Volume?
AT&T looking to end copper landline phone service in California
- Thread starter y_p_w
- Start date
Yes, loudness = volume
There used to be something called "loudness" control on audio equipment. It was really meant for human perception of the mids and highs being lower at lower volume, and boosted those frequencies. Apparently some equipment had a dial to adjust that level too.
Yes, loudness is not volume, although higher volume means also louder in the vernacular.
Look, to me a landline connection sounds clearer, to you a digital connection sounds better. Let's just leave it at that because it clearly comes down to personal preference.
Big disaster time landline also doesn't work. Nobody build circuit switching network with everyone calling everyone else. We will get busy tone as soon as we pick up. There is still a finite limit on how many calls a phone company's location can handle at a time.
On the contrary, with packet switched network, we actually might be able to get text over, and even voice call today on LTE uses very little bandwidth, so surprisingly, if someone can watch 4K video over 5G and LTE then they can handle WAY MORE voice call or text messages than landline.
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Yes, most people forgot the biggest quality problem is not the line or technology but the mic and camera. I have heard recommendation of people buying high quality camera and mic for job interview over zoom before just because of that.
The higher frequencies in the landline are used by DSL signals and other stuff.Well, I'm the one who says his old analog FM car stereo had better sound quality than any of the newer digital tuners. I want my Blaupunkt back. Maybe it's my hearing. It's actually quite good because I didn't damage it with rock and metal like many of my contemporaries. I prefer old sound equipment because I find it to be superior. Modern phones are louder but I don't think they offer better sound. Maybe it's just me.
Also you have way better quality cables than the copper twist pair between your home and the phone company. Try hooking up your system with twist pair thousands of feet and see how good it sound....
You can't prove a negative. The simpler system most likely wins and with only a fraction of users who have landlines now, overload will be much less of a problem. Of course, a landline can also fail. But it also can be restored much more easily as it's low-tech. I guess you don't remember or most likely weren't here when the Loma Prieta quake hit in '89. I was 13 at the time and remember all too well. The cell phone system went down. I was in the city with my dad and nobody could get through on their cell phones - those brick-size devices. The landlines largely worked. Once we made it home we could call our relatives from home. The cell network is sensitive to solar flares, EMP, etc - it's a complex system that under stress will deteriorate into chaos like all complex systems do.
I can barely reach the closest cell phone tower from my house, and when I'm at my beach shack I need to hop in the car and drive three miles to get service. I should get weBoost.
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The biggest problem is form over-function designs when form should follow function, at least in a utilitarian device. Almost everybody wants a pleasing-looking device. With few exceptions*, we have cell phones where the speaker blasts sound upwards past the ear and the mic aims past the cheek at the ground. On an old handset, you press the receiver against your ear wich acts almost like a headphone. Background noises are largely eliminated while a cellphone lets in background noise. The same goes for the mic. On most cell phones, you don't speak into the mic but past it and it too picks up way too much background noise. When I see people hold their cellphones awkwardly horizontally in front of their mouths while talking into them I have to laugh. How far we have come!
*Sony and Razer have some models with front-facing speakers.
Hold on a minute, do you think delivering POTS voices calls is simple? Nothing could be further from the truth, as it's a highly complex network that switches those calls. There are many many things that can go wrong along the circuit switched path. Delivering SIP data packets is probably simpler and definitely more resilient.
I was more thinking of the phone line itself which is the component that, at least during natural disasters, most commonly experiences disruptions. As for the all-over reliability of a plain phone system vs a modern, digitized communications network, which system has more outages? I don't know but I have had three outages this year in just one location.
You can't look at a complex system that way. Your voice call is from end to end, not just your access copper.
I see the data. All voice carried over SIP is MUCH more reliable than voice carried over copper, which includes POTS, T1s, and PRIs. The data will continue to diverge, because the TDM equipment is getting very old and failures are now common. Voice carried as data is simply much more reliable.
I can look at the most common failure point. is a fiber optic line as easily restored as a plain phone line? Is a series of cell phone towers less prone to failure than a plain phone line? Number of failure points? What can be more quickly repaired?
I suppose I am having fewer outages and better voice quality than ever without realizing it!
The physical line between your house to your phone company are the only old lines, everything inside the building has been virtual circuit (i.e. fiberoptic and digital switching) for a couple decades now.
The part that you will have problem with is the switches there aren't designed to handle everyone calling at the same time, just like your sewer is not designed to handle everyone flushing toilet at the same time.
The 5G / LTE network today is not the same analog brick phone your dad has back in 1989. I don't think they were even called cellular back then, only one tower and no roaming. They have large area of coverage with no roaming, that's why they are expensive and need a brick of a battery and super big antenna. My dad's phone in the early 90s (I think it is even before 2G), were micro cell and the phone company has to setup equipment every couple of blocks, the phones are much smaller because they don't need to transmit too far, and they can reuse the same band in multiple different locations as long as they are not too powerful and would interfere between them. This is when the term "cellular" started because they are breaking down the coverage into "CELL". He couldn't roam from one "tower" to another and has to stop moving if he wants to talk and not dropped. The reusing of band is how cellphone becomes cheaper, much cheaper, than before, in both service and the phone itself. The equipment per user also becomes cheaper because they don't need to be as tall or as high power either.
Today's cell is much higher bandwidth, and you can tell nobody cares about voice call bandwidth when they start 3G with unlimited calling. You use what? 11kbps to do voice call? and your LTE has what? 1.4M-20Mbps? This is likely going to be way more than anything else a landline office can handle. Also these days a lot of people just text and that consume even less, a few hundred bytes? Nobody would worry too much about emergency landline after e911 has a way to locate you in emergency.
Modify Bandwidth Consumption Calculation for Voice Calls
This document describes voice codec bandwidth calculations and features to modify or conserve bandwidth when Voice over IP (VoIP) is used.
www.cisco.com
From a practical and logical point of view, copper land line service needs to eventually go away. When and how fast is open to debate, but the end goal is real.
Let's continue this after that 9.0 if we got COMMS still going.
I can guarantee you after a 9.0 earthquake, the cellular system is the very top restoration priority. This I also know as fact.
On that, we agree.
Can we also agree that residential POTS service will be the lowest priority and last to be restored?
