Voice over Internet
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Voice over Internet
Senor Paco from my ISP came round last week, upgraded my WiMax internet bandwidth from 1 to 3 megs, stuck a VOI box in the cable between the PC and the antenna on the roof, and said "there you are, all national phone calls to landlines are now free, you have two and a half hours free calls to mobile phones a month, and cheap rate international calls."
He suggested I cancel my telephone contract and just connect my house phone system to the VOI box.
I tried this and yes, it all works. The only change in the cost of my internet service is that it's gone from monthly renewal to an 18 month contract. But no change in the price.
What I really wonder is how long the old Telecom providers can keep going when enterprising ISP's offer the same facilities for nothing ?
He suggested I cancel my telephone contract and just connect my house phone system to the VOI box.
I tried this and yes, it all works. The only change in the cost of my internet service is that it's gone from monthly renewal to an 18 month contract. But no change in the price.
What I really wonder is how long the old Telecom providers can keep going when enterprising ISP's offer the same facilities for nothing ?
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Traditional telco operators that dont migrate to an IP service will just see their market share fade away and die.
With the introduction of messaging services like Skype, WhatsApp Facetime etc etc which are effectively free (once you have a connection to the internet) then the days of having a PSTN line just for analogue voice are numbered.
I suspect the next 'revolution' will be a totally wireless service to your house which is good enough for large downloads (4G) The days of copper wire linking your house to the outside world are imho numbered.
With the introduction of messaging services like Skype, WhatsApp Facetime etc etc which are effectively free (once you have a connection to the internet) then the days of having a PSTN line just for analogue voice are numbered.
I suspect the next 'revolution' will be a totally wireless service to your house which is good enough for large downloads (4G) The days of copper wire linking your house to the outside world are imho numbered.
In the case of BT in the UK, I was under the impression that essentially everything now was VOIP, at least from the exchange onwards: it's just the last mile which reverts to POTS (plain old telephone service?). BT are just going to keep on milking their quasi-monopoly of the last mile as long as they can, but already have next generation products ready and in some cases in place.
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a totally wireless service to your house
That's what we have now - a small microwave antenna on my roof looking at a mast some 12 miles away. WiMax ! The company is upgrading all their existing, typically British customers for free since we lost satellite TV. For €48 a month I can run two internet-enabled televisions and VOIP all at once, not to mention the other Android phones scattered round the house.
That's what we have now - a small microwave antenna on my roof looking at a mast some 12 miles away. WiMax ! The company is upgrading all their existing, typically British customers for free since we lost satellite TV. For €48 a month I can run two internet-enabled televisions and VOIP all at once, not to mention the other Android phones scattered round the house.
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Ok, so WiMax is a wifi type service using high gain directional antennas to connect to a central access node.
That range is impressive, would be interested to hear if you suffer any sort of service degradation due to weather?
Im seeing more of these types of service on my travels round the UK.
Only last week on the IOW, went through a village where nearly all the houses had a small flat plate antenna supplying BB.
That range is impressive, would be interested to hear if you suffer any sort of service degradation due to weather?
Im seeing more of these types of service on my travels round the UK.
Only last week on the IOW, went through a village where nearly all the houses had a small flat plate antenna supplying BB.
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Yes, very heavy rainstorms do degrade the WiMax signal considerably. However the precipitation is always (a) confined to a narrow area right "on the beam" and (b) fast moving, so the problem usually lasts for not more than ten minutes and we are talking about two or three times a year. We do not lose any WiMax signal on a normal rainy day.
Compared to satellite transmissions on which I also have a signal meter, it's more reliable. The satellite not only loses the signal during heavy LOCAL rainstorms but goes down with medium to high altitude wind (which is a frequent ocurance where I live) and also twice a year as the sun passes "behind" the satellite as seen from my location.
I spent today running a cable and installing a phone socket where the Prime User of the telephone sits in the evening, quite took me back to my GPO Tech 2A days......when I also worked on setting up the UK's microwave telecomms network, which also suffered attenuation in heavy rain. Presumably still does ?
Compared to satellite transmissions on which I also have a signal meter, it's more reliable. The satellite not only loses the signal during heavy LOCAL rainstorms but goes down with medium to high altitude wind (which is a frequent ocurance where I live) and also twice a year as the sun passes "behind" the satellite as seen from my location.
I spent today running a cable and installing a phone socket where the Prime User of the telephone sits in the evening, quite took me back to my GPO Tech 2A days......when I also worked on setting up the UK's microwave telecomms network, which also suffered attenuation in heavy rain. Presumably still does ?
Last edited by OFSO; 18th May 2014 at 15:57.
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I suspect most of the telephone / data traffic in the UK is via fibre optic rather than microwave nowadays.
Theres plenty of spare capacity in fibre networks now.
Although i hear microwave links are making a come back due to 'latency' issues with the existing BT SDH backbone network, and some customers demand very fast networks. Especially ones in the financial services industry.
Companies like Arqiva are doing very well in this field.
Theres plenty of spare capacity in fibre networks now.
Although i hear microwave links are making a come back due to 'latency' issues with the existing BT SDH backbone network, and some customers demand very fast networks. Especially ones in the financial services industry.
Companies like Arqiva are doing very well in this field.
As a long time telecoms guy these comments are interesting and all are right to a degree.
POTS -plain old telephone service is disappearing but there is no replacement yet for emergency calls that is reliable yet nor easy ways to detect when a caller is 'engaged, or to charge accurately if that's required..
Radio is always unreliable for the reason mentioned plus these delivery mechanisms need line of site-no good in hilly terrain or where there are extensive woodlands or in big cities. Replicating
a nationwide wireline network is virtually impossible due to the scale
Telcos still own most of the local network and rent to ISPS and also own large long distance and international networks which they also rent to ISPs
Overall you get a sort of pyramid effect with the bottom-customer retail being impacted by ISPs but with the Telco having a product too-as you go up the network the big telcos dominate the ownership of whatever network facilities are used.
But they do face a challenge and more changes are to come-with VOIP do you still need a phone number or will your Facebook ID do the job instead.
An interesting time
PB
POTS -plain old telephone service is disappearing but there is no replacement yet for emergency calls that is reliable yet nor easy ways to detect when a caller is 'engaged, or to charge accurately if that's required..
Radio is always unreliable for the reason mentioned plus these delivery mechanisms need line of site-no good in hilly terrain or where there are extensive woodlands or in big cities. Replicating
a nationwide wireline network is virtually impossible due to the scale
Telcos still own most of the local network and rent to ISPS and also own large long distance and international networks which they also rent to ISPs
Overall you get a sort of pyramid effect with the bottom-customer retail being impacted by ISPs but with the Telco having a product too-as you go up the network the big telcos dominate the ownership of whatever network facilities are used.
But they do face a challenge and more changes are to come-with VOIP do you still need a phone number or will your Facebook ID do the job instead.
An interesting time
PB
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Geographically and perhaps politically, mountainous Spain is the ideal country for VOIP, with large towns located in valleys and smaller settlements on mountain ridges and shoulders located all around. When Madrid finally conceded that telecommunications were a right rather than a privilege, it was realised that putting microwave links in was far cheaper than running cables through the mountains down to the valleys. Hence the small towns having a centralised telephone exchange with a large dish on top, pointed down at the nearest large town or city.
The firms that received contracts to do this have mutated into providers that now supply VOIP and microwave internet links to individual households. My ISP started off in a small way but has now been bought by Telefonica (probably* the world's most inefficient telecomms firm) however to date they still manage themselves and have not slipped into the slough of despondency in which most of Telefonica operates and one can still reach a local multi-lingual employee in Girona, 35 miles away, to chat over problems, unlike Telefonica which has outsourced all its call centres to South America and hired telephone engineers with incomprehensible accents to work in Spain from Columbia and Uruguay.
* The word "probably" slipped in there by accident. Please delete it.
The firms that received contracts to do this have mutated into providers that now supply VOIP and microwave internet links to individual households. My ISP started off in a small way but has now been bought by Telefonica (probably* the world's most inefficient telecomms firm) however to date they still manage themselves and have not slipped into the slough of despondency in which most of Telefonica operates and one can still reach a local multi-lingual employee in Girona, 35 miles away, to chat over problems, unlike Telefonica which has outsourced all its call centres to South America and hired telephone engineers with incomprehensible accents to work in Spain from Columbia and Uruguay.
* The word "probably" slipped in there by accident. Please delete it.
OFSO- you are indeed right about terrain suiting the medium used- hilly and dry is great so long as they are the right kind of hills and don't cast 'shadows' over large population areas.
For most places tho ' and urban areas fibre optic remains king
On the Telefonica point you are so right, they are the very worst company to deal with in any respect and I hope they leave your local service provider in place for many years to come
For most places tho ' and urban areas fibre optic remains king
On the Telefonica point you are so right, they are the very worst company to deal with in any respect and I hope they leave your local service provider in place for many years to come
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We have a 100+ year old copper landline network in Oz that is going to be almost totally replaced by a FO network within a few years.
The copper network is incapable of handling the huge speeds needed today and in the future, and it's getting pretty aged in many areas.
The cost of the new FO line is proving to be a bit of headache, with AU$40B quoted initially, but it's likely to be more.
The new conservative govt is going for a much-detested scaled down FO system, of fibre-to-the-node (rather than fibre-to-the-home).
This system is not going to provide the full benefit of FO and it means the users will be picking up the cost of installing FO from the node to their premises.
95% of Oz is highly suitable for a landline network, with lots of flat ground. IMHO, I believe it's pretty important to have a landline network - because the landline is more secure, and because wireless networks are prone to signal decay under a number of circumstances.
We have quite an array of wireless transmission in place already - satellite, microwave and the mobile networks.
However, the amount of transmission errors and transmission breakdown in the mobile phone network makes me leery of any communication system that is totally wireless.
The big microwave dishes that handle a lot of interstate transmissions, used to have their components in the centre of the dish attacked by big parrots (galahs), chewing them up.
The damage the birds did was incredible and it took quite a while to find galah-proof components. Of course, the MW system would often go down due to "bird strike".
The copper network is incapable of handling the huge speeds needed today and in the future, and it's getting pretty aged in many areas.
The cost of the new FO line is proving to be a bit of headache, with AU$40B quoted initially, but it's likely to be more.
The new conservative govt is going for a much-detested scaled down FO system, of fibre-to-the-node (rather than fibre-to-the-home).
This system is not going to provide the full benefit of FO and it means the users will be picking up the cost of installing FO from the node to their premises.
95% of Oz is highly suitable for a landline network, with lots of flat ground. IMHO, I believe it's pretty important to have a landline network - because the landline is more secure, and because wireless networks are prone to signal decay under a number of circumstances.
We have quite an array of wireless transmission in place already - satellite, microwave and the mobile networks.
However, the amount of transmission errors and transmission breakdown in the mobile phone network makes me leery of any communication system that is totally wireless.
The big microwave dishes that handle a lot of interstate transmissions, used to have their components in the centre of the dish attacked by big parrots (galahs), chewing them up.
The damage the birds did was incredible and it took quite a while to find galah-proof components. Of course, the MW system would often go down due to "bird strike".
