Why haven't telcos moved to SIP/VOIP for home service?
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As others have mentioned a lot of them have. I use Vonage, which makes it easy when I move to a new location. Just plug it in and go. Plus Vonage offers some cheap or free dialing to other countries, such as Australia, which makes it attractive for me since my dad lives there.
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@Nic said:
As others have mentioned a lot of them have. I use Vonage, which makes it easy when I move to a new location. Just plug it in and go. Plus Vonage offers some cheap or free dialing to other countries, such as Australia, which makes it attractive for me since my dad lives there.
This is a mobile version of what those other providers provide. For example, Cox's solution is a box similar to Vonage's, but with Vonage you can move anywhere in the US, possibly the world. With Cox, I'm limited to placed they service.
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@Dashrender said:
Is that a federal requirement or a local one?
@jason is not talking about anything that anyone on the customer side will ever see. He is talking about the connection to the PSAP (Public Safety Answer Point aka 911 operator).
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@JaredBusch said:
@Dashrender said:
Is that a federal requirement or a local one?
@jason is not talking about anything that anyone on the customer side will ever see. He is talking about the connection to the PSAP (Public Safety Answer Point aka 911 operator).
LOl - that infrastructure could easily be left in place - just a translation matrix put in to give the PSAP what they need, the rest of old telephoney system could be ripped out.
The centralized phone system is what allows 911 to function. If, let's scale this down a bit, the USA as a whole dumped the PSTN and moved to Skype (for example) 911 would have to be redesigned. Though speaking specifically of Skype - MS changed it's structure from non centralized call routing/flow to one that requires all calls to go through their hubs. These hubs could easily be setup to send 911 information as needed.
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@JaredBusch said:
When I was growing up the local telco was GTE North. bought/sold/blah. Finally landed as Verizon at the time DSL was introduced at the turn of the century. Guess what. Still no DSL available there.
That's what you get for living in Southern Illinois.
Northern Illinois, specifically DeKalb, was a pilot town for GTE's brand new frame relay DSL in 1997. I moved to Texas and got the third installation slot in town 1998. They had brand new folks learning how to put it in from my install. And I had to buy a POTS line because I was using ISDN. So add to the fun of porting over my number to POTS, dropping a pair in for the loop, then configuring all that fun stuff.
People wonder why I don't bat an eye when I have two pipes currently coming into the house. I've always paid a lot of money for my internet access.
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@Dashrender said:
Before I cut my phone portion of my bill down to $12/month (unlimited incoming, 100 min outgoing) I was paying $32 a month for unlimited in/out calling and caller ID/Call waiting/call waiting ID, On Screen Caller ID.
I live in an extended LATA here, so if I have a POTS line I have to pay a minimum $50 a month for it. The line itself is ~$20, just like everyone else in Texas. If I actually want to call someone outside of my town without paying long distance charges or even have someone from Dallas call me without paying long distance, I have to buy a "metro" line, that's another ~$10 or so. Then taxes, USF, and vertical services like CID and VM, you got a $50 phone bill.
When I worked for AT&T, it was pretty sweet for the line. Every vertical service sold by them, like VM, LineBacker, CID, and a DSL/dialup account so it was a $120 normal bill. I just had to pay taxes and anything above the 1.5Mbps loop for DSL, so $20 a month usually. My second, third, and fourth lines were as equally cheap and DSL was fairly inexpensive as well.
The month they finally got around to pulling my concessions off my phone bill really sucked. Only took them a year to do it. Thankfully AT&T was starting to sell unbundled loop DSL at the time so I was able to convert my multiple pairs and DSL pipes to dry loop. Then I flipped my house line to a SIP provider. $150 for two years of service paid up front, pretty nice.
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@PSX_Defector said:
That's what you get for living in Southern Illinois.
Well I won't argue with you on that...
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I'm very late to the convo. Been out all day. So starting from the very top.... I can't see telcos wanting to move away from their old model... they've already paid for it and it shuts out competitors. If people wanted VoIP they could have moved to it already without needing to wait for the telcos.
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agreed, I don't think home users/consumers want VOIP. Instead they want things like Skype and Apple Talk.
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@Dashrender said:
agreed, I don't think home users/consumers want VOIP. Instead they want things like Skype and Apple Talk.
LOL, they don't want VoIP, they want VoIP?
Those are just as much VoIP. They just are not VoIP connected to the PSTN. -
Actually Skype does connect to the PSTN, so is even VoIP in that sense as well.
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@Dashrender said:
Also, POTS phones are super cheap. Brand new for less than $10.
VoIP are cheaper due to lower taxation in the US. But telcos get special rights and benefits by not doing VoIP.
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@DustinB3403 said:
I think a global PBX would be awesome. Everyone just goes out and buys a modestly priced VoIP phone. Connects it to their wireless and they would be free to call anyone in the world.
Skype, for example? LOL This product already exists.
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@Dashrender said:
@DustinB3403 said:
I think a global PBX would be awesome. Everyone just goes out and buys a modestly priced VoIP phone. Connects it to their wireless and they would be free to call anyone in the world.
The reasons service providers aren't doing this (at least in the US) is because POTS lines are abundant. Fibre is not. Which with having a global community on VoIP service you'd really need more throughput.
@scottalanmiller Ferrari vs Tractor analogy
Nah - high speed internet is available to most anyone who lives in a city. If those people can get Netflix, they can easily get phone service over that same line. Those in more rural areas have fewer or no options toward this.
Even rural areas it is getting rare to not have Internet access.
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Skype exist yes, but the idea is to be able to have a home phone type of solution, where you aren't on a laptop or desktop computer.
A true "home phone" so to speak.
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@Dashrender said:
Cox is technically all VOIP, but the modem they install into your home converts it to analog/copper to work with your traditional POTS phones.
Cox is also not a telco, they are an ISP that is competing with telcos by offing VoIP as the means to do so. ISPs will offer VoIP as their means of competing with the incumbent telcos.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Skype exist yes, but the idea is to be able to have a home phone type of solution, where you aren't on a laptop or desktop computer.
A true "home phone" so to speak.
Just a matter of getting a Skype phone. Pretty much no VoIP service doesn't have a handset option on the market.
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Companies have just been stopping making many of those products because they are ridiculous considering you can just put skype onto any smart phone, tablet or hand held device and it turns into a far more useful Skype device than if they made a dedicated one.
The market provided what you wanted long ago, had what you wanted and advanced past it.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Skype exist yes, but the idea is to be able to have a home phone type of solution, where you aren't on a laptop or desktop computer.
A true "home phone" so to speak.
How about some of these: http://www.skype.com.ar/en/download-skype/skype-phones/
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@Jason said:
@Dashrender said:
Frankly, I'm guessing for the most part, that all calling moves across the same or similar pipes that the internet uses.
911 paths are required to be analog still.
What do you mean, the paths? You can call 911 from all kinds of non-analogue lines.
