[telecom] When the Landline Is a Lifeline

While this is technically true, it's effectively irrelevant. The fact is that the phone companies mostly tie the choice of upper-layer protocol to lower-layer technology. You can't connect a POTS phone directly to a fiber-optic cable, you need some kind of conversion device. And the devices that exist are based on VOIP protocols. Yes, you can provide broadband services over copper (that's what DSL is), but providers are generally phasing those services out because of their limitations and costs; so if you want broadband, you pretty much have to get fiber.

FG: They don't have to use VoIP; thre are better ways to run telephone over fiber optics. The point is that layers matter, and they can replace old copper without touching the insecure public Internet.

Now *you* are the one who is conflating things. IP and the Internet are not the same thing. You can use VOIP over the public Internet, as with third-party services like Vonage, or you can do it over a private IP network, as is done by all the broadband providers.

FG> But that's the point I *was* making. The article said 42 milllion American had *Internet-based phones*. But most of that number is private IP (VuIP). That was my point. The Internet frankly sucks for voice.

They don't HAVE to, but that's how they've decided to do it, because it's most economical for various reasons.

They probably mean "phones lines that come from their Internet provider".

The simple fact is that people outside the industry don't really understand the fine details of this. All they know is POTS versus broadband, and all forms of the latter are conflated. And unless you're an implementor, you don't really need to distinguish it much further.

The main reason is regulatory arbitrage: if they can persuade the regulators that IP == Internet == unregulated, they can get out from all of the requirements of a regluated telco, like providing service even to people where it's unprofitable.

R's, John