Phone Land Lines

[hbiss]

This is not a cable TV company providing internet and land line service to me. This is AT&T telcom.

Same thing today.

-Hal

 

[zbang]

This is not a cable TV company providing internet and land line service to me. This is AT&T telcom.

In some areas, AT&T is a cable-TV (+internet+telephone) company, depends on why they bought and when.

Remember that the AT&T of the last 15-20 years has almost nothing to do with the Ma Bell/AT&T of per-divesatature days - see the chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT&T_Corporation.

And Frontier? They bought the LEC parts of GTE, which historically were terrible. There have been a lot of name changes to try getting away from a bad reputation.

 

[gene6]

Verizon was been in violation of a contract they had with NYC for years, the city had to sue to get them back to work. The FIOS system was supposed to replace land lines and they never finished installing it, and some of it did not ever work after they cut peoples copper lines. I am no expert but I think 911 should work when the power is out, that is for customers that still pay for landline service.

 

[GoldDigger]

You have to be careful here. The battery backup often kept only phone service working to provide access to emergency services. That was only POTS. Backup for Ethernet and TV was not provided.

This is where your confusion over the term VOIP comes in. As I stated above, most people do not have VOIP phones.

This is why I strongly recommend your own UPS if you want to use your computers and other internet connected devices during an outage. Cable companies give you nothing that they don't have to.

-Hal

Initially, I had only heard the TV ads, but your concern led me to get the actual plan description at https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/stormready. The new service is specifically branded as "Storm Ready". It provides broadband connectivity, including a WiFi access point. And presumably if the cable modem is supporting a voice line that will be backed up too.
But it does not rely on the upstream cable infrastructure being intact. Instead it abandons the cable entirely and connects instead to a 4G cell network, if one is available. And it is indeed limited to 4 hours of backup on a fully charged battery.

 

[kwired]

In some areas, AT&T is a cable-TV (+internet+telephone) company, depends on why they bought and when.

Remember that the AT&T of the last 15-20 years has almost nothing to do with the Ma Bell/AT&T of per-divesatature days - see the chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT&T_Corporation.

And Frontier? They bought the LEC parts of GTE, which historically were terrible. There have been a lot of name changes to try getting away from a bad reputation.

The Frontier systems in this area were formerly GTE. I guess I don't know how GTE compared to others back in the day but it was better maintained here when GTE was still operating than after Frontier took over. I seem to recall Citizens Communications was the name between GTE and Frontier. They didn't do that bad of a job in comparison to Frontier at maintaining the system either.

 

[kwired]

Most the local cable TV operators have or are in process of switching over to only providing internet service and you need to use streaming services to watch your TV programming. I get why they are doing this, but it is hard for some non tech savvy people particularly some elderly to learn how to use it. They switched my mother's service over maybe around six to eight months ago. I had to go over and get it up and working for her almost daily for the first week or two. When they converted they came and replaced her cable box with a modem and an Amazon Fire stick for the first TV, we had to order our own Firesticks for any additional TV's. I suppose if you had a smart TV you may not need the firestick at all. They do have an app that can be downloaded for the firestick that essentially has their former channel lineup from their old conventional CATV service. Which works fine for her, until she accidentally presses wrong thing on the firestick remote and exits the app. That was the biggest problem those first couple weeks. Talking to the lady that manages public housing facility that I often do work at, majority of residents there are elderly and all have similar issues when cable company made them change to this service as well.

 

[hillbilly1]

Initially, I had only heard the TV ads, but your concern led me to get the actual plan description at https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/stormready. The new service is specifically branded as "Storm Ready". It provides broadband connectivity, including a WiFi access point. And presumably if the cable modem is supporting a voice line that will be backed up too.
But it does not rely on the upstream cable infrastructure being intact. Instead it abandons the cable entirely and connects instead to a 4G cell network, if one is available. And it is indeed limited to 4 hours of backup on a fully charged battery.

Then you’re also depending on the cell tower being maintained. One of the big cell providers we did work didn’t have a single tower with working batteries when we did the upgrades. Most were in the large suburbs or big cities though, so power outages were not that common.

 

[kwired]

Then you’re also depending on the cell tower being maintained. One of the big cell providers we did work didn’t have a single tower with working batteries when we did the upgrades. Most were in the large suburbs or big cities though, so power outages were not that common.

Cell towers out here in the boonies all have stand by generators from what I can see. Never worked at any those sites but they all have generators at the site. IDK if they also have UPS to ride through until generator comes on line or not. But out in the boonies they are more subject to several hours of outage at times. And when we had ice storms about 20 years ago some would have been down for possibly up to 10 days, presuming they were there back then.

 

[hillbilly1]

A lot of them in the cities have a manual transferswitch for a portable trailer mounted generator. I installed generators for another cell provider that used 7-10 kw permanent generators with automatic transferswitchs. Those were at top of mountains off very rough roads. They used about 10 grill tanks on a rack. A normal propane truck could not get up the roads in good weather, let alone bad. They could hall the replacement tanks up in a four wheel drive.

 

[electrofelon]

One building I work in a lot has a ATT cell site and a second one no longer in use. They both have provisions for bringing in a generator. The ATT site does have a rack of batteries, I'm curious how long they last. We had an outage a couple weeks ago overnight and the battery alarm was beeping in the morning.

 

[tortuga]

Originally I had a two party phone.

Was that the phone line you share with your neighbors and you get a special ring when someone calls your 'number'?

 

[hbiss]

Most the local cable TV operators have or are in process of switching over to only providing internet service and you need to use streaming services to watch your TV programming. I get why they are doing this, but it is hard for some non tech savvy people particularly some elderly to learn how to use it.

Getting off topic here, but the problem with streaming is that the interface sucks and it doesn't matter what TV or box you have. Left, right, up, down, enter, navigation on a remote makes me pull my hair out- especially in the dark.

I have YouTube TV and can also access it on my computer. It takes one second to bring up a show on the same screen as the TV on the computer using a mouse.

I use Roku on my dumb TVs and although Roku has voice command on their remotes, it only goes so far. It can open an app like YouTube TV but does nothing once you are there.

I see there are apps for iPhones that will provide more control with Roku but they are subscription and $$ every month.

Just put a USB port on the box that will support a mouse and keyboard!

-Hal

 

[ggunn]

I like our Roku boxes (we have three) most of the time, but when I have to enter a password with a Roku remote, I don't like it so much.

I once got a Roku to connect with a keyboard by pairing the KB with my phone via bluetooth and using the Roku phone app to connect to the Roku. It was an interesting experiment but it was more of a PITA than just entering the password with the Roku remote.

I do wish that the different streaming channels would standardize their interfaces. Turning on captions, for example, is very simple for some of them and very convoluted for others. Don't even get me started about autoplay that you can't turn off.

 

[GoldDigger]

Was that the phone line you share with your neighbors and you get a special ring when someone calls your 'number'?

In the simplest form a party line could support two parties with "normal" ring timing by applying the ring voltage either from tip (red) to ground or from ring (green) to ground. by using different ring voltage frequencies and tuned bell circuits this could be extended to four or six parties without requiring the use of distinctive ringing cadences.
The talk circuit was indeed common to all parties, allowing eavesdropping and causing problems billing for toll calls when direct dialing was available.

 

[cdoublejj]

heres what i setup for power outages. i'm not reliant on power over copper from any service provider now.

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/upgrading-ups-with-dual-100ah-deep-cycle-batteries-kept-under-the-house/140572

 

[kwired]

In the simplest form a party line could support two parties with "normal" ring timing by applying the ring voltage either from tip (red) to ground or from ring (green) to ground. by using different ring voltage frequencies and tuned bell circuits this could be extended to four or six parties without requiring the use of distinctive ringing cadences.
The talk circuit was indeed common to all parties, allowing eavesdropping and causing problems billing for toll calls when direct dialing was available.

We had that when I was very young. I don't really know details as I was maybe 6 or 7 years old when we moved from that place. I do remember the being able to listen in on other conversations thing. Also remember my mother talking to friends and apparently you only could talk for so long before the system gave you some warning and eventually disconnected the call so that it would free up the line again for others? May even been an operator that told them to end the call? I remember mom always saying "I'll call you back" then hung up and pretty much immediately called back and continued their gossip session.

 

[Ragin Cajun]

Putting the equipment at your end will really not help much. From you to the telcon office are MANY "boxes that require power. They are supposed to have batteries, but they don't last very long. Our area lost power during the night. My end was fine, but the "box" down the road shut down. Dear old windows was doing a update when the "box" went down and trashed my operating system big time!! I was on AT&T.

 

[electrofelon]

Putting the equipment at your end will really not help much. From you to the telcon office are MANY "boxes that require power. They are supposed to have batteries, but they don't last very long. Our area lost power during the night. My end was fine, but the "box" down the road shut down. Dear old windows was doing a update when the "box" went down and trashed my operating system big time!! I was on AT&T.

Yeah I don't think it's as simple as "POTS only needs power at the office end". I think a phone line is only good for about 4 MI before you need some sort of booster or repeater, that I assumes need power.....

 

[zbang]

I think a phone line is only good for about 4 MI before you need some sort of booster or repeater,

A real POTS line can go for miles, limited only by the supply voltage (nominally -48v) and the resistance while still getting 30-ish ma current. Ma Bell even had special switch modules that would use -96v to get a longer loop.

What you may be thinking of is that the lines had series inductors ("loading coils") spread along the line to counteract the distributed capacitance. (ISDN lines needed the coils removed and were only good to maybe 18k ft without a repeater.)

 

[electrofelon]

A real POTS line can go for miles, limited only by the supply voltage (nominally -48v) and the resistance while still getting 30-ish ma current. Ma Bell even had special switch modules that would use -96v to get a longer loop.

What you may be thinking of is that the lines had series inductors ("loading coils") spread along the line to counteract the distributed capacitance. (ISDN lines needed the coils removed and were only good to maybe 18k ft without a repeater.)

You could well be more versed in POTS than me, but almost every source you see from a quick Google search says about 4 MI. There are certainly "tricks" to extend that, and I assume some require power out in the field along the way, and some can be deployed at the CO?