[Discuss] AT&T eliminating copper phone lines

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 03:34:04PM -0400, Daniel Barrett wrote:
> On March 28, 2017, Dan Ritter wrote:
> >1, 2 and 3 are all variations on 4 [eliminating the landline]
> 
> Oh god. Does this mean that fiber optic lines, when they replace
> copper lines in the home, reduce the voice quality to that of a cell
> phone? (If so, I'm screwed for life. I cannot make out 50% of cell
> phone conversations, even with hearing aids.)

No, it means that you will no longer have a roughly 64Kb/s analog
connection to your local phone switch. Because it's no longer 
analog, a digital adapter at your house needs to be involved --
and it needs power. Power which will not be available over the
phone line. If your house power goes out, so does your phone.

As I said, VOIP quality *can* be better than POTS. (But that's
not the way to bet.)

> >What does your alarm company recommend?
> 
> They say they'll work fine over fiber optic lines of the sort that
> AT&T or Verizon installs. I'm checking on Vonage. (But Vonage has
> other difficulties, like the fact that the phone lines are in the
> basement and the FIOS router is on the third floor, so I'd have to
> hire an electrician to run cables to the Vonage box, and then bring in
> the alarm company to hook up their stuff.)
> 
> >What does AT&T say when you say "I have an alarm system that depends
> >on a POTS line"?
> 
> "The lines brought to your home MUST be MUST be [sic] converted to
> fiber. [Otherwise], your AT&T service will be disconnected when the
> outside facilities in your area are fully migrated from copper to
> fiber on May 5, 2017."

Wow, that's nice of them.

Why are they charging you $100/month for that? They should have
an obligation to replace your copper with fiber at the same
cost.

I wonder if there's some fine print available that they are
carefully not drawing to your attention.

-dsr-