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  • Status of Copper Based Landline Telephones [telecom]

    From Albert Erdmann@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jan 23 12:31:25 2023
    The great sunset date by the FCC for Landlines has come and gone, and my 2 landlines at 2 different locations are at this time are still operating. I
    have had a recent pair change done on one of the lines, and the tech told
    me he knew of no plans to force retirement at this time.

    My understanding is that carriers may continue to sell Copper Based
    Landlines, but are no longer required to do so by the FCC. In fact based
    on my experence, AT&T in the old Bellsouth region is not only offering
    Copper Based landlines including mine, but in fact has a website where you
    can still order one today.

    Is anyone aware of any tracking of this issue anywhere on the internet? I
    read a lot of issues of Telecom Digest around the sunset date, but it
    appears that analog retirement has not really been covered here.

    I have been investigating alternatives which do not require internet
    access to work. I am trying a 4G router, specifically a Yeacomm P21, that
    has an available RJ11 that is able to place and receive calls on a
    standard landline phone using a mobile network.

    Does anyone else have any other ideas? At one time even AT&T had a
    similar box, and Verizon tried to migrate Hurricane Sandy people whose
    lines were damaged over to such a box but ended up putting in fiber to
    replace the damaged copper lines. Considering the so called "sunset", I
    have seen very little promotion of any such boxes.

    I am thinking about the many lines used for fire alarm and elevator
    emergency phones. Any idea what building owners are doing in this regard?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Marc SCHAEFER@21:1/5 to Albert Erdmann on Tue Jan 24 09:36:37 2023
    On 23 Jan 2023 12:31:25 -0500,
    Albert Erdmann <[email protected]> wrote:
    I am thinking about the many lines used for fire alarm and elevator
    emergency phones. Any idea what building owners are doing in this regard?

    In Switzerland, they had to be replaced either by GSM (and 4G/5G
    presumably, because 2G is already obsolete, and 3G will become obsolete
    soon), or VoIP.

    I heard of some cases where they still had the analog dialing devices
    (the WSG35-2 was very popular, it was a modem that could also just dial
    and then switch to an analog microphone). They now plugged those to the
    ATA port of a VoIP router. As long as the dialing device uses DTMF to
    dial, it works like a charm.

    Then you just need to either ask those systems to poll the central
    monitoring system every now and then to check they are still
    operationnal (which most of those systems did anyway in the past
    already). They usually used DTMF for checking-in, which works best when decoded at the ATA itself.

    If they used real modem modulation, they are better off replacing the
    modem part completely by an IP signaling or GSM system, although my
    tests have shown that the VoIP network can still mostly work at 2400
    bits/s with e.g. V22bis seems to still work. I could not get higher
    speeds even with parameter tweaking and no codec conversion. I used real
    modems on both sides: using a DSP directly attached to the VoIP network
    might get much better results.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bill Horne@21:1/5 to Marc SCHAEFER on Wed Jan 25 15:17:41 2023
    On Tue, Jan 24, 2023 at 09:36:37AM -0000, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
    On 23 Jan 2023 12:31:25 -0500,
    Albert Erdmann <[email protected]> wrote:
    I am thinking about the many lines used for fire alarm and elevator emergency phones. Any idea what building owners are doing in this regard?

    In Switzerland, they had to be replaced either by GSM (and 4G/5G
    presumably, because 2G is already obsolete, and 3G will become obsolete soon), or VoIP.

    I heard of some cases where they still had the analog dialing devices
    (the WSG35-2 was very popular, it was a modem that could also just dial
    and then switch to an analog microphone). They now plugged those to the
    ATA port of a VoIP router. As long as the dialing device uses DTMF to
    dial, it works like a charm.

    In the U.S., it's common to find business Internet connections that
    depend on AC power to operate, which go dead during a power
    failure. Since most elevators here also run on AC, any widespread
    power failure leads to tens or hundreds of people stranded in
    elevators, and, if the emergency phones in those elevators require
    Internet connections to work, also unable to call for help.

    Bill Horne

    --
    (Pleae remove QRM for direct replies)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Garrett Wollman@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Thu Jan 26 19:34:10 2023
    In article <[email protected]>,
    Bill Horne <[email protected]> wrote:

    In the U.S., it's common to find business Internet connections that
    depend on AC power to operate, which go dead during a power
    failure. Since most elevators here also run on AC, any widespread
    power failure leads to tens or hundreds of people stranded in
    elevators, and, if the emergency phones in those elevators require
    Internet connections to work, also unable to call for help.

    In some jurisdictions, buildings where elevators are mandatory are
    also required to have backup power sufficient to return those
    elevators to the recall floor. Of course that does not do much for
    older buildings that were never retrofitted, and I'm not sure what
    requirements are imposed on the emergency phones specifically.

    This is brought to mind by the fact that our building was closed for
    two days this past month in order to perform preventive maintenance on
    the automatic transfer switch, which required shutting down utility
    power and doing a manual transfer for generator loads. Much of my
    core network equipment is on generator power, as well as a UPS, but
    the office switches and anything powered by them (desk phones and
    wireless access points) are not.

    -GAWollman

    --
    Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, [email protected]| act to remove constraint from the future. This is Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
    my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Marco Moock@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jan 27 08:56:36 2023
    Am 25.01.2023 schrieb Bill Horne <[email protected]>:

    In the U.S., it's common to find business Internet connections that
    depend on AC power to operate, which go dead during a power
    failure. Since most elevators here also run on AC, any widespread
    power failure leads to tens or hundreds of people stranded in
    elevators, and, if the emergency phones in those elevators require
    Internet connections to work, also unable to call for help.

    That is a huge problem. In Germany IIRC they now use cellular mobile
    network (2G, 4G or 5G) as a backup.

    Analog phone lines have some advantages. :-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Marc SCHAEFER@21:1/5 to Bill Horne on Thu Jan 26 23:55:35 2023
    Bill Horne <[email protected]> wrote:
    failure. Since most elevators here also run on AC, any widespread
    power failure leads to tens or hundreds of people stranded in
    elevators, and, if the emergency phones in those elevators require
    Internet connections to work, also unable to call for help.

    Here, the phone systems in the elevator are usually running on
    batteries, in case of power failure. It would be however be interesting
    to know if:

    - the VoIP routers also run on batteries

    - if FTTS, the MicroCAN in the street either have batterie or are
    tele-powered via old phone lines from a phone central
    which has a generator or batteries

    The devil is always in the details.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Marco Moock@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jan 27 13:13:05 2023
    Am 26.01.2023 schrieb "Marc SCHAEFER" <[email protected]>:

    - the VoIP routers also run on batteries

    The entire network needs to run. Bigger computing centres have a
    battery backup and a generator for all their machines including
    network, but smaller offices/buildings mostly don't have that, so
    network (including routers, switches, telephone exchanges) go down -
    either immediately or after some minutes because the batteries are
    only there to ensure a graceful shutdown to avoid data corruption.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)