phones should disappear

[mellowtigger]

Why do we still have phones? That technology should be eliminated altogether. There are so many things wrong with it, and we already have better options. We have various internet technologies that exceed traditional phone capabilities. About half of my job time is spent on our old phone system. Looking at project ideas for the upcoming year, half of them are also phone related. Please, when can we retire this ancient technology and use something far more flexible?

phone numbers:
I reprogram our phone database at work to make adjustments for undialable phone numbers. Here in the Twin Cities metro, the area codes 763 and 651 are supposed to be local phone calls with no toll charges. Except that a few rapidly growing areas are considered long distance prefixes even within those area codes. This exception leaves our PBX system unable to route any calls to those destinations. I have to program a rule exception that permits us to dial 1 to allow long distance charges to those destination numbers. Let's just move the internet to IP6 already, then every technological device under the sun can get its own unique number. Phone book listings transform into internet nameserver lookups. The phrase "long-distance call" becomes irrelevant. Every device within a household can share the same base address. Add more "phones" on a whim within your base address, and do so at no charge.

power:
One argument for the old phone system is that it included its own electrical power. Ethernet these days, however, can do the same. If my calculations on these core values are correct:

63.25 mA * 1000 = 0.06325 A
52.5 V * 0.06325 A = 3.32 W

I find that the old phone system delivers 3.3 Watts of power. Ethernet today, however, is able to deliver 12.9 Watts. There are probably big differences in the distance they can deliver that power, but honestly I don't see what the fuss is about. Phones don't need to include their own power transformer brick just to connect them to the internet data line. Also, USB devices when in suspended mode will draw a miniscule amount of power (see page 3), so I don't think the phantom load will break the green technology goal that we should aspire to achieve.

speed:
I think the maximum data transfer rate of old analog lines capped out around 33.6 kbits / second. Companies like ours use a digital phone network instead of analog. I can't find any documentation that explains the speed of this network. I do easily find reference to the 4.8 kbits / second that each phone allows for a serial attached device. The main network is surely faster than that, but I don't know how much. In contrast, gigabit ethernet is commonplace, and that technology is orders of magnitude faster.

faxes:
While we're ending the old phone technology, let's finally end fax technology too.  Instead of faxes, transmit PDF documents by email.  It offers higher resolution and (because of the speed increase mentioned above) would still be faster to send a document.

wiring:
My biggest objection to phone technology, however, is the duplicate infrastructure that it requires.  We already have buildings wired for ethernet with all of the benefits described above.  Now, in addition to that wiring and equipment, we also have to have a second system in place to support the old phone technology.  It's such a wasteful and pointless expense that I boggle at the thought of how much money is wasted by industry in America to keep this inferior technology in use.

cell phones:
I mention these points now because my pre-paid phone expired earlier this week.  I pay $100 up front to Verizon, and the balance is good for a year.  They deduct $1 each day the phone is involved in a call (send or receive) plus $0.10 per minute.  I've never used up all the money on such a plan, but this year I had a record $93.65 go to waste.  I don't use phones.  Really, why does anyone use phone technology when internet service is ubiquitous?  I don't keep the cell phone on my body, and it sometimes spends weeks without battery charge before I remember to plug it into the recharger.

Now, it's time for me to go make another $100 payment on a phone that seems mandatory even though I don't use it.

Comments

[furr_a_bruin]

As someone who lives in SoCal and was here for the Northridge earthquake - when the cell network (admittedly, years ago) collapsed under the load but my POTS line still worked fine... I would point out that there are reliability advantages to thoroughly mature technologies... presuming they're properly maintained, of course.

It's true that you can do Power over Ethernet - but most people's internet connection delivery doesn't involve ethernet; the connection comes in via TV cable or a fiber optic line ... or those old POTS wires you dislike, and which do carry power. We're starting to see companies like Comcast who sell IP-based phone services starting to seriously cheap out - making the battery backup for the leased phone interface (powered from the customer's electrical service, not Comcast) an option the customer has to purchase separately. Even at that, the battery only lasts so long and if the customer doesn't have some other way to power the interface, eventually they won't be able to make or receive calls at all. While it's true that in a major emergency the power backups for POTS lines might eventually fail - there's a LOT more depth there.

This is aside from the fact that some of the alternatives - AT&T and Verizon are pushing home adapters that use cellular service, for instance - don't really play all that well with 911 systems, where good ol' POTS lines tell emergency responders exactly where the call came from.

In short - as long as I can still get one, I will have a POTS line because of their massive superiority in case of emergency.

[mellowtigger]

I'm in the process of switching our trunks for 911 outgoing access from our phone provider to some Comcast phone lines (part of a bundle package). Geographic pinpointing is important during an emergency call.

We should be able to invent a comm network that can be at least as useful in emergency situations. Would it work, for instance, to have a protocol that individual routers use to append tables of geographic information onto the emergency request? So the router handling ethernet land lines in my city block would know that its physical port 13 delivers to my street address. (The phone company would need extensive security on routers to prevent tampering with their database.) Any emergency call passing through that port would have the address info delivered with the call to the emergency response center. (You'd have the same problem with wireless calls as you do now with cell towers.)