> wasnt there a hige shit stom in australia for their new national > broadband network making internet ptrimary and phone secondary, a lot > of aussies on forums I frequent bitch about its reliability, where > even their aged copper services worked fine, not to mention prolonged > outages due to storms and the bushfires they had recently, lets hope > the world learns from australias mistakes and not go down that path.
There are still a few complaints every now and again but fixed line numbers are continuing to drop off a cliff and those residential services which remain have almost all been converted to VOIP via home gateway with an FXS port. Mobile/Cell is where most people ended up. Especially since you can get unlimited calls/txt with some data for about ten bucks a month. It also helps that a number of the mobile providers include wifi-calling so mobile is a viable alternative even in weak cell coverage areas if you have internet. Yes, everyone knows about the reliability/power-failure arguments but in the latest set of bushfires whole exchanges, backhaul services and power distribution cables were destroyed so 8 hours of battery backed up POTS in a local exchange didn't help much. Mark.