Not as likely to happen to fiber well not unless a new technology or
different kind of glass that significantly changes the economics is
developed. Your not wrong about the reason copper networks were left to
rot was due to money that is true. Sometime around 2008 or so is when it
was more costly to repair copper than to replace with fiber. I would
disagree however with regulators not enforcing carrier of last resort.
Even today I have a customer that provides phone service in an area that
they are going to have to overbuild the copper and replace all the lines
at a loss to support a handfull of POTS services. All because they are
in an area with next to no cell coverage. The big change in that regards
is many of the services that required a copper line the LECs where able
to drop from the services that were required. The first one that comes
to my mind is alarm lines I used to love ordering those why pay $1500 a
month for a t1 when you could do sdsl over a $30 a month alarm line.
Those and services like tty lines etc were dropped from required
services because no one was using them. Its now pretty much limited to
POTS and TTY lines that are easy to implement over wireless so no need
for a land line.
On 8/12/25 1:44 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
I hope people realize the same thing could happen to fiber in 10 or 20
years.
The reason the copper network was left to rot wasn’t technology, it
was about money. Either the service wasn’t generating enough revenue
& profit to justify maintaining the infrastructure, or the companies
just got greedy. And regulators didn’t enforce things like carrier of
last resort and let them get away with poor service metrics.
All BEAD cares about is speed and cost. But it’s like buying your
kids a puppy. They have to feed it and walk it.
*From:*AF <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Bill Prince
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 12, 2025 1:27 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT: Oh No! No more modem sounds!
Around here, it was common to see the phone lines draped between
bushes on the side of the road. That and instead of trenching, they
ran the phone line through culverts.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 8/12/2025 11:22 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Here when GTE lines became Verizon and then Frontier, the techs
would tell customers there was “water in the lines” and “mice in
the boxes”. That happens when your repair for a busted pedestal
is to put an orange trash bag over it.
*From:*AF <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Jan-GAMs
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 12, 2025 1:02 PM
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT: Oh No! No more modem sounds!
After Verizon bought GTE the phone became un-usable and their
technicians couldn't fix-it. We had to move to wireless and cable
because the noise interference on the twisted-pair copper was too
excessive for dial-up.
On 8/12/25 10:13, Bill Prince wrote:
Before we started our broadband company, we had 3 landlines.
One for personal use, one for business use, and one for
internet access. None of the 3 lines were capable of more than
28 Kbps on a clear sunny day. More often, about 20 Kbps. We
had a modem that was directly connected to our router. The
main reason for the slow speeds was because we are ~~ 75,000
feet (over 14 miles) from the CO. When you picked up a phone,
it took at least a second or two before you got a dial tone.
It was a miracle it worked at all. At some point after we
established our broadband company, the 3rd line became a
backup phone line. There was even a point where none of the 3
lines actually worked. That became the writing on the wall;
especially when VoIP became a reality.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 8/12/2025 8:00 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
If it’s from self-reported census data, I’m still skeptical.
Most people today don’t know what a landline is, they
think their cellphone is a landline. They also don’t know
what dialup is. Ask someone with DSL and they may call it
dialup because it goes over the phoneline. They say WiFi
when they mean Internet, and modem when they mean router.
I felt dialup became totally useless for most use cases
over 10 years ago when it was no longer possible to do
Windows Update or update antivirus software over a 56 kbps
connection. People would have to take their computer
somewhere else every few months to get updates. And for
anything other than a computer they probably need WiFi
which is technically possible over dialup but nobody buys
that equipment any more (I forget what it was called or
who made it).
Anybody using a dialup modem connection today is probably
using a FAX machine or something like a POS credit card
terminal.
We got out of dialup in 2009, I might still have some
Ascend remote access servers somewhere if they didn’t go
to the recycler, I think it was something like a MAX4096?
Let me know if you actually want them and I’ll look. Most
of them were on Chicago metro area numbers but we had one
in DeKalb for our wireless customers to use for free in
case of an outage. Nobody used them, even in 2009, they
would rather drive to town and use the WiFi at a coffee
shop than use dialup, it was considered that useless.
People these days will say their Internet is so slow it’s
at “dialup speed” when they’re downloading at 1 Mbps.
People don’t know what 56 kbps feels like. I mean, in
today’s terms, that’s 0.000056 gigabits. Asking Google AI
how long it would take to download a game at that speed,
it answered: “Therefore, it would theoretically take
approximately 168 days (almost half a year) to download
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on a 56 Kbps dial-up connection”.
*From:*AF <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Bill Prince
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 12, 2025 9:37 AM
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT: Oh No! No more modem sounds!
The 1/4 million I heard yesterday had to be an estimate.
In today's paper they had this. It's still an estimate,
and it is 2 years old.
/Still, a handful of consumers have continued to rely
on internet services connected over telephone lines.
In the U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an
estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone
to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of
all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide./
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 8/11/2025 9:16 PM, Trey Scarborough wrote:
I don't see how they have lasted this long or how
there could be a 250k people that would be able to get
an actual land line to be able to use 56k dialup.
This makes me have so many questions. Like where are
all these PRIs and dailup units to run these. I
remember removing many of the old Lucent max TNTs that
AOL used for dialup in our COs in the mid 2000s. I
tried to reconfigure a couple of them to use as VOIP
gateways, but they had a custom firmware on them that
it wouldn't go back to regular defaults. How are they
still running all of these local numbers? I'm in
ATT/VZ/CL main COs on a regular basis and think I
would notice dial up equipment running in the colo
spaces and cant say that I have noticed any. I have
seen a few portmaster PM3s that do not look like they
are functioning anymore. All the ports have alarms and
the companies they are labeled as being have been
bankrupt for years.
For certain the oddity that they are still somewhat
functioning today completely astonishes me.
On 8/11/2025 2:36 PM, Bill Prince wrote:
For those of you who think nostalgically about
those warm modem dial-up tones, AOL is
discontinuing its dial-up service. Music to the
ears of all ISPs that there will now be about a
quarter million new internet customers.
https://pcper.com/2025/08/aol-discontinues-dial-up-wait-what/
--
AF mailing list
[email protected]
http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
