Southern New Jersey residents want fairness from Verizon [telecom]

South Jersey wants fairness from Verizon

(Letters to the Editor, South Jersey Times)

Every elected official, every business owner, every farmer and every voter I've talked to desperately wants Verizon to provide our area with technology that will give South Jersey a reasonable opportunity to participate in the 21st century economy.

In response to our concerns about deteriorating or non-existent service, Verizon denounces us, seeking to make us look ridiculous by stating that we are not capable of understanding modern technology.

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Reply to
Bill Horne
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Ah, Verizon wants to replace real telephone service with Voicelink, mobile phones packaged to pretend to be fixed phones.

Oddly, the rubes in Fire Island and in Manasquan (both full of zillion dollar beach houses of NYC business execs) didn't think much of Voicelink either.

One of the things I've alwys wondered is if they get away with the Voicelink stuff and they abandon all of the wires, how's the mobile backhaul going to work?

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine
+--------------- | One of the things I've alwys wondered is if they get away | with the Voicelink stuff and they abandon all of the wires, | how's the mobile backhaul going to work? +---------------

Well, from the cell towers to the COs, point-to-point microwave, of course. ;-} [Or fiber. Maybe.] The *real* question is if they abandon all of the wires, how are they going to power the cell towers, especially during emergencies after the batteries run out?!?!? [Solar? No. Think hurricanes. Or blizzards. Or haboobs. Or smoke from wildfires.]

-Rob

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ Rob Warnock 627 26th Avenue San Mateo, CA 94403
Reply to
Rob Warnock

Nothing like that "cell phone quality", 7 kbps voice compression. They can't waste too much bandwidth on voice because they need to leave room for more cat videos.

During the Fire Island kerfuffle, a VZ spokesman went on the radio using VoiceLink to show how good it sounded. He sounded like a cheap speech synthesizer doing a metallic robot voice. Which is about what most cellular calls sound like.

Verizon's current management concept is that the wireline division primarily exists to provide fiber backhaul to the cell sites. There are apparently some strange accounting shenanigans going on there, too, which may come out one of these days. It appears that the wireline folks pull fiber to the cell sites, wireline foots the bill, VZW pays them a rather modest price (compared to what Sprint would pay, but Sprint can't get the dark fiber VZW is rumored to be getting), and wireline cries to the regulators about its losses.

Reply to
Fred Goldstein

The cell sites were never powered by the copper wire plant, they always used local utility power and some battery backup. Recent FCC action (FCC 07-177), now requires at least 8 hours of backup power in the event of a local power failure, mainly because first responders are using cell phones for communication. This order was in response to hurrican Katrina. Prior to that FCC ruling, there were no backup requirements for cell sites, although operators did usually provide at least a couple hours of battery. Some providers are now also supplying backup generators to meet the 8 hour requirement. There is no requirement beyond 8 hours (for cell sites, COs have a 24 hour requirement).

Bear in mind that the central battery design was implemented to save maintenance cost, not necessarily to provide phone service in the event of a power failure. Experience with increased calling volumes (read $$) led to the current backup battery/generator combination found in COs.

Eric

Reply to
Eric Tappert

[Moderator Snip]

Bill,

I'm going to call you on this one. Write the equations and you'll find a single telephone pair is incapable of providing more than about a Watt or so of power remotely, It is inconceivable that any telco would use hundreds of pairs to charge a battery for a PBX, The battery supplied power to the switch and was charged by local power, thus the switch operated on local power.What PBX's did have was a throwover to allow a phone to operate as a standard line when power failed so that all communication capability wasn't lost..

On the other hand, that Watt or so is enough to power a repeater or a regenerator on a carrier system, although many of those systems used higher voltages than the standard 48 Volt plant..

So, citation please....

Eric Tappert

***** Moderator's Note *****

I don't have one, sorry. Right after I started out, I asked a "rated" man why certain pairs were designated for "battery supply", and he said they were for charging PBX batteries.

Anyone else have a citation?

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
Eric Tappert

You are correct. Bell Laboratories Record articles on small PBX's, such as the 555, state that power was supplied by the central office.

In addition, critical field infrastructure, such as concentrators, were also powered by the central office.

Reply to
HAncock4

I stand corrected, the 555 PBX was CO powered. However, it was a small cordboard and rarely had a local battery plant. If a local battery plant was used, there was a switch to disconnect it from the station equipment at night for recharging. Ringing was also provided from the CO over a cable pair. Distance from the CO was also limited due to the power loss in the one or two pairs used for power.

Details can be found at

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In any event, one has to question the need for local battery plants when CO power is adequate for operation. Additionally, the amount of power available on a pair is severely limited and any kind of central control (i.e. one with modern features) PBX of any useful size would easily exceed that capability.

I might also add that the vast majority of PBX users did not opt for the battery plant. Seems businesses didn't see a need for phones when the lights were out...

As for outside plant equipment, the power limitations over cable pairs is severe and only the smallest loads (like repeaters and regenerators for carrier systems) are supplied by CO power over cable pairs. Look at the objections to the 2007 FCC (previously cited) ruling requiring concentrators and remote switches to have 8 hours of backup power to see the practical side of this.

As a learned Bell Labs supervisor once said "There are a million ways to solve any problem and here in the Bell System there are million and one solutions in the field."

Eric Tappert

Reply to
Eric Tappert

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