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PhoenixDown
FIOS is Awesome
Premium Member
join:2003-06-08
Fresh Meadows, NY

PhoenixDown to CGMason14

Premium Member

to CGMason14

Re: Verizon is using Sandy as an excuse to force people to FiOS

nothing00:

a) Almost everyone who still has a home phone uses a cordless phone. Not many people with old school phones that don't require an outlet for power.

b) You are forgetting that POTS isn't always a pure 100% copper run from the CO. A lot of places, including my house, are mostly fiber (non-fios) and have been for decades. The only "copper" for many of us is the line running down the block and into our house.

c) FIOS (regulated voice or "voip") is far far far far far more reliable in my opinion. I am sure if you ask any tech, they will tell you the same thing.

nothing00
join:2001-06-10
Centereach, NY

2 edits

nothing00

Member

said by PhoenixDown:

nothing00:

a) Almost everyone who still has a home phone uses a cordless phone. Not many people with old school phones that don't require an outlet for power.

Search Amazon for "corded phone". Still plenty of them old school phones being made and purchased.

I'm sure almost everyone does have a cordless phone. Lots of cordless phones have battery backups to help in this situation (but still runs into the limited battery life problem). Regardless of the cordless phone issue I do know of many people who have corded phones specifically because they want a phone that works when the power goes out. (While I do have one of those phones, I don't have POTS so I'm at the mercy of my battery backups.)
said by PhoenixDown:

b) You are forgetting that POTS isn't always a pure 100% copper run from the CO. A lot of places, including my house, are mostly fiber (non-fios) and have been for decades. The only "copper" for many of us is the line running down the block and into our house.

Not really forgetting, just being imprecise. The non-"copper" POTS service still had the same regulatory backup power and availability requirements.
said by PhoenixDown:

c) FIOS (regulated voice or "voip") is far far far far far more reliable in my opinion. I am sure if you ask any tech, they will tell you the same thing.

Sure, now it is. It's a brand new, just installed network designed to last decades. Let's see how it looks after 40 years of use and 20 additional years of neglect.

By virtue of fiber being non-reactive, not subject to electronic interference, corrosion, longer reach and more it'll end up being less costly for Verizon to maintain. (And more expensive for the customer in energy and replacing millions of batteries every year.) Those virtues don't make it more reliable. They make it less costly to maintain a particular service level.

And of course in a power outage FiOS is only as reliable (or predictably unreliable) as your battery backup.

FiOS regulated voice is a pure bait and switch. It's VOIP with a different bill and no service availability requirements.

PhoenixDown
FIOS is Awesome
Premium Member
join:2003-06-08
Fresh Meadows, NY

PhoenixDown

Premium Member

said by nothing00:

Sure, now it is. It's a brand new, just installed network designed to last decades. Let's see how it looks after 40 years of use and 20 additional years of neglect.

FiOS regulated voice is a pure bait and switch. It's VOIP with a different bill and no service availability requirements.

1- fiber has been used to provide voice service for decades. The reliability of it in actual working conditions has been proven.

2- regulated voice (over fiber / FIOS) is =not= VoIP. Customers choosing regulated service plug into the same switches as the copper lines.

You keep arguing about how necessary true pots line service is -- but if you read the news topics here, people have been cutting out pots lines for years. If you read posts in this very forum people are screaming that pots is too expensive. Copper prices are at all time high's -- people are dying in thier attempts to steal it. At some point there jus aren't going to be enough customers wanting the service for companies to continue offering it.

The only real arguement you have is who pays the minuscule electric bill for powering the ONT but its a weak arguement as that relates to real world survivability.

danclan
join:2005-11-01
Midlothian, VA

1 recommendation

danclan

Member

Fiber is already more reliable, most powerful, flexible and cheaper to run over the long haul than copper is. Fiber has been in use for 30+ years already.

It's a proven reliable and stable technology. You can argue the case that copper might be better in an emergency but that just is not the case any more.

Fiber is the reason your 'Nan in California sounds like she is next door, if you are old enough to remember THE AT&T then you know what I am talking about. There is no interference its housed in the exact same tubing that copper once was. It's glass its natural water and corrosion resistant.

Fiber repairs faster and more cheaply than copper. You have fewer fiber lines to repair during a cut and you don't have guy's tenting up for days on end matching pairs up.

There is no rational argument for copper anymore. The "power" argument is moot at this point with the level of infrastructure that is currently built out.

The cost of your powering the device is next to nothing over the level of service, types and quality of service you now receive.

I don't hear this power argument in the cable forums, they too have to power all their equipment to get phone, T V and internet over one very old coax plant that may or may not have fiber depending on the age and location. They aren't constantly bemoaning that they now have to power all their equipment.

There are MILLIONS of cable and FiOS customers that are quite happy and satisfied with the state and direction of technology that allows them to communicate to the world at large. There would be millions more if the service was built out in their area.

You want to make real change? Petition your local community developers and councils to mandate buried lines for all phone, cable and power infrastructure. You would see drastic reduction in these storm related power issues across the board.
McBane
join:2008-08-22
Wylie, TX

McBane

Member

You know, I bet if all these POTS supporters were offered a choice of you pay for the service of maintaining the POTS network yourself where no FiOS subscriber money is put into that, the cost would probably be so high that nobody would want to bother.

I know I don't want my FiOS bill increasing to maintain an ancient network architecture that only 10 out of every 1000 people are crazy about because they can use their ebay purchased 10 year old land line corded phones during a power outage.

The need of the many outweigh the need of the few, or the one. Get over it or move to AT&T turf. I myself moved to Verizon territory specifically for Fiber and never look back to regret my decision. You may also look on the AT&T forums for all their subscribers begging for a FiOS type solution and telling all of us how lucky we are to be in Verizon FiOS territory.

nothing00
join:2001-06-10
Centereach, NY

nothing00 to PhoenixDown

Member

to PhoenixDown
said by PhoenixDown:

1- fiber has been used to provide voice service for decades. The reliability of it in actual working conditions has been proven.

Okay, we're conflating two different things when we talk about reliability. Let's talk about availability and maintenance. We can agree that fiber costs less to maintenance and we should also be able to agree that POTS has higher availability. The brand new shiny FiOS network is less available by design.

Reliability as it's been used here has meant at least two different things. From how often the customer experiences outages and under what conditions (me) to how often and how much money must go into maintaining the network (others).
said by PhoenixDown:

2- regulated voice (over fiber / FIOS) is =not= VoIP. Customers choosing regulated service plug into the same switches as the copper lines.

And you still end up with an ONT and the inherent unreliability of the network during a power failure. FiOS Digital Voice calls end up going over the same switches as POTS does too most of the time and vice versa. Technically it's a silly distinction since these services are necessarily transparently interoperable. Legally it's a different story.

Show me a Freedom Essentials fiber phone line that's plugged into an electromechanical switch in some CO and I'll agree that the services are truly different and that POTS truly has never evolved.
said by PhoenixDown:

You keep arguing about how necessary true pots line service is -- but if you read the news topics here, people have been cutting out pots lines for years. If you read posts in this very forum people are screaming that pots is too expensive. Copper prices are at all time high's -- people are dying in thier attempts to steal it. At some point there jus aren't going to be enough customers wanting the service for companies to continue offering it.

I'm not arguing that POTS is necessary at all. I'm arguing that without a suitable life safety equivalent we should hang on to it.

Show me the high availability replacement. I'm all for progress.
McBane
join:2008-08-22
Wylie, TX

McBane

Member

So nothing00, would you pay 3x or more what your currently paying for FIOS to keep your copper?

nothing00
join:2001-06-10
Centereach, NY

nothing00

Member

said by McBane:

So nothing00, would you pay 3x or more what your currently paying for FIOS to keep your copper?

I don't want to "keep my copper". I'm not nostalgic about and dreams of it don't keep me warm at night. I could care less about what the underlying technology is as long as the public has a high availability communications network available.

The argument seems to be, "FiOS does cool things therefore we can ditch the life safety requirements for our future critical infrastructure!"

And yes, I do agree burying power and telecommunications lines should be a priority for areas that are prone to storm related outages. And yes, I'm absolutely willing to pay my share to do it.

»mashable.com/2012/11/21/ ··· outages/

danclan
join:2005-11-01
Midlothian, VA

1 recommendation

danclan to nothing00

Member

to nothing00
Nothing00,

This is called changing the argument and its various forms. You are debating things that have nothing to do with your original premise.

I see no further reason for anyone to respond to this thread since the points raised have been addressed ad nausem and have so far not been refuted.

Fiber is not new, period. it supplanted copper a long time ago and I would even argue its more prevalent now than copper in dense population areas. You just aren't seeing it as other posters have noted. It beats copper in all cases including your cost version of reliability.

Fiber is HA. Fiber is used everywhere possible due to its superior HA characteristics over copper, just ask the military and banking systems for them copper is the option of last resort.

Fiber requires less power to transmit more data over longer distances than copper could ever possibly hope to. Ever wonder why there aren't anymore trans-oceanic copper lines anymore?

Copper is a dying medium and it will continue to die off as it should.

Further wireless is making many a fiber plant slowly obsolete as well. Just because your Nan doesn't use a cellular phone doesn't negate it as an increasingly reliable and required part of the national infrastructure. Wireless companies have been shoring up their wireless plants to reach HA levels of 99% or better.

Copper is becoming 3rd tier service for people and its becoming 3rd tier in terms of HA as well.

nycdave
MVM
join:1999-11-16
Melville, NY

1 recommendation

nycdave to nothing00

MVM

to nothing00
said by nothing00:

Show me a Freedom Essentials fiber phone line that's plugged into an electromechanical switch in some CO and I'll agree that the services are truly different and that POTS truly has never evolved.

FiOS Freedom Essentials still uses a class 5 CO switch, such as a 5ESS, DMS-100, GTD5 or EWSD....FE can also use a CS2K Softswitch.

nothing00
join:2001-06-10
Centereach, NY

nothing00 to danclan

Member

to danclan
said by danclan:

Nothing00,

This is called changing the argument and its various forms. You are debating things that have nothing to do with your original premise.

I see no further reason for anyone to respond to this thread since the points raised have been addressed ad nausem and have so far not been refuted.

Thanks. Since the master has spoken we'll all go away.

Which argument has shifted?

There are two points to my argument:
- FiOS is not high availability - by design as opposed to the technology it replaces
- Verizon has shifted costs of running and maintaining the network to the consumer (for voice)

Your argument on the other hand is "fiber is great and fiber deployments can be highly available so therefore FiOS is too". Bologna! Just because it's fiber, the 10G fiber in my house that my dog occasionally walks over can't be called reliable.

Should be crystal for you. Everything else you wrote isn't very relevant.
nothing00

nothing00 to nycdave

Member

to nycdave
said by nycdave:

FiOS Freedom Essentials still uses a class 5 CO switch, such as a 5ESS, DMS-100, GTD5 or EWSD....FE can also use a CS2K Softswitch.

Cool stuff Dave.

CGMason14
Nj Roaddog
join:2002-07-22
Mountainside, NJ

CGMason14 to danclan

Member

to danclan
said by danclan:

Further wireless is making many a fiber plant slowly obsolete as well. Just because your Nan doesn't use a cellular phone doesn't negate it as an increasingly reliable and required part of the national infrastructure. Wireless companies have been shoring up their wireless plants to reach HA levels of 99% or better.

Wireless will never supplant a fiber plant in bandwidth or value, there just isn't enough spectrum to support it. I don't expect to see an uncapped consistent 35/35Mbit LTE connection any time soon. Plus the cell phone voice network pretty much collapsed the day after Sandy hit. Data worked for the most part, but voice service was dead. If the lines to your house didn't get knocked out, you still had POTS.

Whats funny is that I had an actual copper pair (actually 2 since we have 2 lines) direct from the CO prior to switching to FiOS in 2007. That same CO maintained an electromechanical crossbar switch well into the late 90s! It was obvious too, after dialing there was a short pause then a kr-klunk when the call connected and started ringing. The lines were never truly silent either, you could hear faint signaling tones and voices while dialing numbers.

danclan
join:2005-11-01
Midlothian, VA

danclan

Member

said by CGMason14:

Wireless will never supplant a fiber plant in bandwidth or value, there just isn't enough spectrum to support it. I don't expect to see an uncapped consistent 35/35Mbit LTE connection any time soon. Plus the cell phone voice network pretty much collapsed the day after Sandy hit. Data worked for the most part, but voice service was dead. If the lines to your house didn't get knocked out, you still had POTS.

Whats funny is that I had an actual copper pair (actually 2 since we have 2 lines) direct from the CO prior to switching to FiOS in 2007. That same CO maintained an electromechanical crossbar switch well into the late 90s! It was obvious too, after dialing there was a short pause then a kr-klunk when the call connected and started ringing. The lines were never truly silent either, you could hear faint signaling tones and voices while dialing numbers.

Old school CO....but wireless will eventually take over...it's not going to happen in the next 5 years but 10 years out you should expect there to be fewer people hard wired and decline in wired connections. Its happening already and will continue to accelerate as younger wireless kids age and move out.

Wireless whether we like it or not is the future state of a very large portion of the communications environment Just check out the sheer number of smart phones being purchased in the past 5 years and their growth.

There is AMPLE bandwidth. The issue is really how efficiently its deployed and with what type of radio. The US mobile carriers aren't nearly as efficient as European. I think (hope!) that will improve over the next decade.