Off-Hook Moose wrote:
> How can you expect a 'phone company, which is in business to make money, to
> maintain a huge, high maintenance installation, that's generating little
> income, to a high standard?
I know that you are just seeing if you can ring my number, but I can't
let all this slide without a wee bit of challenge.
ALL communications companies, whether "telephone" or "cable-tv" are in
it to make money. What you may not realize is that a telephone company
(proper ILEC and CLEC companies, not VoIP add-on just because we can,
companies) has specific service restoral time requirements. Cable-TV
companies? "We'll be out there next Tuesday or Wednesday or maybe even
Thursday between 8AM and 5PM."
The profitability of the phone companies is regulated. Cable-TV
companies? Only for the core TV service.
> The copper wire network in our area uses connection blocks that were fine
> for their first few years of life. Many decades later, they tend to corrode
> and corrode and break the wires. If you nag them, old school linemen will
> come out, find and fix the problem. But it will deteriorate again, soon
> enough. Even DSL doesn't get much faster than your dial-up. (OMG!!! You are
> still using dial-up???)
The connection blocks are subject to the local soil and air
conditions, but are generally designed for a 25+ year service life.
We're looking at 40-50 service life in some cases. Actually, except
for environmental concerns, corrosion rarely occurs on healthy
connections that have properly loads on them and correct grounding.
Hang a half dozen bridge taps and radio shack phones around home and
all bets are off. As to the main cables, we've got 600 to 6000 pair
air-core, paper-wrap cables dating back to 1960. As long as we keep
the cable dry (they are pressurized), they'll last indefinitely. A
couple weeks ago, in downtown Lincoln, we had backhoe fade on a 6000
pair. It was encased in concrete and the idiot still nailed it.
DSL not much faster than your dial-up? Maybe your DSL connection in
your neighborhood, which is probably 3+ cable miles from the serving
device, but that's certainly not the norm. I'm about 16000 cable feet
from the central office and I'm getting ONLY 5.96 mbps. However,
closer in, and we're providing up to 18 mbps. Let's see, a dial-up
modem is getting 56 kbps. We also have DSL technology, right now, that
provides over 45 mbps and we're lab testing equipment that provides
over 100 mpbs. All over a single twisted pair of copper. The Schnozz
calls BS on the Moose on this point.
> But it doesn't matter, because the cable company has fiber to provide highly
> reliable, fast internet and nice, clean VOIP voice.* The 'phone co. will
> never replace/upgrade the copper system. They'll bring in fiber too, switch
> all land lines to VOIP and recycle the copper.
Unlike the ILEC, the cable company gets to pick and choose where they
deploy their assets. We have no such option and unlike the cable
company, the phone company has to provide to everybody that wants
service, no matter how many miles out in the sticks they live. Cable
companies are notorious for turning down customers. They are also
notorious for service standards that make bankers look like heroes.
> Ancient, but up to date, Moose
No, mislead by the slumlords of the telecommunications industry.
The equipment that the telephone industry uses is of an entirely
different grade than what the cable industry usually uses. Granted,
there comes a point where stuff just no longer is reliable and we do
push the equipment as far as we can until we have to replace, but in
most cases, we replace equipment because of bandwidth growth. I have
to have several fiber terminals replaced tomorrow night, in an
emergency maintenance, due to an equipment failure. Best that we can
tell, this particular equipment dates back to the early 1980s and is
actually among the very first fiber terminals installed in Iowa. The
only reason why they were still in use is because those towns have
shrunk by 50% since they were installed and they were outsized
solutions to begin with. But the hardware does go kaputz after a
while. What about the fiber-optics? Aerial fiber has an expected
life-span of 10-20 years. Buried 20-30 years. This section of fiber,
with the failing optics is so old that it is turning to sand. Any time
that we have to do splice work on it, we can lose two feet of fiber
trying to get a splice that works. What about the stuff your cable tv
operator is installing? Much of it isn't even glass, but plastic.
Telecommunications companies, like the one I work for, have been
transitioning towards a business-to-business model. It's a hoot when I
see my company referred to as a "Rural Telephone Company". Riiiiiight.
No more rural than ANY telephone company that wasn't part of Ma Bell.
I'm going to tell you a dark little secret of the telecommunications
industry. Your BEST telecommunications services are not in the big
cities, but in the smaller communities far out in "flyover country".
There is no such thing as the "digital divide" in "rural America". The
average person in Iowa (except where served by CenturyLink) has better
broadband and telephone service any most anywhere else in the country.
For one thing, I made sure of it for the nearly 600 communities in
just this one state that I'm personally responsible for. And I'm
responsible for a whole bunch of states from Iowa and Minnesota all
the way to Oregon and Washington.
OK, back to the hold music.
AG (Tactical Planner for a major telecommunications company) Schnozz
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