Digital Phone Service vs. Landline (was Re: Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent)

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Sun, 7/6/08, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 4:41 AM, Leo Mauler
> <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > OTOH, he does have a news server, and their phone
> > service is actually regular phone service, as opposed 
> > to "bandwidth-sucking digital phone service that goes 
> > out when the power goes out".
> 
> That's an interesting observation.  I've had TWC
> before and after cable phone service, and I haven't 
> seen my bandwidth go down at all.  800kB/s consistently.
> Perhaps it drops when someone's on the phone, but that 
> rarely happens here for long.

Of course you won't see downstream bandwidth drop, because its usually a big pipe, but your more limited upstream bandwidth drops when someone is using digital phone service because the cable companies do not add any additional upstream Internet service to compensate for the phone's digital VoIP packets.

ZDNet: How We Test Voice Over IP : File-transfer tests
(http://tinyurl.com/6anndn)

"Most residential and small-business broadband connections don't have enough upstream throughput to support both voice and data packets simultaneously. The end result is that under those circumstances when you are sending large amounts of data from your PC (such as uploading photographs to an online photo-finishing service) while using the VoIP service, the audio quality of your call will probably be adversely affected. Since most broadband connections have a high enough downstream throughput, you'll likely hear the person on the other end just fine, but the person you're talking to will have great difficulty hearing you intelligibly: whole words and sentences will drop out."

"Typically, the slower you see your data throughput drop during VoIP calls--especially the upstream data throughput--the better the TA and the VoIP service are at prioritizing the voice packets and the less likely you are to experience any degradation of audio quality. Because of the limited upstream bandwidth of most residential and small-business broadband connections, this is a necessary compromise. Unfortunately, most TAs and VoIP services are not yet sophisticated enough to find the right balance, with the most common result being a significant degradation of audio quality during data uploads."

> As far as the power going out, the phone box they provide
> has a built-in UPS.  Does your regular phone have one?  I 
> doubt it.  I haven't owned a regular phone that can handle 
> a power outage since the 80s.  I don't think they even 
> sell phones nowadays that don't require wall power.

You should get out more often.  Out here in the Big Blue Room you can still buy a corded phone which does not require wall power (other than that provided from the phone jack itself).  Wal-Mart still carries "no power outlet required" phones, as does Radio Shack, Best Buy, Sears, Target, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Walgreens, CVS, Disney Stores, etc.   Even if you can't get out to the physical stores, the websites of the above-mentioned stores offer online shopping opportunities to order "no power" landline phones.

The "no power" landline phones are made by AT&T, GE, Panasonic, and also in various other brands including generics.  They're generally cheaper phones, sold for people who can't afford to drop older technology just because there's something newer and more expensive.  They still have features like speakerphone, number memory, and lighted keys, and some can even do two phone lines.

Having had a neighbor with digital phone service frequently ask to use my phone during a three day ice storm power outage, where the phone lines stayed on, I can say that I'm quite happy with landline service that isn't dependent on a UPS with only SIX HOURS of battery life (TWC's *theoretical* maximum UPS battery life on its digital phones).  Phone lines always seem to be the last connection to go down in my neighborhood, with cable usually being the first to go down.