AT&T landline service terminates in 2020?

General discussions and other topics.
17 posts Page 2 of 2
by danielg4 » Sun Aug 26, 2018 6:41 am
jillianmoffett wrote:I'm not saying it's the end of voice telephone service, access to 911, etc. My concern is for rural folks who rely on the copper wires to get phone service. If they are not serviced or replaced with fiber optic, and cell service is not reliable, what are we to use in an emergency?

What opportunity is there for Sonic if AT&T discontinues POTS?

The whole concern for me the the power part. Landlines work when there is no power.
Landlines work when there is no power because of the huge batteries in the switching stations. With fiber, that battery power is now being spread across homes, which is definitely not ideal IMHO.

The "opportunity" coincides with viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6897, and I think Sonic will have some hard choices to make. If the CPUC and/or legislature says a big fat NO to AT&T's request, which I hope they do, AT&T will have to divest its ILEC holdings in this state, like Verizon already has. Frontier Communications, which bought into Verizon's divestiture in several stages, is edging toward bankruptcy as a result, so they would not be eager to buy into an AT&T divestiture, like Sonic wouldn't. What will whatever new company do to the bulk contracts with Sonic? And if the state says OK, Sonic will lose access to the copper lines for new Fusion service except FTTN, which may now be jeopardized at the federal level...
by jillianmoffett » Sun Aug 26, 2018 1:45 pm
In all of this commentary, still no one has supplied a response to my original concern:
HOW WILL WE COMMUNICATE IN AN EMERGENCY?

in an emergency longer than 24 hours how is it that people in rural areas with no supported (copper) landlines and only VOIP over LTE assisted by battery back up, how will we be able to communicate beyond 24 hours?
Landlines didn't need power to run. Now, our phones will need power to connect.
Also, rural areas don't get cell reliably.
And even if so, cell signals if overly taxed like in an earthquake (when everyone is trying to call everyone) will be jammed and not usable.
by dane » Mon Aug 27, 2018 10:56 am
jillianmoffett wrote:In all of this commentary, still no one has supplied a response to my original concern:
HOW WILL WE COMMUNICATE IN AN EMERGENCY?

in an emergency longer than 24 hours how is it that people in rural areas with no supported (copper) landlines and only VOIP over LTE assisted by battery back up, how will we be able to communicate beyond 24 hours?
Landlines didn't need power to run. Now, our phones will need power to connect.
Also, rural areas don't get cell reliably.
And even if so, cell signals if overly taxed like in an earthquake (when everyone is trying to call everyone) will be jammed and not usable.
Yes, the demise of landlines presents a multitude of issues for emergency response. For example, 911 location information isn't very accurate for mobile phone users, particularly in dense urban environments with multi-level and multi-dwelling buildings. And as you note, without power, none of the non-POTS type telecom services work, and the duration of power availability varies based upon local battery backups, cell site batteries and generators, cell phone battery life and charging ability, etc.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by digitalbitstream » Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:32 pm
AT&T is not helping things by raising prices on rural area copper POTS lines into the stratosphere, especially for the less regulated business lines. They're trying to milk the last drops out of the copper wire cow.

The competition is there with $15/month unlimited fixed wireless phones:
https://shop.straighttalk.com/shop/en/s ... homephones

The only people screwed are those in valleys or pockets or areas too far from the nearest cell tower.

----

The really serious issue is how robust are the systems meant to give PRIORITY to some users, on the cell network, during an emergency. It all seems pretty adhoc now (as evidenced by the recent California wildfire issue, where Verizon throttled one of those fake-unlimited data plans).
by nhbriggs » Wed Aug 29, 2018 4:13 pm
@Jillian --
While I keep copper POTS service for the emergency communications, my Internet connection is useless if there's no power (for the modem), and so I already have a UPS in place to keep that running. If I depended on VoIP then it would run as long as my Internet connection was running. So, if I were dependent on the modem/VoIP I would buy a small gasoline powered emergency generator. For example, a small Honda generator, 2200 watts, will run for 8 hours on about a gallon of gas. It's about $1150 MSRP. I would run it intermittently to charge my UPS. It would also run my refrigerator, recharge my laptop, etc. You don't want to store large quantities of gasoline though. Solar panels are another option for backup power (with battery storage).
by Roxanne » Mon Apr 27, 2020 3:15 am
So here’s the problem. There is no technology out there that I’m aware of which will REPLACE the landlines. You will never get as clear a connection, for starters. But what’s worse, is that if you are relying on VOIP for your “home phone”, you may very well find yourself in the dark with no phone after the next earthquake or whatever disaster. VOIP uses computer connections and relies entirely on Commercial Power. If the Commercial Power (PG&E, etc.) goes down, so does your phone. A battery backup is a lovely idea, bit it only lasts for about 24 hours, whereas a landline in the Central Office can stay up for several days, or indefinitely, if the utility (AT&T, etc.) has enough fuel on hand to run the engines that can power the office and the landlines. I find it curious that Sonic is in favor of eliminating the landlines since they rent both the space and the dial tone in the Central Offices from AT&T and the like. I would expect that they would rather have their landlines stay up in an outage, or especially, in a disaster. I, myself will keep a landline as long as one is offered to keep myself and my family safe in yhe event of an outage or a disaster. Care to comment, Sonic? I’m curious about your logic in supporting this loss of service.
by rchrdfrdmn » Fri Jun 19, 2020 2:43 pm
Apparently this thread started in 2018. Now it's mid 2020.

So, what is the current status on ATT's plans to replace copper landlines with VOIP in California?

We have both an ATT landline AND a Sonic VOIP+Internet-over-copper (Fusion) DSL. We intend to keep our POTS as long as we can.
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