> My own calls are seldom more than 5 minutes, typically 2 minutes or
>> less, and only 20 seconds to order a pizza (tell them my phone
>> number, simply say "repeat the last order", done (would be faster
>> if they had CID :-))
My [local] Pizza Hut does have caller ID and they are sometimes confused when I call from my cell phone because they keep my information under my landline (home) number.
Given the apparent widespread acceptance of VoIP, I wonder what's
> going to happen with all the TelCos? I haven't seen any innovative
> new services from any local ones in decades. The big thing for me
> way back when was Touch Tonen the mid-1960s in New Mexico. I gave
> myself Touch Tone service when I moved to California by
> "accidentally" reversing the green and red wires. :-) :-) :-)
There are now come concerns expressed over AT&T's U-verse (TV) service because your landline phone now becomes VoIP and people are comcerned about when the power fails you're without landline phone service, likely in an emergency when you're likely to need it most and the cell phone service is overwhelmed with calls.
I'm sure they'd be willing to continue to sell separate telephone service to a U-Verse subscriber.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Let's back up a step, and be sure we're not comparing apples to oranges. Is the U-verse service the same as Verizon's FIOS offering, or does it DSL to transport data? Since the original poster put "TV" after the first mentionof U-verse, I'd like to get it clear if he's talked about a bundled cable offering, FIOS, or DSL.
U-verse, I believe, is provisioned over a video signal to a device called a VRAD (I forget what the acronym stands for), the big refrigerator-sized boxes, which have to be within a certain distance (I believe 2,400 feet, although that would seem to require an awful lot of boxes), where it goes over the copper loop to the subscriber.
On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:31:25 -0400, after what Adam H. Kerman wrote, the Moderator, in a Note, asked:
I can only paraphrase what I *think* I understood from a local at&t U-verse telephone CS agent, but that was this: that U-verse offers internet access, telephony, and TV, over a delivery system that is fiber to the "refrigerator-box" out on the street nearby, and *either* fiber *or* copper to the household from there, "all depending."
AT&T U-verse doesn't deliver video, data, nor voice via DSL. Verizon FiOS uses a different protocol.
With video, it's nothing like cable. No television channel is sent to the viewer until he tunes in a channel. It's comparable to cable's Video On Demand services, but entirely different technology. For residential services, there is one main set-top box installed (which incorporates a DVR) plus receivers for other tvs and recording devices. There can be up to four television streams per residence (no matter how many receivers), only one or two of which can be HD, and all four can be recorded on the single DVR. The receivers at the other devices can tune in a channel or recorded program on DVR.
U-verse and FiOS are exempt from CableCARD, but I don't know if it's because they are defined in the Telecom Act as switched digital video or because neither was a consumer service when the legislation was written.
Data: up to 18 Mbps down, 1.5 up.
I have no idea what the digital voice protocol is.
I have Uverse which is delivered as a high speed DSL-like service running at ~25MB/2MB on the copper pair. I also have POTS on the same line. There is an option to drop battery/dial tone on the line and use VOIP which has two RJ11 interfaces already provided on the gateway/modem they provide. In my case, I kept the old POTS service instead and it coexists just fine with Uverse.
The U-verse service is almost the same as FIOS, except the last 1,000 feet of U-verse is on copper where FIOS is Fiber-to-the-door. My understanding from talking to AT&T techs [is] that in new areas [U-verse does] have Fiber-to-the-door. I would guess that you could get U-verse TV and Internet along with a copper phone line. I can't get it in my area since I'm over 10,000 feet from the nearest CO/Remote/Fiber Ring and the cable in my area is over 30 years old and has many bad pairs; I know that since the last year or so I have had phone/DSL outages which took from a day to a week to get fixed.
This explains that while the FiOS adapter seems to have provisions for a bunch of phone lines, net connections, etc. they put multiple boxes on apartment buildings.
Holy Mackerel! Even a picture of one that exploded and burned.
It doesn't appear ANY effort has been made to camouflage and/or prettify the things; they're large/ugly (in a residential neighborhood) and some of those pictures show VRADs (apparently) obscuring sidewalks and almost blocking views of traffic signs.
I wonder about the incidence of accidental vehicular destruction of them given how close to the roads most/all of them seem to be. Here in Calif. if it's on the ground it's gonna get hit -- you can take that to the bank.
Does FiOS require such large above-ground vaults?
Around here (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, etc.) even cell towers have to be hidden and out of sight; many are disguised as trees, some are hidden within church steeples, etc.
Those grey plastic boxes with the network interface are meant for single family homes, but the phone company puts them on the outside of apartment buildings for new subscribers rather than making a decision to install a single large modern box to terminate all the inside wire in the apartment complex. If they had such a box in an area getting FTTB (fiber to the building) installed, it would certainly make sense to bring the fiber into this box for ease of interface, allowing a long period of transition in which some subscribers will continue to be on copper pairs to the building.
I once lived in a six-unit apartment building in 1928. Telephone service was originally provisioned with a large piece of wood in half of the basement under three units with screw-down connections for a dozen lines or so. I was working out of the house and required three lines. When he was working, I didn't notice that the installer wasn't preparing to extend the new drop into the basement but terminate it at a grey box he was about to install. I was annoyed as I considered these grey boxes to be invitations for theft of service but he wasn't cooperative. I stuck a padlock on the box. My landlady was extremely annoyed as I hadn't sought her permission to have the phone company install an outside box.
A week later, I noticed that the lock had been drilled. I think it was the telephone company techinician I saw at the building the day before, who had trouble finding the line he was sent out to repair and clueless about the function of those grey boxes, as the lock I put on does nothing more than secure the cover over the jack that bypasses inside wire the subscriber would use for testing the line by plugging in a telephone set. The entire cover can be removed by removing the single screw, which is what the technician is supposed to do.
I made a police report of vandalism, which was sufficient to gain the phone company's cooperation to terminate the lines inside the basement and not outside the building.
So multiple boxes on the outside of a building just mean that the building's owner and phone company haven't made an agreement to install a modern point of interface of sufficient size to terminate all telephone service and inside wire. And I suspect that even with an agreement, you're always going to get a tech who won't use it.
They are not much bigger then traffic signal and telephone cabinets. As to FIOS, since it is underground for the most they system are located in Environmental vaults. I have seen cabinets; regular cable type; they may got bent up but held up pretty good.
FIOS has only passive equipment (the equivalent of SAIs) in its distribution. FIOS either terminates at the CO or (when they couldn't physically run the extra fiber) at advanced DLCs. In downstate New York, these FIOS "SAIs" are (about) 2'W x 2'D x 3'H, have no AC power and, like SAIs, are mounted either on ground pedestals or up on poles near the distribution fibers and wires. On Long Island, this amounts to mostly on poles.
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