POTS Panned

The days of POTS or Plain Old Telephone Service seem to be numbered. The FCC put out a request for comments on how service providers are migrating to IP networks. In response, AT&T asked the FCC to shut down the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network and the plain old telephone service that it has supported for over 100 years.

OK, it’s a new century. It’s also true that new network architectures are packet switched rather than circuit switched. But is it really time to give POTS the old heave-ho?

I’ve got my doubts. Mostly because I remain unconvinced the Internet is up to the job. VoIP over DSL or Cable broadband is a dicey thing. It’s a lot like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When it’s good, it’s very good. When it’s bad, it’s horrid. If you really think that sounding like you’re deep sea diving or chopping off each other’s sentences is acceptable telephony, then have at it. But please don’t call me until you get that fixed.

What’s at the heart of this problem is the elephant in the policy room called network neutrality. Proponents want absolute equality of access for all. That means you can’t do anything to favor one packet over another. Mandating that all packets get equal treatment protects us, at least in theory, from network operators favoring one content provider over another and ruining the democracy of the Internet. Unfortunately, such a superficial approach prevents implementation of any quality of service measures that could ensure that each packet gets the network performance it needs. As a result, TCP/IP guarantees that non-time critical text files are perfectly transferred, while time critical voice and video streams may or may not get the low latency, congestion, and packet loss characteristics they need to maintain signal integrity.

On the Internet, you launch your packets and you take your chances. Contrast that with the dedicated channels of switched circuit networks. There’s no comparison when it comes to reliable and repeatable call quality. For many consumers, that may or may not matter. We’ve gotten use to variable performance on the cellular phone system. People no longer expect to hear a pin drop. They simply want to communicate when and where they feel like at a moment’s notice. In fact, it’s the rush to cellular rather than VoIP that is the main reason so many people are abandoning their landline phone service.

It’s understandable that AT&T and the other traditional telephone companies are feeling trapped between two worlds. They’re stuck maintaining a costly investment in analog POTS lines and their associated interfaces and switches at the central offices. At the same time, there are fewer and fewer users to amortize the cost. They can’t raise prices without risking that the remaining satisfied users will revolt and move to cell phones or VoIP services.

What are businesses doing? The ones with more than a line or two are going digital, but not on the Internet. A business of any size that has a PBX phone system on-premises has options. The legacy solution is ISDN PRI or T1 PRI, a digital telephone trunking system that aggregates up to 23 outside lines. Oddly enough, this is a PSTN technology but it doesn’t depend on analog POTS service being available. The other option is SIP trunking, a packet network technology. The difference between a SIP trunk and an analog telephone adaptor connected to the Internet is that the SIP trunk runs on a private network where quality of service can be assured. The SIP trunk may be set up to provide both telephone and broadband Internet service on the same line without quality issues.

Realistically, the days of POTS may be coming to an end. We got through the analog to digital television transition and we’ll weather whatever chaos ensues when analog telephony is no more. One key issue that will be hotly debated is the decommissioning of copper phone lines at the same time the dial tone is disconnected. Copper is likely to persist long into the future. T1 and ISDN lines are provisioned over standard twisted pair copper. So is EoC or Ethernet over Copper that uses multiple copper pair to transport mid-bandwidth Ethernet service. The replacement for copper is fiber, and there is precious little of that in the ground right now.

Phone Power... To The People

Enterprise VoIP and broadband phone service for residential users is busily chipping away at the hundred year old switched telephone industry. But what makes the tried and true approach vulnerable? Prices!

Traditional telephony is set up on a tariff basis that nickels and dimes you for every little thing. First you pay a line cost. Then there's local phone service. Long distance is extra with charges for every minute called. Features such as Caller-ID are add-on extras. They even want to charge you a monthly fee for servicing the wires in your home or building, just in case some crazed rodent decides to have copper for breakfast. Is it no wonder your eyes bug out when your phone bill arrives?

Large corporations caught on to this game a long time ago and have been steadily upgrading their facilities with in-house VoIP telephone handsets and IP PBX phone systems connected to competitive ISDN PRI or SIP Trunking digital service providers. Smaller businesses and home phone users are headed the same direction. Except that they need something much smaller in both scale and price.

Broadband telephone service allows new highly competitive telephone companies to vie for your business even though they don't own the copper telephone wires that are so jealously guarded by the incumbent phone companies. How to they get around that monopoly? They piggyback on the broadband Internet service that just about everyone has these days.

Phone Power is one of these new generation telephone service providers that has something attractive for both home and business users. Residential plans start at $14.95 a month with a special introductory offer of $9.99 a month for 3 months available as of this writing. That low price gives you 500 minutes of long distance per month plus Caller ID, voice mail and other highly desirable features. I counted 26 of them on the list and they're all included in the basic price. Need more minutes? Low cost upgrades are available.

Phone Power's business service is even more intriguing. It's a virtual PBX system that you order by the line. Each line is $39.95 a month. Start with one or two. Add more as your business grows. You get big company features such as an auto attendant (electronic operator) and hunt groups to tie your phones together. Seems like a great way for small businesses, even home based businesses, to get started with a professional grade phone service.

In addition to low cost local and long distance, international calling rates are also very attractive with this service. Have a look at what Phone Power has to offer.

Your Right to Competitive T1 Prices Protected

This afternoon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reaffirmed your right to benefit from the intense competition in wireline based telecommunication services. In a 5-0 decision, the Commission rejected a petition by the Verizon Telephone Companies to "forbear" or let them out of regulations that mandate they provide competitive access to their lines in six major cities in the Northeast.

The forbearance provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was put in place to level the playing field between incumbent phone companies, the legacy of the Bell System monopoly, and newer competitors. The incumbents enjoyed a 100 year reign free from competition. They were protected as a government monopoly to ensure that telephone service would flourish and become universally available. That goal has long since been accomplished. One result is that every copper phone line to every home and business was installed and is owned by the local telephone company. That includes not only analog voice lines, but those used to provide last mile connectivity for T1 digital line service.

T1 lines are the mainstay of small and medium businesses who need regulated, reliable voice and data trunk lines for their PBX telephone, point to point connections, and dedicated Internet access. Basic T1 service is provided using two pair of conventional telephone line twisted pair. That's wiring that is already installed to every business nationwide. By bonding T1 lines together, higher bandwidths can be provided to offer fractional DS3 and the newer Ethernet over Copper services.

So why don't competitive carriers just get their own last mile connectivity and bypass the incumbent telcos completely? That's actually starting to happen. XO Communications runs fiber optic lines from its POPs or Points of Presence to nearby office buildings in major cities. They also offer wireless access using early versions of the new WiMAX radio service.

The problem is that building out new facilities, either wired or wireless, is a major undertaking requiring huge capital investments in a highly competitive environment. It will take many years before competitive paths are available with the kind of coverage now in place for the incumbent telephone companies. Consequently, it's not unreasonable to ask that the incumbent facilities put in place under monopoly protection be shared with competing carriers at least until equivalent connectivity can be installed.

It should be noted that the competitive carriers I'm talking about already have their own regional or national fiber optic backbones and network operations centers in place. If you are willing to colocate your equipment at one of their colo facilities or a neutral "carrier hotel," you'll get the best prices on bandwidth possible. It's only within cities where pulling new copper or fiber cable is pricey, or out in the boonies where the cost per mile for new lines is usually unreasonable, that competitive carriers need access to installed telco lines. For that, they pay the local phone company a fair price for the "local loop."

Is this all really important to you as a business owner? You bet it is. One of Verizon's assertions in asking for relief is that competitive carriers are cutting into their wireline business. There's a reason for that. Competitive means competitive pricing, the kind of pricing that has it made it possible for thousands of businesses to establish digital voice and data connections and others to expand their bandwidth at rates they can afford. If we go back to an era of telephone company monopoly, we'll go back to monopoly pricing too.

If you haven't checked the competitive prices for T1, DS3 and Ethernet services lately, you may be in for a shock. The expansion of voice and data network options that's been fostered in a free market environment is nothing short of astounding. Prices of once staid line services have plunged in just the last couple of years. Pull out your current contract and compare it to the results you get from an instant online T1 line service quote. You'll see.