Sorry Mantoloking, no more copper phone lines for you

It's the beginning of the end for plain old telephone service (POTS). Hurricane Sandy wiped out all the copper telephone wires in Mantoloking, New Jersey, and now Verizon has decided it won't bother to replace them.

Cell phones are the presumed alternative. Or a gizmo Verizon calls "Voice Link" which turns your home phone into a cell phone.

But the box doesn't work with remote medical monitoring devices, home alarm systems or faxes. It can't accept collect calls or connect callers with an operator when they dial 0. It also can't be used with dial-up modems, credit-card machines or international calling cards.

Other than that, it's just like your old phone. Uh huh.

I sympathize with Verizon. Replacing all those copper wires is costly. And with Comcast already laying coaxial cable and providing phone service, there is a viable alternative. The demand for POTS is decreasing every year. Like the party lines of old, its time has definitely passed.

Heck, the federal Universal Service Fund, which used to subsidize POTS lines in hard-to-serve areas, has already switched gears. They pass out Obamaphones now.

But technologically any true replacement for POTS needs to provide equivalent service. And that means supporting modem tones for things like fax machines, credit card terminals, alarm systems, and emergency medical devices. Verizon has the necessary capacity; their 4G LTE network regularly provides data speeds in excess of 10 mbps. So piggybacking a 56K modem signal ought to be a piece of cake. The cellular network can route 911, so presumably it can route 0 to an operator service and calling cards to the long distance company of your choice too.

Their FiOS gear handles all that stuff seamlessly, so there's no reason the Voice Link gizmo can't do it either.

Well, there is one reason. Marketing. A Voice Link box that supported those features might cut into FiOS revenues.

The knee-jerk reaction to all this is, of course, a call for government regulation. Force Verizon to rewire the POTS lines! Feh. I'm no fan of government interference in the free market. I see the demise of POTS as an opportunity for an enterprising young engineer to develop a Voice Link replacement box. One that offers all the features of POTS. And has more than a few hours of battery life too.

Beat Verizon at their own game. That's the American way.

Posted at 09:57 by Chris Wysocki   [/tech]   Comments | Perm Link |
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