Gold Standard Phone Quality Shows Patina of Age

There's one simple task that's often a royal PITA, and that's the once monthly to my utility companies to enter my monthly meter reading. It's either that, or get the estimated bill which is curiously always substantially higher than what I actually used.

So, what's the big deal? Read the meter, record the numbers, make a phone call, right? Well, it's often not so simple.

Calling the utility company puts me into the voice tree straight from hell. Add in that the account number is many digits, and it repeats them back to verify. Unfortunately, the system is also voice activated, and any noise sets it off, and restarts. Last month, despite pressing the mute button on the phone, it took four phone calls, and then I eventually had to speak to someone anyway after holding for a while. Then I had to repeat it for the electricity as well. Don't even get me started that I can enter it online as the last time I tried that, I couldn't even establish an account and gave up after half an hour. So it goes, month after month.

I had figured out a while ago that a newer phone can help. When I replaced my staticky 2.4 GHz one, it was better for a while, but the last few months, it's been getting progressively worse.

Today, something surprising happened. As I placed the call, I realized that this was the first month I was doing it on VoIP, and not on copper. For whatever reason, both meter readings went through on the first try without any issue. This hasn't happened for months with my previous Verizon copper phone service.

I'm guessing that the rotting aging copper phone lines were just introducing too much interference, although even if I wasn't hearing it, the phone voice menu was. In any event, I think that the digital connection is just cleaner. Let's see what goes on next month. In the meantime, we'll see what we can do about gasoline prices...

Jonas

2nd Thought: Maybe it wasn't only the phone line, but the DSL piggybacked onto the copper voice line was throwing the whole thing off?

Stampede From Copper Phone Lines

Recently, the overwhelming customer service response I received from Verizon practically forced me to dump my phone company, and replace them with the local cable company, Optimum. While trading one giant provider for another is hardly that different, at least they were nicer, and communicated better. Apparently I'm not the only customer that "cut the copper:"

With features like unlimited domestic phone calls, cable companies have continued to take business away from rivals such as Verizon Communications Inc., which lost 3 million residential lines for traditional phone service in the first quarter, with total home lines down 11 percent from 2007. Verizon added 263,000 net new FiOS TV and 262,000 FiOS Internet subscribers.

Sure, they get a higher monthly fee from the Fios customers, but they lost ten times as many copper phone line customers. I'm sure my copper phone line account was quite profitable for Verizon as with cell phones, they get used less and less. It doesn't make any business sense to me to lose customers ten times faster than they can find new ones, and this while they're deploying Fios faster than they can run the cables.

While Verizon may have the better product from a technical standpoint, at the rate they're going, it's not going to matter. In the meantime, Optimum Voice, with all the features they throw in was a significant upgrade from my New York Telephone/ Nynex Verizon phone service that hadn't changed in the last three decades. Verizon is facing an uphill battle with their user base eroding, but they just haven't figured it out yet.

Jonas

Will Copper Phone Lines Be Killed By VoIP?

Not So Fast, We're Not Dead Yet!

I've written before about copper phone lines and VoIP technology, and continue to be interested in both, and the complex transition occurring. It's one of those situations where the shift to digital is not quite a no brainer like it was tossing out the cassette tapes for CD's, or VHS for DVD's. Anyway, I found this article:

Grant Thornton, an expert analyst in the business and finance industries, has issued a report stating that VoIP services are going to continue to grow rapidly and pose a threat to traditional telephony in just a few short years. Citing a four-fold increase in VoIP subscriptions over the past two years, he predicts that the VoIP market will see over $25 billion in revenue by 2010.

For the current offerings, I think we can all agree on some basic points about plain ol' telephone service (POTS) over copper lines: it's overpriced for what you get, it's definitely overtaxed, it's proven technology, it has an aging infrastructure that is not being maintained, it's 911 works the best, and it is the "gold standard" for voice quality that all else gets compared to.

I think it's more than safe to say that there will definitely be less subscribers to POTS as the years pass. Despite the quality advantages, and proven technology, it's simply not enough value. Cell phone penetration has reached very high levels where there are multiple phones per household, all with included long distance and caller ID thrown in. I already make all of my long distance calls on my cell phone, and despite my incessant grumblings about T-Mobile, I will throw them a bone here and say that their voice quality is just as good as my landline, and so if I had a plan with more minutes, I could consider ditching the home phone.

If Verizon wants to wonder why folks are ditching their landlines, they need to look no further than their pricing. Copper phone lines are quite a la carte. I was paying, with the taxes, just under $25 for a single phone line to the house, with nonpublished service. I had no long distance to avoid another charge, whether or not I used it. The Caller ID that I really wanted was $8 monthly. I had a local calling plan where I paid for each call, but within the county they were not timed then, although calls to the next county, less than 10 miles down the road were charged by the minute! Hence, why I use my cell phone for such calls, and use the Verizon line for mostly incoming calls. To get a better plan, such as unlimited long distance, ran a friend $60 monthly, which is quite ridiculous these days given the competition (she ditched it and went to cable just last month). On top of this, Verizon isn't maintaining their copper infrastructure, in favor of fiber optic, so expect some down time, as I experienced last year. Finally, Verizon is heavily marketing for their Fios offerings, and making it nearly impossible to go back to copper once the fiber gets hooked up. By doing this, they also trade folks up to a higher priced monthly plan, coincidentally, just when more "affordable" unlimited monthly cell phone plans are rolling out. Not to mention services such as T-Mobile's HotSpot at Home which is unlimited VoIP, but cleverly marketed more as a cell phone so it probably has higher consumer acceptance.

However, given all of these forces against traditional copper landlines, I still don't see them going away overnight as some are predicting. For starters, not every household has a broadband connection, or even access to a broadband connection, particularly in rural areas. On top of that, many folks have affordable DSL as their broadband, and in most cases that requires a landline as well to get (Verizon has millions more DSL customers than Fios folks). There are also plenty of folks that don't change their services, and don't reevaluate periodically, particularly among the senior set. They've always gotten their phone that way, and if it ain't broke they're not gonna look to fix it, or try anything new. As homes turn over, and new services are selected, clearly copper lines are on the decline, but this could take many years to accomplish the transition. Incidentally, the digital TV transition may be hastening things as folks (such as myself) sign up for new digital TV services, and end up getting forced into triple play pricing for the best deals.

So, how will this all work out? I think it could take 20 years for copper phone lines to go away. Perhaps future technologies will change the rules of the game. How about broadband and telephony over satellite? For that matter, what about a Skype like service over nationwide WiFi hotspots or WiMax? And who knows what the wireless spectrum auction might bring in terms of new services? While the future is not copper, this is all going to take time to sort out, and lots of it.

Pricey Landline....

Month after month my Verizon phone bill shows up in the mailbox. You may recall that I have both telephone service with them, and DSL internet. While I'm generally satisfied with my internet hookup (hard to beat 768/128 for a broadband bargain $17.99 monthly), I always feel like I'm overpaying on the phone portion of the bill.

The phone, on the other hand, is just under $25 for a traditional phone service. You know, the ol' fashioned copper lines that many have gotten away from. I generally don't make that many calls in a month as I use my cell phone on nights & weekends, and for any long distance or regional calling. The landline is really more for incoming calls, and God forbid, for 911.

When I look at the $25 charge, and the 6 calls that I made on the line a month, and realize that it's close to $4 a call, it starts to become rather silly, and clearly there should be a better way.

When folks think about VoIP, the name that instantly comes to mind is Vonage. There $25 plan gives an all-you-can-eat, err, I mean talk, approach to phone service. While it works out to more than what I'm paying after taxes, there's still something attractive about it, and represents a better value. I recently learned that folks are getting the service for even less which could force my hand (like $14.99 monthly before taxes). The other stumbling block is that my DSL modem is downstairs, and my base phone with answering machine is upstairs. Recall that the Vonage box needs to plugged into the phone and the internet. While I'm not enthusiastic about running my own Cat 5e cable, I'm pretty sure a quality powerline network adapter could bridge this gap.

Yesterday, Bill posted about a new service from T-Mobile, my dreaded cell phone company. It's called the Talk Forever Home Phone. For customers with existing plans of greater than $39 monthly, which I fit into, for a mere $10 a month, they offer an all-you-can-talk phone plan. Sweet! Unfortunately, it's in limited areas (and not by me yet), but while I've been unenthusiastic about their Hot Spot At Home plan (special phones, new router, and mediocre service), this new plan did get my interest. True, I still have the issue about the network box, but for such a low monthly rate, and the ability to keep my home phone number, it could be worth the effort.

The one stumbling block in all of this is that any of these new services rely on a fast internet connection. With a DSL upload speed of 128 (kbps) I'm not sure that I'll be able to both surf and use the phone simultaneously, so this is going backwards to the days of dialup. Not to mention that my DSL is tied to my landline account, and I'm not getting DSL without the phone (smart phone company folks).

I think at this point, the best thing to do is to wait for my phone contract to expire in a few months (begrudingly paying for the overpriced copper in the meantime). Then I can get Fios, which I believe is 10/2 mbps in my area for $39.99. Then depending on the triple play offer, I'll either go with "Fios Phone" or a Vonage service.

It seems to me that at this point, while phone service used to be the star of the show, it's become a secondary player to the internet service, and used mostly for retaining customers.