone. They could see it from the Test Board. The split came right at a time Ma Bell was undergoing a major changeover from mechanical to electronic systems. Judge Greene got credit for improvements he had little to do with in that respect.
Anyone believing that their cell phone makes them immune to any and all Ma Bell problems are in for a shock. The Cell Grid is completely dependent upon their Ma Bell Land Line Grid to function. They can not function without going from your cell phone to the tower to Ma Bells Cable Grid. I like my cellphone but my land line stays as well. BTW all the 911 Centers in the U.S. are also Ma Bell dependent to function.
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