[BC] Telephone--what's a telephone?

[Ira Wilner]

Robert, I can't believe that only 5% of the public are using POTS.  How was
that statistic measured?  Sure a lot of folks have jumped onto cellular and
cut the cord, but not in my neck of the woods.  Here it's a mixture of POTS
and cellular.   Granted that many universities stopped providing POTS lines
in dorms except by special request and fees, but my daughter's school
continued to provide free phones for every student.  And I must confessed
she begged me for a cell phone at the time saying she was missing out on
social contacts while walking from class to class as her dorm room phone
would only be handy in the evening or when she had a long break between
classes and was not in the library or outdoors studying in good weather.

I need to keep POTS service to enable data and cellular at my home.   That
may change when the fiber network is completed by my LEC.  At work we're
using a SIP provider with a dedicated T-1 into their network, but they use
the public Internet and we've had a lot of instances of break-ins to the
equipment and thousands of dollars of bogus calls made on our accounts.
Slipshod security on the shoulders of the SIP system provider.  And, unlike
the golden days of the local telecoms, when you call in for a trouble ticket
it can takes days before the problem is sorted out.

If your figures are correct, then there's a huge amount of dead copper out
on the poles and in the manholes across America.

--Ira

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-----Original Message-----

 From: RobertM