Well, not everyone. I have to start shedding excess lines here and convert a bunch of stuff to VOIP or Google Voice, but I'm keeping at least one POTS loop on Copper if I have to raise a ruckus to do so. Several of the 'Fiber to the Home' initiatives building out want you to sign a form agreeing to move all of your voice data and video services to the fiber, that line gets crossed out and modified to keep one Legacy POTS over Copper line.
Yes, it's a pain to maintain, but you'll do it. I have my reasons.
***** Moderator's Note *****Once Upon A Time... There used to be simple dry-pair "McCullough Loop" alarm service, which worked like a telegraph - they ran multiple loops from the C.O. to a Bunch Block and put all that alarm company's local subscribers in series. If a premise alarmed, the local alarm panel opened the loop rotary-dial style with the account number and the zone code that tripped. Was used for banks and unattended locations because any tampering would be immediately noticed - the loop goes open.
Nowadays there are security monitoring backups available but there is a significant added cost to having one, like a SMS or packet radio based transmitter like AlarmNet. And if it's based on Cellular SMS and the cell system goes down from lack of proper backup power, your backup system is worthless.
Given that many "CEV" sites have less
That's a whole 'nother discussion, because IMNSHO *all* critical cell and wireline Telecom sites should have 96 hours minimum of local backup power and stored fuel to run those services that need the "Five Nines" reliability
- Hospitals, doctors offices, or just the heart patient living at home. Too many public safety related agencies have abandoned independent radio systems (KISS simple analog with backup power at the repeaters) for their more "reliable" cellphones and Blackberries and complex trunked radio systems (Nextel), and that's a dangerous fiction.
The Telco's 'Official Disaster Plan' is to deploy portable generators to small sites where the power is down, but that plan will fail miserably in a widespread disaster. It's like spinning plates - not enough portable generators stocked locally ("We'll truck them in from the depot in the next state!" Yeah, right... On what roads?) or people available to fuel and maintain them every ~12 hours - and the roads have to be open and passable to get the portable generators widely deployed, which won't be the case with many major highway bridges down and roads impassible after a major earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, tornado...
It's bad enough when you have to provide local premises power to run your telephone subscriber equipment, but when the service fails from lack of power at a midpoint like a CEV or line concentrator, or an amplifier point on a Cable TV system knocking out their VOIP offerings, then the whole system has taken a huge step backwards in service reliability.
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PS: Bill, human-readable Obfuscate please, GMail won't let me at the headers. Grumble...
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