Walking is a good exercise, but it is also good for the mind: it gives time to observe and think. At least this is what I do during my daily walks. As myself, I usually observe and think about the local infrastructure along the way. Recently, I was surprised to see some telephone company cabinets open beside the sidewalk. Usually when you see an open box, there are telephone technicians working on the system. But these are all open and unattended, which I think is very unusual.

Of course, I also took this opportunity to view the contents of these pedestals in detail. Looking at hundreds of pairs of brightly colored wires that are neatly terminated, and obviously expensive to install and maintain, I wonder why someone would expose such a valuable asset to the natural environment. With the decline of traditional POTS or plain old telephone service, the world may no longer have much use for the millions of miles of copper cables fed back to the central office (CO) of the telecom. However, this once-critical infrastructure still applies to certain things, which makes me wonder: What does the local loop do?

Like any industry that existed before the turn of the last century, the telephone industry is flooded with jargon. Telecom companies refer to everything they use to run the system as their physical factory. If this reminds me of the image of a factory, it is not far away: switchgear, cables and ancillary equipment are indeed a huge machine, and initially, the telecommunications company was actually just to transmit sound from one place to another. And the factory built.

Telecom physical equipment equipment can be divided into two categories: internal equipment and external equipment. As the name suggests, internal plants are everything under the roof. This includes the switchgear itself, the main distribution frame connected to the local loop circuit, and all supporting equipment for the so-called BORSCHT function, abbreviated as:

With the advancement of technology, the situation inside the factory often changes quite quickly. For example, many COs are initially filled with step-by-step (SxS) or crossbar switches, and one rack after another is filled with spark and crackle relays and solenoids. These relays and solenoids connect one subscriber line in the switch. Connect to another subscriber line, or ship it to another exchange for connecting to its subscribers. Later, electronic switches appeared and replaced all old equipment, and this change usually took place so quickly that users hardly noticed the change.

External equipment refers to all equipment installed by the telephone company outside the central office. If it is hung on a pillar, buried in the ground, or sitting on a tower somewhere on the top of a mountain, it is counted as an external plant.

The most obvious aspect of the external equipment is the miles of wires that form the local loop. In the early days of telephone service, at least in North America in the 1980s or early 1990s, the local loop was like this—a pair of copper conductors extended from the main distribution frame of the central office to the location where the demarcation line pointed to the subscriber. When the phone goes off-hook, the cycle is complete, and the process of making or answering a call begins.

Like the internal factory, the local loop and other components of the external factory have changed over the years, adding additional equipment to handle newer digital technologies such as Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL). However, despite the constant changes in technology, much of the work done by telephone companies to upgrade services is based on using their most valuable asset-all these miles of precious copper wires, carefully building a huge network, almost covering the map. Of each address.

Unfortunately, the technology of the 19th century can only be advanced to this point, and telephone companies have faced a double challenge since the early 2000s: the rise of mobile phones and the emergence of broadband. People are no longer fixed on fixed phones, and mobile phones can do it. The same job is even more. In the case of poor cellular coverage, the broadband connection is likely to be used with a new VOIP phone service, through a cable Internet provider or, ironically, through a DSL connection through a pipe into the user’s house.

But the proliferation of DSL connections is indeed the last cheer for the local copper loop. Since 2000, the number of fixed-line telephone subscriptions in the United States has dropped from nearly 200 million (about 70% of the population at the time) to only 116 million lines in 2018. People just no longer have valid use cases for landline phones. This explains the details I observed during my morning walk: A few days ago, a cable construction worker appeared near a pedestal I found opened and set up a sign announcing the arrival of Ziply's new fiber optic network. Facts have proved that Ziply purchased the operations and assets of Frontier Communications in my area as early as May, and invested 500 million US dollars to upgrade the network.

As far as I know, Ziply is mainly interested in using the right of way to an external factory they inherited from Frontier. The remaining fixed telephone lines seem to be nothing more than a source of cash to fund the construction of the new network. My question is: what will all these copper wires become?

Merely giving up such a valuable asset may seem like a shame, but it may only be valuable to people who do not run a fiber optic company. Maybe one day all copper will prove to be just a hassle, something that consumes maintenance budgets with little return. Perhaps by then, it would make sense to discard it-to pull all those carefully installed and well-maintained cables from utility poles and pipes, and then sell them for the value of scrap copper.

Or are there other plans for this seemingly valuable asset? Can the copper wire network have a place in the communications ecosystem, using its unique position to connect almost every family and business? We would love to hear your thoughts on what to do with the local loop, and we especially want to hear the opinions of any telecom engineers who are dedicated to building these amazing networks and keeping them alive. There must be plenty of inside stories about external factories, and we really appreciate you sharing them in the comments below.

They should sell the copper wire to Muzak, and Muzak will install the interstate speaker system for the background soundtracks we all need in these uncertain times.

Nonstop Yakety saxophone? no, thank you.

Ever heard of a remote concert hall? It was almost like this in 1901: http://synthmuseum.com/magazine/0102jw.html

I recently watched a classic suspense movie. One of the main plot elements is a service that has a large number of photo players connected to subscribed businesses. On the receiving end, there is a speaker and a phone. Customers will call in the song they requested, and the waiter will load that song into the gramophone player. It functions as a manually operated jute box.

Thank you so much for doing this!

Reading about Teleharmonium will remind people of the Optigan organ in the 1970s. This is a kind of musical instrument with a CD as the sound source. Its function is similar to a sample keyboard. It borrows the production method of soundtracks in movies and movies. There is a disc inside the organ with a series of concentric circles on it. Each track plays a note or even the accompaniment track plays a specific chord.

1- Find their scientific use. 2- Use them for a function that no one thinks is important, and that is the power supply during a disaster.

Some radio signals may be received. I did collect some cables and used them for breadboard jumpers.

For the #24 wire pair with 48 V insulation, you cannot reduce the power too much.

Above 90v RMS of the ring.

The specification of the VMDF (Vertical Main Distribution Frame) protection block is actually 86v ac. If the loop meets specifications (maximum 1600 ohms), it can provide enough current to operate up to 3 old electromagnetic ringers. Yes! The old days of POTS and PANS.

Not an engineer, just an old 5-XBAR, #1ESS, #1AES, #5ESS, DMS100 technology.

You say DMS 100? Dude, I've ripped off a bunch over the years. To be precise, the brown Nortel.

@ Col. Panek said: "For the #24 wire pair with 48 V insulation, you can't reduce the power too much."

If you overcool the wires, you can.

Bringing the next ice age

Theoretically, 40W line loss is allowed, and the use of "line power" /-190V can provide up to 60W of power to the home.

European and North American electrical safety standards, IEC 60950-21, IEC 60950-1, and Telcordia GR-1089-CORE have a /-190VDC option for powering remote DSLAM electronic equipment from the CO. Also called RFT-V circuit, the output power of each channel is limited to a maximum of 100VA. In cases where more power is required, multiple channels can be combined (but must be kept isolated from each other). The RFT-V circuit is used when system access is limited to service personnel, so only the Trunk line feeds the remote control, not the actual distribution cascaded to the home. To avoid accidental "buzzing", the energized lines are kept in a continuous "adhesive group" and labeled like this.

There are newer technologies, such as VoltServer's digital power, which can ensure safe energy delivery by ensuring that there is no damage from interference or accidental touch. But the circuit may be shut down frequently or annoying because...

The actual problem with distribution lines is (as many have pointed out) that they may be in poor condition, or be affected by rain, etc. Tracking the wire pairs in the home is daunting because it swaps the wire pairs in various cables and cross-connect boxes back to the CO. There are also some devices, such as "bridges", which must be removed. High-voltage circuits must be labeled. Mixing voice and high voltage is impractical... and trying to cascade "adhesive groups" through multiple cables may require swapping and cleaning over considerable distances.

So there are potential use cases... but it usually fails reliability or actual testing.

Since this article is discussing the use case of scrap copper, which means that voice (among other things) is entered in another way, so the only thing to worry about is power.

This is exactly what I think and why I still want one. They don’t need electricity, suppose you have a non-motorized phone (yes, they still exist, I have a pair, actually. One is old, the other, not too old, maybe 10 years?)

"People just don't have valid use cases for landline phones anymore."

In Southern California, a valid case is that cell phone service disappears more quickly in the event of a fire. Due to lack of power or backup infrastructure, the cell site is offline, and the remaining sites are overloaded, but the capacity is small. After the utility power is cut off, the local loop remains powered for a long time.

For 911 calls, you *know* the location where the local loop ends-for mobile phones, maybe you know where the phone is, depending on whether you have good assisted GPS positioning (it depends on the data service of the cellular site, which is the first A power emergency) or whether there is a good time difference between the arrival data from the cell site (assuming they even provide the data). – For VOIP calls – it depends on who your VOIP operator is.

Of course, there are many solutions (backup generators, batteries, etc. to keep the phone charged, amateur radio, etc.).

But POTS is very simple and requires limited infrastructure to continue working.

Came here for this. Jim is right. But not just because of wildfires. We also had an earthquake in California. I remember Loma Prieta (7.1) very clearly. It is true that the mobile phone service in 1989 is not as powerful as it is now, but my mobile phone cannot be connected for a few weeks, and POTS can work in about an hour. It's uneven, but work. We also had no electricity for most of the week (the transformer at the Moss Landing power plant exploded), so it was impossible to charge the phone.

Having worked in the telecommunications industry for 40 years, I can tell you that POTS lines are far from simple. In addition to the oldest installation, there is a lot of hardware behind any old POTS product line. Let me explain...

Indeed, many years ago, there was a dedicated copper wire pair from your CO switch to your house. This was true at least until the 1980s. But then the digital revolution happened. It is now more likely that if you still have a POTS line, the line only runs from a nearby service dock, which is equipped with power supply equipment that is not much different from modern VOIP equipment. In other words, there may be only a few hundred yards of wire between the digital source in your home and the POTS phone.

POTS is still the most reliable service. In Connecticut, we have experienced many ice storms and power outages, which caused the coaxial cable TV and VOIP service to be interrupted for days and weeks. Neighbors who need a telephone line or Internet connection come to my house to continue their work because even the backup power of the cell phone tower has run out. Our TV service also remained stable during local outages. Since 1974, my POTS has only dropped once due to weather. As an electrical engineer who graduated in 1973, if someone told me that you can get a TV signal through a few pairs of copper wires, I would laugh. Those who devalue POTS may never find themselves in a position to completely cut off the means of communication.

Fiber is deployed where I am, so I can’t subscribe to DSL or old analog phones now. But they kept the existing local loop and did not allow tampering or dismantling it, so the optical fiber and copper wire (two antennas) were laid together.

In the white north of Canukistan, we just let them rot.

Load coil, bandwidth limiter, paper sleeve and lead sheath. All this is good for the earth!

If you neither subscribe to expensive wired services nor very expensive wireless services, you can get "fax"-level quality from any uncorrupted line, all of which require a small monthly fee and expensive long-distance calls Wait.

I find it incredible, considering the scrap value of copper and lead-in the UK, the spearman pulled the cable out of the ground to sell the scrap. The result was too bad, leading to a change in the laws of scrap merchants.

why not? Lead is not created by us. Lead-containing ore is only mined from the earth and then smelted. Lead is also an extremely common substance.

Although these elements do exist underground, they are not necessarily harmful where they occur naturally. However, they may be harmful in other places or at higher concentrations. Lead that is transported from the mining site and then transferred in large quantities to the wells used for drinking water can be a big problem.

However, this concern is really only for a small number of materials.

I let my old pot phone continue to run for a while, because I think I can still rely on it to work when the power goes out. But when the power did go out, it was discovered that the phone company was a little lax in maintaining standby power-their focus had shifted to fiber optics. Therefore, I switched the phone line to the voip service on the fiber I was already running. Now I can see that the economics of the new 5G wireless may eventually become a strong competitor for wired Internet access—at least for families. This may have caused Verizon to stop building FIOS. As for the copper wires all over the world-they will be scrapped, which may cause uneconomical copper mining for a period of time...

IFF (if and only if the old mathematics talk) your land line is 100% using copper wire all the way back to the central office, your phone is powered by one of the original UPS, and the large -48V battery pack in the CO "floats" through the public Power supply or backup diesel. It’s actually very difficult to turn off the CO’s power supply. However, as early as the 1970s, RBOC was implementing a system that is still called a “pair gain” system. You can use T1 carrier technology in two or four pairs of copper Up to 96 users are placed on the cable, so “pair gain.” Over time, those copper wire pairs that carry T1 signals become optical fibers, which are fed to multiplexers in the roadside cabinets, called Remote terminal. None of these paired systems are powered by the CO, so when the commercial power supply for the remote terminal stops working, the emergency gel battery is dead, and all phones on the paired system will freeze.

@DDS said: "Using T1 carrier technology, you can accommodate up to 96 users on two or four pairs of copper cables..."

Transmission System 1 (T1) was introduced in the Bell System in 1962 and can transmit up to 24 telephone calls simultaneously through a single copper wire transmission line. [1] Therefore, the 96 channels of each standard T1 line divided by 24 channels equals the required 4 lines. The next step is the rarely used T2 (6.312 Mbit/s) with 96 channels.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier

In the dark ages, I learned Unix at one of the factories that made Western Electric SLC-96 ("Smooth 96"). I think I remember it standing in two full-size 19-inch equipment racks and cabinets. That should be around 84 years. It is said that this is a big deal, but I am busy playing with the Unix style that does not even have vi.

I am in a major metropolitan area, on a DSL island. We are surrounded by fiber, but ATT refuses to run it to my street. We have no other suppliers available, and the speed limit is 50mbs, but these suppliers rarely achieve a drop of 10 seconds or more in a minute or two. I have never played an online video game. I read an article about access to high-speed internet in rural areas and wondered if there were a dozen families on my street would get it.

Those stories about access to high-speed internet in rural areas are stories of people biting dogs, exceptions rather than rules.

"SpaceX Starlink helps Native American tribes:'It brings us into the 21st century'"

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-helps-native-american-hoh-tribe/

Ho family? Is Jane Fonda an honorary member? B^)

I hope StarLink is a bit affordable...

We can only get 1Mbit Comcast (advertised, but much slower) or cellular Internet (10-20Mbit faster, but limited hotspot data).

This is the "down state" in rural Illinois.

This depends on, in Central Europe, the EU has large infrastructure projects to eradicate poverty, and the provision of cheap optical fiber for poor villages in the Carpathian Mountains is part of it. Therefore, until the city upgrades there, the village in the deep forest is better connected than I am in the city center.

I have been using fiber for 20 years and live in a rural area 10 kilometers away from the city. They upgraded to 1Gb 10 years ago. Of course I have to pay for it, but for a connection I can connect, $14 per month is reasonable There is no data cap for streaming Full HD 24/7. Sometimes I don’t get more than 800Mb, but I can survive

I have a good impression of you pmichaelh. I am only 3 miles from a town with a major highway. DSL is 0.9MBps. Comcast stopped half a mile from my house and refused to run half a mile of cables to serve 10-20 houses.

You can't talk to your neighbors and split for the 0.5 mile dedicated line? My parents gathered the whole street and decided to install their own network because the telephone company had old communication lines and refused to upgrade.

Don't worry, we have the same story in China, but we failed. A few lucky people get fiber, but usually only when you are along the main line, they have planned to run between towns. When we started to see more and more fiber optic trucks in the area, we were very excited, but unfortunately, this is the next county road north of us. So we waited with our DSL. I have PingPlotter to track our pings randomly over 1000 milliseconds during the day, but there are at least a dozen times a day. Customer service will not do anything about this...

They "abandoned in place" in the suburbs of Boston. A few years ago, I received a letter telling me a date that unless I switch to fiber, my copper wire will be disconnected. So, I changed (I have ulterior motives). Keep the fiber connection for a month, and then transfer my wired home phone to the OOMA box. Verizon optical fiber is reserved with their ONT, just in case I decide to switch from COMCAST to FIOS.

What should the copper factory do? I think someone will eventually recycle it for copper (legal or illegal). AFAIK, it has been replaced by overhead fiber, at least in my town. This was done when FIOS came in (I assume they used FIOS profits to "fiber" the entire town). I can't believe that there are many people requesting wired telephone services, including mobile phones and VOIP.

I heard that Verizon is "cherry picking", which exchanges use optical fiber and which ones don't. They do have a statutory requirement to provide telephone service in every town, and they can't give up the copper factory until they get approval from the PUC. Picking cherries seems to involve a formula that takes into account the presence of competing broadband providers, population density and the total number of potential broadband customers. I also heard that due to economic conditions, fiber deployment is currently suspended (so no new exchanges are "fiberized").

Ultimately, the plan (as happened in other states) seems to be to dump the remaining pure copper exchanges (those that are deemed unprofitable to convert to fiber optics) to a third-tier supplier like Clearpoint, thereby Improve the balance sheet by eliminating support costs for unprofitable transactions. 'It would be bad to live in one of them, but I think almost the entire western half of the state falls into this category.

Yes, when Verizon abandoned the entire northern New England (Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine) because we were not profitable enough for them, they really showed us how despicable they are.

In central New Hampshire, we have 100 mbps Atlantic broadband, and we will never miss Verizon.

I live in a town in Massachusetts south of Boston without FIOS. Our only Internet choice is Comcast or DSL. My family uses OBI 200 and Google Voice instead of landline phones. I believe I will pay for landline phone services again. Vz is too easy to get out of trouble (please forgive the pun). Phone/Internet operators should be required to provide fair services across the state.

AT&T kept telling me that there was optical fiber nearby, but I only installed copper wires (2-50 pairs) sometime after it was built in 1947. AFAIK, they can carry old copper data, as long as they are not short-circuited, most of them are now in my "hood" (skin effect transmission)

Maintaining these is *really* expensive, so it has nothing to do with them. The copper is corroded, the signal drops, and the bandwidth drops, sometimes to the point where the DSL is no longer synchronized.

The average monthly cost of a telephone connection is between a few euros and ten euros per line. Keeping all activities small will not be easy or cheap.

In France, the current (ie, long-established) telecommunications company Orange (formerly France Telecom) tried not to maintain copper wires (they have a monopole on the copper wires, so the law requires them to be maintained), most likely to save money and Push people to switch to fiber (either through their subscriber products or through competitors because they lend fiber to those competitors).

Copper is expensive. The best way is to recycle (as evidenced by the copper thief).

"The average monthly cost of a telephone connection is between a few euros and ten euros per line. It will not be easy or cheap to keep all activities small."

puff! Taking into account the fixed-line charges that AT&T charged me, they easily made money back.

In the Netherlands, they no longer lay cables underground, but just lay plastic pipes. I think they have been doing this for about 20 years. Then they passed any type of cable that was popular at the time through it. Use compressed air to push the thinner cables.

The biggest problem is taxation. In the past, local governments levied taxes on underground cables, and it was disputed whether air traffic control was counted as taxable cables.

This is of course a major event, because opening the ground to lay these pipes is a costly work, and when the ground is opened, it is easy to put about 5 pipes in the hole for redundancy and future protection, but there is no People want to pay taxes for years of air traffic control.

I think there are a lot of smart people who can walk around, and they use this technology on a global scale. It started a long time ago. There was a time when they used electric current to heat the core of a large coaxial trunk cable, then pulled out the copper core and used a hot plug to pull through the cable to widen the inside. Making empty pipes in this way may still be used for existing cables from time to time, if this allows you to lay new cables without opening the ground, but once you need to open the ground, then laying the empty pipes and filling them later is a better option. The logical choice.

There are also some technologies that can lay underground cables and pipes without opening the ground. They loosened the soil with a sprinkler, then pushed a pipe through the soil, and then let the soil flow through the new pipe to remove the soil. It "just" drills horizontally. I have seen that the 40 cm diameter sewer pipe is laid like this, and the ground is only opened once every 150 meters or so. It may be easy to find some YouTube videos about this or similar technology.

DIY pressure washer as a way of doing some personal excavation.

Yes, when you have to lay the cable in the driving mode, you just need to dig a hole on each side, then insert the hose into the pvc pipe, and then it will form its own tunnel. Of course, it's easiest in places where rocks or tree roots are not too bad. When it is just sand and can be done by hand, it is very easy, just keep adding the pvc part until it reaches the other side. Pass the fish strap through and pull the cable. I also used the same method to drill a well, of course, I must first go to the site to replenish water. Just keep pushing down and adding pipes until you reach the depth you need, and different soil layers will appear, which is really amazing. It is much easier than knocking a pipe into the ground. Just don't let the water stop for too long, otherwise it would be too bad to start again!

It will be fun to try it in New Hampshire. You are lucky to walk 10 feet without hitting a rock as big as your head. About 7 years ago, when installing a new 500-foot-long sewer, they had to dismantle several 4-foot-diameter boulders.

"Walking is a good exercise, but it is also good for the brain: it gives time to observe and think."

Not everyone is like this. Most people I see in daily walks think and observe less than their dogs. Their eyes are fixed on the phone screen. This also explains why landline telephones are no longer a priority for telephone companies.

No, my smart? The phone is almost always placed in a cradle in the hallway, where the old phone used to be.

Many words just say "the phone is broken"

I am not Donald Twitter.

My parents connected the copper POTS landline to their old ma bell rotary phone (except the answering machine). We have also retained similar settings in rental properties. Both are hurricane-prone areas.

When they were evacuated and a storm hit and we were unable to ping the remote site, we started dialing the phone number. If it rings and the answering machine answers, the building is there and has electricity. If it just rang, rang, rang, the building is there, but there is no power. If it doesn't sound at all, it means the pole has dropped, or the building has disappeared. In 50 years, we have never had the last case.

After 50 years, if you don't call at all, your situation will be exactly the same.

They get a lot of money from this business, but for consumer subscriptions, you also need to add connections at all levels, and I guess they make more from these.

All this has become so corrosive that it will only be useful as a scrap in the near future

In my city, half of them are already unusable due to the various stages of history and infrastructure installation. It's a bit strange, because city is originally a few towns, all of which have their own exchanges. So they are the center of all the local discards infested with copper, rats and pigeons, and now they are no longer guarded. Now, it seems that the "middle-aged" community got the new copper before the merger, but I think it was driven by the "mobile phone for everyone", so they did it as cheaply as possible, all of which is only a foot or less I guess it should be the shortest path, but it seems a bit random. No problem for about 20 years. At the same time, the new exchange was placed in the new/old city center of the new city, which was located northwest of everything else. Then the old communication was concentrated on this. Therefore, these middle-aged communities end up with 7 kilometers of copper doglegs to the exchange only 3 miles away. Therefore, in the digital age, they mistakenly sold a higher speed DSL than the copper wire supports, because the distance under the copper wire in half of the cities is twice the recommended distance from the main switch. Now, also at the turn of the millennium, people are impatient with the positioning of telecommunications lines. Whenever someone digs a wire on the terrace, they twist together and bury it again. With all the scratches and cuts made by the ppl on the pillars and even the plant piles and swing ball posts, the copper has become a nasty shape that can hardly support the sound. However, older communities end up close to the new switch and connect directly to it, while newer communities have good pipeline trunks and straight paths to the new switch, so they get reasonable performance from it. In any case, so I think half of the cities start to predict EOL when the fiber is waiting, and although it should be the last mile of the fiber initially, they don't seem to be doing anything. Now they should have fiber optics to their homes on the poles, so they doubt that everything will be done. The copper mines in the old and new communities may have 20-30 years left, but it was just updated before everything changed about 40-50 years ago.

Anyway, the last time I cared about it was more than ten years ago, when I was despised by the arrogance of "the" cable co and continued to use DSL. Every winter it would drop mbps until I got 1.2 and they basically refused to do anything. , While bombarding me with fiber optic ads, they didn’t even scroll to my exact area for the next 5 years. Fixed phones are very fragile. "This" phone company and phone companies that don't repair the line started charging indiscriminately with extra fees and false bills, and despite multiple requests, they would not transfer my plan to another one. So I completely sever the relationship with them, completely sever them, and I will never do business with them or their subsidiaries in the future. This is a somewhat hobsons choice. I re-use cable TV through a 3rd party distributor, and I don’t want to deal with the arrogance of "the" cable company and the "error" of the billing.

Where I live in Sweden, optical fiber is installed everywhere, and the price is quite high for the end user. (Contract 1.5-3000 USD, depending on the region)

But in many places, the old copper wire network rarely walks more than 300 meters to reach a fairly large telecommunications cabinet. (Except in rural areas) Considering that there is very little ice on these cabinets, I don't even dare to guess that they contain one or two DSLAMs.

The downside is that I haven't seen any xDSL connections that provide more than 12 Mb/s in Sweden. Considering that better xDLS technology has been around for nearly 20 years, this is strange...

I don't know why the telecommunications provider does not upgrade their equipment. I suspect that they have just checked the numbers and found that installing optical fiber can bring them more profit than upgrading the xDSL system. Even upgrading the xDSL system will be very cheap. (Even if all xDSL users pay for this, each connection will only cost about $30-100...)

For other countries/regions, the xDSL line needs to travel 1-5 kilometers before reaching the local "office", then I can understand that optical fiber is a more attractive way, because xDSL is quite abhorrent at these distances. But in Sweden, the network seems to be constructed/modified with xDSL service in mind.

And the function of xDSL is quite reasonable, for example, VDSL2 can reach up to 200 Mb/s, but for a distance of 300 meters, this will still be 100 Mb/s. The upgrade people get from the current 5-8 Mb/s is considerable. (Well, the fiber here currently offers speeds up to 10 Gb/s, but most people subscribe to speeds no more than 100 Mb/s, and because ISPs cut lower plans, they are usually forced to upgrade to 200 Mb/s .)

There are also 300 Mb/s VDSL2 and even 1 Gb/s G.fast.

However, the need for a faster Internet is also a question. After all, a 20Mb/s 4K video stream has enough compression artifacts that you need to pause and search for them at close range. A 100 Mb/s connection can download today's "crazy" size games in a relatively short period of time. (After all, you can download 40 GB of content per hour at this connection speed.) (However, for games, latency is a bigger issue.) Compared to using a 10 Mb/s connection, browse the webb using a 10 Mb/s connection There is not much difference at 100 Mb/s. Sometimes, one is actually restricted by the website's own server, anyway...

To some extent, xDSL is fiber. Just arrived at the node. To be honest, expensive fiber can be used more efficiently in this use case, because the xDSL host can use 40 Gb/s QSFP modules. If there are 160 xDSL users on it, then each user can get a speed of 500 Mb/s. But in reality, companies over-provision their backends because everyone will not use all the bandwidth at once. (Even FTTH is over-provisioned in the ISP's data center. So there is almost no difference.)

I personally believe that fiber to the node is a cost-effective future for families. (If they want, offices and companies can provide themselves with dedicated fiber.) However, it is better to drag copper/fiber into the pipeline than to dig it underground. Since then, maintenance has become easier. (Just pull it out.) And it’s easier to upgrade because it can be changed to something better. Perhaps xDSL will be replaced by "Ethernet". After all, 4 twisted pairs are faster than 1 pair, and those who need fiber can also get it. The local network cabinet can provide some extra backhaul line bandwidth for these stupid users.

FttN also has a better redundancy advantage to prevent the fiber optic line from being interrupted. (After all, optical fiber can travel many kilometers, so the risk of it being accidentally dug or torn is higher, depending on how it is wired.)

The telecommunications network changed from a former state-owned company to a limited company (Televerket -> Telia AB), still exercising monopoly control over the local loop. They control what happens via POTS and coaxial cables, and provide infrastructure for competing Internet providers using existing public networks. Telia's interconnection costs are so high that competition is pushed to lay its own fiber.

So basically they don’t use xDSL because Telia is too cheap to install backhaul bandwidth to handle it, and they don’t have commercial customers who use infrastructure because they price themselves out of the market, and fiber is so much better. NS.

This often happens when state-owned companies are privatized.

If the company has a nationwide network infrastructure, then judging from the actual implementation of the xDSL network, its concept can be quickly seen from "Let everyone provide good services".

To: "Let’s not invest in this, treat it as a cash cow!" When suddenly a shareholder is not interested in anything other than profit​​.

Although, the same is true for other aspects of Swedish infrastructure to a large extent, not for politics, but personally, if it is still owned and operated by the government, I would find it better because they at least focus on Provide good solutions.

I would not agree that optical fiber is "much better" because it is much more expensive, and in the last half kilometer, copper wire can reach speeds that are sufficient to meet the foreseeable future needs of most people. Reserve some extra fiber lines for those who really need crazy bandwidth fiber, and they can still get it if they want. (Currently talking about more than 500 Mb/s here, there is almost no reason why xDSL cannot use Ethernet cables and reach 5 Gb/s within half a kilometer. I doubt whether people need more than 1 Gb/s in the next ten or two years. year.)

Just like the MP in a camera, or the bit rate in an audio file, in the end, it is just a gimmick. A faster network connection does have the advantage of being able to download larger files in the same time frame, but how often? Is that actually necessary? If the actual demand is low, is it worth investing in higher-cost infrastructure?

FttN has the main cost advantage. If the node has two independent backhaul lines, it can also avoid being accidentally dug out to a certain extent. (Or, to be more precise, it doesn’t matter whether it is damaged or not, another connection still exists, and the network operator will receive a warning about the lost connection.) Redundancy is a good thing, and FttH does not provide it, so this is FttN’s A benefit, and depending on where people live, compared to the original speed, this can be a huge improvement in life.

Nevertheless, FttN is better even with optical fiber, since then we can use cheaper optical fiber from node to customer premises. Because there is no need to go super far. This provides the benefit of galvanic isolation, which is good during thunderstorms, but there is also the problem of the ingress of dust at the end of the cable that causes the signal quality to deteriorate. After all, there are few clean data centers in people's homes, and even data centers are difficult to keep the internal optical fibers clean. run.

However, as I have now outlined, both solutions have their pros and cons. The hybrid approach may be best for everyone. Keep a large number of customers on FttN, because it is more cost-effective and can provide enough bandwidth for most people (using the current xDSL call speed is 0.2-1 Gb/s), and provide it to those who need it at the local node Some FttH lines provide more bandwidth than copper cables, and these people can install optical fibers over this relatively short distance. If all underground cables are in the pipeline, or for those who like to let accidental truck drivers remove them, it will be easy to install...and those with FttH can still use their FttN as a backup, or The extra bandwidth again provides redundancy. (Or a node may only have a set of SFP ports and/or a few QSFPs.)

> "Let's not invest in this, treat it as a cash cow!"

Do not. This is a hot potato game. This is because this state-owned company is operating under political pressure to implement all political grandstanding and receive substantial subsidies, so they overbuilt the infrastructure and expanded it to unnecessary or uneconomical places. This is due to drivers such as "99% of households should have broadband by tomorrow!" Come back that day.

Then it started to spend too much money, so the government sold the infrastructure to a private company to get rid of the responsibility and blame for poor work, and then supervised the private company to maintain the same level of service and reach an unprofitable infrastructure.

As a result, prices have risen, infrastructure has stagnated due to lack of upgrade funds, and competitors have built a parallel infrastructure that ultimately eclipses and kills the old infrastructure.

So they have to spend $500 million to upgrade a service that has no use cases? Another excellent HaD article!

I am in the Atlanta area. Near me, AT&T redesigned the local loop to be something they insist that it is not a DSL, but they are a bit vague about what it is. What I know is that it can be set between 100 and 1000 MBPS. It has symmetrical upload and download speeds. It plugs into the RJ14 jack like a normal telephone line, uses a twisted pair instead of a coaxial cable, and can’t run through it normally. Phone service. It seems that these lines may run to some kind of routers at the entrance of the subdivision, and these routers may connect them to fiber optics or other technologies.

Oh, now this is a great toolkit. Imagine it would be much easier to connect fiber to a DSLAM and get full speed in the "hood" of that fiber.

AT&T may not call it DSL, but I bet it uses VDSL as the underlying technology...

At least you can turn colored wires into learning moments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25-pair_color_code

The nearby copper is still useful and can travel very fast over short distances. If we build fiber-work towards the community. And place DSLAM and other equipment closer to users-copper cable investment can be well utilized without incurring "over construction" costs.

The last mile is important, but the supplier’s infrastructure must also keep up.

This is a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am limited to DSL or broadband cable TV-even though AT&T ran fiber through cities and every community 15 years ago. My 7 up 20 down DSL has never failed (5 router restarts in 25 years), and the speed is sufficient for my needs. (Internet and Netflix). but! ...

Now, people stay at home and the problem is that my carrier (Centurylink) has insufficient network capacity. Congestion is causing severe decelerations and shutdowns during peak hours. (By the way...According to a friend who works at his company, if certain content providers do not pay, Centurylink will also limit the number of connections with them.)

What has not been mentioned is the heavy hand of government regulators. In the United States, these will be the FCC and local public service commissions, or may be called in your state. Your local wireline provider, formerly known as RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company), has a regulated entity responsible for providing services that comply with government regulations in its area, such as dialing within half a second after you pick up the receiver To make a call. They all want to abandon the old POTS network. Since the 1970s, or since MCI won a GSA contract to provide the same service to the US government at a price of $0.05 per minute, no one has made five cents on POTS. In addition, they must now support the old copper wire-based wired network and the optical fiber-based modern data transmission network, as well as parallel mobile phone networks in most cases. Most, if not all, of them are willing to give up copper wire, but they will not be able to do so until they prove to the FCC that the new material is as reliable as the old material. That will not happen. They cannot prove anything of this kind, because it is not, and may never be. So they did what Verizon did when it started selling copper facilities to Frontier and others. They even sold some of their FIOS networks. They are more or less eager to get rid of the shackles of the old FCC/PSC straight jacket and make money as a reinvented broadband provider.

"They can't prove anything like this because it's not, and probably never will."

When the fiber is plugged in, including a pair of wires for power supply is at least a good start, but hey progress (that is, better than before) is as important as keeping all the pennies, not towards the future.

What is printing these days? That is a company with a strange history. The South Pacific Railroad installed an optical fiber communication signal system next to their train tracks, replacing the old copper wires used to operate lights, switches, etc. Then they realized that this was only a small part of the function of optical fiber.

Therefore, they installed telecommunications equipment and opened the store as a telephone company. But to expand beyond those who can connect to the South Pacific Railroad's internal VoIP system, they must be able to make long-distance calls with the existing switching operators of the Bell System.

The big guy said no. South Pacific filed and won the case. So Sprint was born, which was eventually spun off as an independent company. I don't know if the railway company leased or leased the capacity of the optical fiber they once owned for signal transmission and control. They installed the optical fiber.

So if you ever felt that Sprint was helping you, now you know why. ;)

Watching the copper dragged from the ground, cut into 1.5 meters long, piled on pallets for sale, never seen again. Maybe replaced by fiber (Sydney, Australia)

I would choose Adagio for Strings myself

Low-speed unsafe data, one way-weather, news, local and national emergency data

Isn't data broadcasting (equipped with over-the-air TV or radio broadcasting) more effective and reliable, let alone cheaper to implement? In fact, Europeans have been doing this in the form of teletext for decades.

I have been working in the US industry for decades (unfortunately), whether it is an incumbent or a startup.

"Maybe one day, all copper will prove to be just a hassle, something that consumes maintenance budgets with little return. Maybe then, it makes sense to scrap it—all those carefully installed and maintained Well-organized cables are pulled from utility poles and pipes and sold at the value of scrap copper."

Copper has been annoying for many years. Maintenance is difficult, expensive and time-consuming. If you remember what T1 is, you will know that it hardly exists today. Some vendors no longer offer it, and those that offer real 4-wire version prices will never want it. And those companies that are reasonably priced do it through optical fiber and T1 switching.

Copper is disappearing. Telecom won't even bother to tear it off. too expensive. Maybe...maybe they will do it for some subcontractors. But how risky is the infrastructure and legal/regulatory chaos near it. From a business point of view, it is not worth the time.

Insulated copper wires, especially small-diameter wires like telecom wires, bring very low scrap prices. Stripping the larger wire can raise it to #1 bright copper wire, but the small telecommunication wire (or thin stranded wire) can only reach #2 level.

The problem is the large surface area to mass ratio. Small metal wires will oxidize more mass when they are melted, so the metal recovery rate is lower than that of coarse metal wires, unless the foundry uses a closed smelter, which is full of gases that will not combine with hot copper. 'Of course it will increase costs, so the value of small wires is still low.

The author points out, “People just don’t have valid use cases for landline phones anymore.” So I want to ask the knowledgeable person here a question: despite the pressure from SBC (my supplier in Illinois) (sometimes annoying) , I still insist on using copper wire service. reason? I may mistakenly believe that when (not if) China invades/closes most of the Internet during a war (such as Taiwan) on a large scale, people using VOIP home phone services will not be able to make or receive calls because those mobile phones rely on the Internet. (The same is true for more local disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.) Therefore, if I need to call 911 or have other emergency or non-emergency numbers to call, I can still call through copper wire. Comment? Is there a serious flaw in my assumption? Does my copper wire service depend on the downstream Internet connection in some way so that I cannot make calls anyway?

No, you are 100% correct. No Internet means no VoIP, and considering that cell towers use VoIP to transmit calls, you will be SOL (please refer to the FCC report on Centurylink’s outage report. The outage was caused by 4 erroneous packets. These packets caused Emergency services and some other cell phone services ceased). My family has a copper wire that goes through ATT (As far as I know, ATT has no intention of shutting it down), and through their copper wire, you can dial for free (to a certain point). So I have a Sega Dreamcast with a mouse and keyboard and a web browser CD juuuuuuust in case I need to do anything in this situation. Not long ago, when we were hit by a tornado and destroyed electricity for a week and a half, in terms of news and e-mail, this was very helpful in avoiding being excluded. Yes, I set up email on Dreamcast. do not judge me.

Yes, your assumption is flawed, because the telephone company has already switched to IP-based relaying and transmission extensively in its backbone network, so the only analog part of your situation may be the last mile.

The phone system I grew up allowed you to dial * and 3 random numbers, and then you could answer someone's call. They cannot hear you, but you can hear the two parties they are talking to. For a boring 12-year-old kid, this is a kind of entertainment, and heard something I might not have heard, haha! It takes a lot of combinations of numbers to get someone to actually answer the call, but time is nothing at that time. This city has its own power company and telecommunications company. I tried it and it didn't work anywhere else, so there must be a problem with the system they are using, or they have not set it up correctly. Friday and Saturday nights are prime time to call, haha!

As the use of fixed telephones decreases, the repair and maintenance of the copper distribution network will become uneconomical. It will be discarded in place. It is not very useful. Long-term telecommunications engineer.

I just like that everyone assumes that mobile phone coverage is universal! I live in a rural area and I can only get through when I reach the end of the driveway and hold my phone above my head. As long as it doesn't rain too much, the landline phone can work normally. If you don't mind things that are only slightly faster than dialing (and not a storm), you can use a wireless network. Satellite internet is slow and expensive, and can only be used when it is not raining or snowing. I hope Musk's system runs better! ! !

Come out to me. Emergency backup power supply used to keep fiber optic transceivers running during disasters/power outages. Since we are all digital now, why not make good use of these lines? Or establish some long-distance communication for some kind of radio network or other things... But the power is there, and people can at least use it to convert it into usable power to power or charge emergency lighting or communication equipment.

In Australia, they just use rotten/corroded copper for our NBN (National Broadband Network)

Come to this comment section to look for grumpy Australians. I think I have to scroll far to see your comment because NBN is too slow. Interestingly, Libs admitted a few weeks ago that yes, we need fiber. But only after they offered billions of dollars in ransoms to friends holding copper. Maybe sometime in the next decade, I will actually be able to browse the web while other people in the house are having a video conference. And upload! Imagine actually being able to create content effectively! In 2013, I received a letter from the government saying that optical fiber was entering my street. Two weeks later, the government changed and Tony Abbott destroyed it. I have a screenshot of my 6000 millisecond ping. Cheaper and better, my ass.

Use old copper wires to distribute electricity so that you can charge your phone in an emergency. Use a simple circuit to lower the voltage and terminate the old cable into the USB connector!

If you go back about 4 years or more, you are only allowed to connect the phone company-owned equipment to the phone line, and the actual installation must be done by them. The reason is that they need to control the number of people currently attracted through the phone line. Every device that may be connected to the telephone line system has an "equivalent ring" class. I have read that the mobile phone consumes about 20ma when in use. However, this does not say how much current can be drawn.

I don't know what made them change. Of course, electronic products ultimately require much less electricity than physical ringtones. However, you can still buy phones with physical ringtones. I want to know what happens if you insert too many such calls on the same phone line? Maybe by then they have installed some kind of circuit breaker. If there is no circuit breaker on the POTS line in every house, then people will definitely try to manipulate too many things on the phone line.

Think about what happens if your neighbor only has a POTS phone line, but cannot dial 911? You may be responsible for someone's death.

Typos... I mean more than 40 years ago, not 4

POTS telephone equipment is still strictly regulated. You have restrictions on the amount of DC current that the phone can draw when on-hook (hang up), the amount of AC (ringing) current that can be drawn when the phone is off-hook (in use), and the amount of DC current that can be drawn.

I'm confused. I remember there was a power outage, but my mobile phone without an electrical plug can still work. I have always thought that they are not electricity in the usual sense...meaning that they have no wires plugged into the house, nor do they need to be charged or used batteries. So based on your comment, I guess these phones will still use some electricity, but they get electricity from copper wires instead of wires in the house, and since it is a separate system, it can still work when the regular power supply is cut off go out. is this correct? Sorry, it sounds so ignorant... Haha, my brother has a PhD in electrical engineering, and I actually have my grandfather’s old books on circuits etc... but when I look through them, I think it’s a foreign language :-)

Yes, the telephone company provides some electricity through the telephone line. And since there is no large amount of electricity at any given time, they usually have spare batteries on the exchange. Therefore, usually when your home's power is interrupted, the POTS line can still work.

In the early days of POTS, to call an operator, you needed to shake the handle of a mobile phone connected to a small generator. This is the reason for calling the operator. However, after that, I assume that the telephone company provides electricity for the call.

If you go back early, you don't need any electricity at all. Because the microphone coil will generate some current when your voice vibrates. However, the range of this system is very short. It is more likely to be used in a building.

I live in a remote part of Virginia, where the fiber is at least 10 years old (if I'm lucky), and I'm far from the CO, and the dial-up speed is faster than DSL. Cell coverage does not exist either. I rely on my POTS line to talk to the world. Hughes Net is terrible and cannot handle VoIP reliably, so POTS does. I have 6 lines connected to the house via standard twisted-pair cables, and the previous owner paid for the second cable, for a total of 12 possible lines. On the second cable, I have a pair of links dedicated to the remote radio repeater that I rent, and the other pair is used as a hotline to the gate at the end of the road. The cable is buried directly on the switch 20 miles away. I am actually the last home in the loop. It has been snowing for several weeks, and the power outage lasted as long as mine, if not longer, every time I picked up the POTS phone, I would hear a dial tone. I am happy to pay any fees to keep my POTS line running.

I bet you never thought that someone would tell you that you are lucky :-). I’m old school... I wish I had non-electric, non-digital backups available for my use, or I knew more about electricity, so maybe I could use copper wire to create my own system, if it still exists and it’s just not there Used in my area. I live in an apartment in a very large city, but understand how easy the system is to downtime, and think that it is very short-sighted for companies and individuals to stop using copper wires altogether.

34 years inside and outside the SBC telecommunications factory... Splicer installers, houses, businesses, coins, communication technology testers, etc....During the Texas freeze in February 2021... .. The power has been in and out for several days... The power of the cell phone tower is turned off or the battery is low... But my landline is still working... I have communication... I have been working on digital circuits for many years , They are easily destroyed....

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