My Aunt loses her DSL whenever it's hot and humid. Truck after truck will roll with excuse after excuse as to why the trouble is occurring. She finally had enough and snapped at one of the techs and said she knew he was lying. He made a snide remark about how she would know what the problem was. She said 'Because there's a paper wrapped trunk line in poor condition on which gets saturated by the humidity and starts shorting the pairs. How do I know that? I was the field engineer who wrote up the work order to have that line installed over 30 years ago!'. I'm told the look on his face was priceless as he said 'oh, so you do know what you're talking about'. Ignore any incorrect terms for the trunk type, as this was 7-8 years ago and my memory is crap, I just know she said it had something to do with the sheathing wrapped around it being a paper-based material and not a newer material.
Paper based cable and we have tons of it still in the field is pressurized with air from the co so moisture should not get into the paper cable. I thing that was stelpath, then there was the alpath which was a dry plastic insulated and finially cellfill which is a greased cable. Paper cable will short out if it gets wet but that should never happen as there is about 9psi of air pumped into the cable which prevents any water getting into the cable. We have paper cables in manholes that are full of water. About a 15 years ago a contractor that was pulling in fiber for our remote dslam. They dropped a ladder in and hit the pressure stem on a splice case breaking it. Splice lost pressure. Pressure alarm went off but the pressure guy thought it was a falses alarm. It wasn't. Cable got wet. Took 1200 people out of service. Had to pull in new 1800 pair cable about 1km from one manhole to the next. Took us 4 days to fix. I was a cable splicer back then and worked on this outage swinging customers from the large damages cable to a smaller one just to get the lifeline customers back online. It was a disaster that could have been prevented had the pressure guy that was ready to retire had bothered to go out and investigate rather than leave it for the next day. He retired abruptly.
@@12voltvids It's a legacy local carrier system, passed off to SBC (then AT&T after SBC bought them and re-branded), now run by Frontier. Frontier maintains NOTHING that they own. There's likely a constant alarm from the pressure drop going off that they just ignore. They simply do not care.
Now THAT is epic. I've met many former employees or family members of retired employees in the past 14+ years as a contractor. I LOVE the history of the PSTN, but it's been in such a sad state as long as I've been doing this, that when an opportunity came to jump ship, I just had to. Been doing cable I&R for the competition for almost 2 weeks, and I'm so glad I did.
Here in NJ, copper phone lines are no longer being maintained. You can still use one, but if it ever has a problem, the "repair" that Verizon does is to switch you over to fiber optic, with an Internet speed of only 5 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up -- but that's still better than the DSL I had, which due to my distance from the central office was limited to only 3 Mbps down / 768 kbps up. Now I have FiOS (with 100 Mbps down & up) and the ONT does support rotary dialing, but the battery backup they supplied never worked, so every time the power goes out, the phones go dead.
Here the copper is also not being maintained either. They want to switch everyone over. Fortunately I work for the company, so if I have a problem I just go fix it. I shouldn't say "Not" being maintained. It is discouraged. I did a copper install a few weeks ago.
@@12voltvids In NY we have the same thing, Copper is phased out and that was even more phased out when Sandy hit in 2012. I myself along with a few others liked the way copper sounded during a phone called compared to Fios IP Phones which sounds like too much of a digital echo like a cell phone! Dave being that you have both worlds running to your house, couldn't you use fiber for internet purposes only or TV if its available and keep using copper as is for everything else (legacy) which in term making them coexist? Also to @VWestlife , I enjoy your legacy electronics videos as well!
@@Hi-Tech-Ray no once you switch everything switches. Even people with no internet or tv are being switched just for phone. There are other reasons i don't want fiber. IP changing every 24 hours is another. Wrecks gavick with things that require a fixed up. As I said I have legacy equipment i have no intention of upgrading.
In my country copper (with VDSL) is not only maintained but also installed. They sell you VDSL at 100 or 200Mbit as fiber to the cabinet, which clearly is not fiber. Also the new VDSL lines doesn't have analog phone service, I mean that the phone service still is VOIP and the copper line is only for the data. To me is not a problem, I dismissed the home phone years ago since the only calls that I did receive were spam calls and I have unlimited phone calls on my mobile phone so.
@@alerighi We still do copper for people that don't want drilling or for apartment that is too costly to update. It is fiber to the cabinet. The dslam is fed with fiber. VoIP could be done over the DSL modem but the gtd5 is still in operation. I have a VoIP line as well for business.
@@TricksterRad i live next to one and i work in telecom, when ever i try to work to work on my own telecom stuff (my own infrastructure) she asks a million questions. makes life hard. these western white karens need their brain resets
@@aedgvv6095 by my own infrastructure, you're talking about stuff you own, or stuff the phone company owns that connects to your house? Either way, I'd probably politely ask the lady to leave me alone while I'm trying to work. It's not like she has any business being there asking you questions.
@@12voltvids Is there electronics? Or it is only a patch to derive the lines to the consumer house? What's the main carrier cable upwards to the network?
@@swilwerth the cabinet has the VDSL ports in it. They are fed with fiber. Power to power up the dslam is 48 volts. The battery voltage at the co 52 volts is stepped up to +192 and -192 with respect to ground. 384 volts potential and 25 pairs of 26 gauge copper is used for this. High voltage low current. In the side panels contains the power supply cooling fans and VDSL ports. This cabinet has 384 total ports. 192 on each side. That can feed 384 single loop DSL or up to 192 bonded which uses 2 ports. This cabinet is about 1.6 km from the main central office and about 600 meters from my house. If fed from the co directly i might get 6 megs but cutting that 1.6km (1 mile) off the cable allows each line to hit about 50 megs, so I can get 100 meg service over the copper line. I only pay for 75. More than fast enough for my needs.
With my cell provider they make you enter your home address whenever you set up Wi-Fi-calling, I think most providers do this. This means if you’re connected to your home Wi-Fi and dial 911 from your cell phone they will know you’re home and get your home address right away just like if you were calling from a landline. Pretty neat!
Is that something that resides on the phone itself? Because if the phone were lost or stolen, any unscrupulous person would then have your home address.
@@stanpatterson5033 I'm pretty sure it's stored within my carriers servers but even if it isn't I'm not worried about it. The phone is a modern encrypted iPhone locked with a password that the police seem to have trouble breaking into. In the world we live in, anyone who knows my name or yours for that matter can figure out where I or you live within minutes.
@@stanpatterson5033 For my cell carrier the user entered home address is stored on the account on the carrier's servers. I can easily edit this address at will. I believe this is required by law for e911 purposes.
@@timramich Sure. But here we are talking about how to have a reasonable replacement for a fixed landline. That's why this address is clearly indicated as the home emergency address, and why 911 operators understand and are trained on such things with mobile phones. The other location mechanisms such as cell tower and GPS may provide additional context for other locations. When out and about it should be understood that with the convenience of mobility may come more onus on the mobile caller to assist with location identification. The mobile technology is getting better and better at reducing this onus introduced by the mobile convenience, but it's a moving target (literally and figuratively). :-)
He mentioned that he has Fiber already capped in the home so it's a safe guess that he has FTTN, fiber to the node. Fiber makes 99% of the journy to the box on the street and only communicates with your DSL modem between your home and that node. Very modernized version of DSL, good for rural areas where it can be 100m-5km between homes and digging fiber would be too expensive. I have a friend out in the farmlands with 250Mbps DSL and actually gets his full speed during peak times because his node isn't overloaded like it is in the city.
My granfather who was a Vietnam Veteran started working for Centel in the late 70's or early 80s (which eventually became Sprint and then Embarq by the time he retired) and I remember seeing him work with telephone lines like this from time to time. I was always amazed at how many wires and tools/equipment he worked with every day. He passed away the day before Thanksgiving of 2020 and I couldnt help but smile when I saw the thumbnail for this video. Thanks for posting this! I have no idea how any of that stuff works but it reminded me of spending time with my grandfather and I really needed that today!
@@johncoops6897 I should have included that he was drafted into the navy and was a radio operator that handled messages to direct the gunmen on where they needed to fire. He was there from 1965 to 1969 on a battle ship and I am sure this influenced his decisions in life.
I still have a copper line coming into the house and an old phone hooked up. Where we are on the island we lose power quite a bit during the wind storms. Nice to have an old phone and phone line that still works even when the power goes out. It’s also more reliable than cell service.
@@rodpadev The beta is pretty broad now. It's not so bad, $99/m is only $15 more then my gig internet and unlike mine starlink could be used on a moving object. I think that is nifty. Being on an island you would be a prime beta candidate
@@-Good4Y0u 99usd a month is a looot of money for some people, my 50/5 DSL is 8usd a month and i have the fastest internet out of all off my friends lol, and thats in a fairly big city
@@ondrejbrandejsky5592 99 USD isn't a lot of money in the US for internet. The cheapest plans are usually around $40. SOME states are trying to limit pricing, but NY State for example is being sued for just that right now.
Glad I found this! My landline primary phone is doing the same thing with the static, since we had heavy rains the past couple days. Unfortunately, AT&T no longers service landlines -- so guess that means we do our own fixing. We have cell phones, but landlines are definitely MORE RELIABLE with power outages
Yes thats what AT&T told me and suggested I get set up with using cell phone instead, but I'd like to hold to my landline as long as possible, which is why I searched in what to do. Thanks for the upload!
Pretty neat to see behind the scenes like that. We had this happen at my parents house a few decades ago. Buried line, would crackle a few days after it rained. Same solution, they just switched with the unused second line.
Please note: GPS often times works inside as well. For example, at my work I can submit clock punches on my phone, BUT I must be within a work location, and for the most part, it just works. Unless you have +3ft of concrete in-between you and the satellites the GPS function will work just fine. In major downtown areas with large buildings and in parking ramps will generally be the areas where you will have problems, also on lower floors of some apartments. Note that if you connect to WiFi, you can also get location information from there, that EMS technicians can pull from your phone. Sometimes even more accurately than a simple landline, ie. what part of the building you are in and which floor. Also, when you call emergency services, you are always broadcasting them your location so they can know where you are.
Yep...tho my one experience calling 911 in a real emergency I was standing OUTSIDE stopped for a car that flipped in a median and they insisted I was in a different county than I was...not convinced they actually use GPS, I think they just use the tower location.
@@matthewmiller6068 I am going to say that your situation was probably an infrastructure issue. Unfortunately throughout the US many emergency response services are under-financed so they may be using 5-10 year old technology with only the required components, like computers and OS's, updated, and sometimes not even them. So their systems are unable to receive/read that data.
Yup. I work in an interior office, on the 2nd floor of a 9 story building that was an old Montgomery Ward retail store - ALL concrete, wood, and steel. My gps still works on google maps just fine
"...because I have legacy equipment." You're a good man. I bet you'd like to hear about my Otari MX5050 reel to reel tape deck! I always wanted to be a phone man. I collect 1A2 systems now. Excellent video!
When I switched to fiber I bought a VoIP adapter and hooked it to a Panasonic digital/analog hybrid PBX. Now I've got a mix of rotary phones, touch-tone and digital phones all hooked up to in various parts of the house.
Get a current one, no need to get the old shit. For example the HT812/HT814/HT818 are current models, very good and can enable pulse dialing support in the configuration.
incredibly good speed through the telephone line! Before I only got 8 mbps through telephone cable even though the line was set to 20 mbps. but it's almost 15 years ago if not longer. Now I have fiber and I will never go back!
DSL can be good, especially if the run to the DSLAM is relatively short, and the cabling is in good condition and not a mix of cable types. Worst is aluminium cables, they are terrible over longer distances, and the skin resistance does a lot of attenuation. Funny enough century old paper sleeved oiled copper cable is pretty good, well controlled all the way.
Thank you for this video. I work in Dispatch for CenturyLink and it was very interesting to see what a tech would do in the field for repairs and troubleshooting.
Y'know, I really think service for customers would be improved if the call centre, dispatchers etc. could go out and spend a day or two with the guys in the field, talk to the customers etc. and vice-versa. I tried to push that idea where I worked but management wouldn't go for it.
Dave, I've got copper lines as well for my DSL and landline. I've got a Western Electric 302 with a date code of 1946. It's a metal bodied phone that's never been restored. I use it all the time and it still works wonderfully well. Very heavy, you could drive nails with it!
Actually in Germany it's worse, at least east of the former german-german border. There the (copper) phone network was from the 1940s at best when DSL took off, and Telekom (which after the reunification got a whole lot of new customers) was required *by law* to deliver basic DSL (only 786/128 if I remember correctly) to every phone customer, whereever they are. But when the 1940s copper lines were replaced, they didn't put new copper in, that would have been crazy. Instead they pulled fiber, but terminated in a box just outside your house that converted that to copper, with a 1-customer-DSLAM. Then the customer connected his/her DSL modem on the inside and you had all of a few meters of copper where they got DSL as required by law. SMH.
@@hinzster That's what happens here too. The telephone network until the final distribution cabinets where all the DSLAMs are located is all fiber optic, then there's the twisted-pair local loop reaching the customer's permises. That's the situation with my line too. But as the distribution cabinet is near my home, I have a 100/25 mbit VDSL2 which is pretty stable and reaches the rated speeds quite well, and according to the test that can be done online on the telephone company's website, my Internet connection could reach speeds of about 400/90 mbit, which is really good for it being on a copper line. Actually I'm happy with my Internet connection despite it being on copper, and right now I don't feel the need for a fiber optic connection. Anyway since some years telephone companies are working to bring the fiber optics directly to the customers and there are cities where such connections are already available.
@@mima85 You forgot one thing. Telekom Fiber from the the early 90th is not the same as today. This was an OPAL-Network. You could not change this to modern FTTH. It was never the goal to bring this direct to the customer. The new network works in an other way, with other fibers.
Worked at a 911 center as a radio tech. I was tasked with troubleshooting phone line troubles and interfacing with the telephone techs. Had a problem with a 4 wire line used to tone out a fire station. Went to the station and checked the line with my butt set. Lo and behold I hear Vietnamese voices! There was a crossed line in a splicing pedestal. This was in a Vietnamese residential area. Nobody believed it until they heard it for themselves. We also had lines from remote receivers to central comparators. A quirk in Motorola Comparators is that they would vote to a noisy line. We also had to sweep and adjust the lines once a year because they went through concentrators as opposed to being end to end copper.
When i was on business i dealt with concentrators, amplifiers, over line talk groups, ISDN and t1 carrier. Before cell sites were fiber fed they would have 10 t1 circuits bonded which gave the site 15 megabit up and down. This was in the old CDMA days.. i didn't do the cell equipment, i just dealt with terminating the copper and testing. That was about 14 years ago. I moved back to residential as i have my own territory and don't have to travel anymore. Been spoiled now working 1 mile from home.
WI bonded/twisted pairs are not being maintained either - many, many homes still use it, gotta love a cabinet and terminals. too cold here for me to pop up 20 ft every 5 seconds. love this, working backwards to the clearest unit - lmao yessss the fiber is primed too.. love the legacy sir. lets go!
I just tested it now. Just got 74.2 down and 19.8 up and there is a TV running in the other room. Never have a problem with speed here, and that is why I am reluctant to change anything. Also I can pull multiple open IP. The guys on fiber get 1. That's no fun. I run multiple routers with their own public IP, so I can run open ports for things like cameras and stuff all the while the IP I use for my computer is totally different.
@@brothertax it is symmetrical gigabit but that still won't sway me at all. Even if it was the same price which I currently pay i would stay for the reasons listed above. Gigabit internet causes me the most headaches at work because of brain dead customers expectations. The speed is only as fast as the slowest server. Also I have yet to see a single wireless device they can achieve more than 500. Most wireless devices especially Apple top out well below even 500. This is due to the expected long battery life, manufacturers put in slow wireless cards so it's not to drain the battery quickly and this generates trouble calls for slow internet. I show up plug my laptop in get 1.1 GB prove that the speed is there and the bottleneck is their equipment and then have to bill them a diagnostic charge which pisses them off and now I'm the bad guy. Can only guarantee that type of speed over hardwired connection and to a PC that's not running antivirus or VPN software as these are going to slow the connection down substantially but people don't understand this which drives nuisance trouble calls.
Bought my new home in 2003 and requested a home phone line. A copper line was installed and it worked for the most part except when it rained. So noisy that it would not pull a dial tone at times. Call in a trouble ticket and they swapped pairs and it was fixed until 2005 when fiber came in. I ended up switching over to fiber for everything. The downside is that I am now the CO providing battery so if there is a power problem my battery kicks in and keeps my phone alive but disables my TV and internet. Its a cost but not a very big problem. Worked in crypto in the AF and spent some time in vaults in West Germany tracing cables. Also spent many hours in the tunnels under Washington DC tracing problems for the DC Subway. Any way blue, orange, green, brown ,slate to you.
Not to mention, most phones now (smartphones) use Wi-Fi scanning to get an accurate location, too. This means you can be polled at almost EXACTLY where you are, even inside your house without a GPS signal, as long as your phone has reception from towers and Wi-Fi networks nearby.
With android, location services can use your wifi location to determine where you are. That's for apps, if enabled. That doesn't mean that the phone will necessarily use that for emergency services. Google used to go out and map the location of various wifi things. There was an amount of controversy surrounding it. Speculation: it may now also use your wifi history and correlated that with your GPS to work out where your wifi access points are.
I have very mild Raynaud's phenomenon basically my hand can feel normal but be a bit colder. so touch screens sometimes don't work for me because fingertips are too cold. mobile phones may be harder to dial if you are tensing up and cant do the unlock code
@@nullvoid564 it isnt based on temperature, just moisture which changes the capacitance of the phone, so if you have thick dry skin or gloves they touchscreen wont work. but yea touchscreens arent as reliable as a physical button. Thats why iPhones have an emergency mode by pressing the power button 5 times. not sure about android.
Thankfully you have a second copper pair to swap to, i have just one copper pair and adsl. The problem i have is getting the company to look into faults, my modem loses the connection around 9 oclock at night and jumps in and out of connection. Loverly old phones, my mate has a few old rotary ones that still work, he has one that was an old emergency phone in it's own pole mounted metal box. The rotary mechanism worked so well.
Sure if they are way out on a long loop. I am relatively close to the fiber fed dslam, so I get very fast service. I could get 150 down 40 up if I wanted to pay an extra 10 bucks a month.
@@12voltvids I was very close to the station that served my area for DSL (Verizon) and best they could offer was 3mbps down and 1.2mbps. The station’s facility (a closed small telephone station from forever ago) is only 2 miles from the house. No matter who came out to fix it after a storm (always dropped after a thunderstorm, noisy AF line) they couldn’t fix the line or make it faster. What I find odd though is we switched to fiber since and while reliability and speed are much improved it still oddly vulnerable to thunderstorms… I’m thinking some shared equipment further upstream from me is hella leaky or a complete RF nightmare. I know fiber shouldn’t be impacted by RF probably some equipment in a box that’s terminating out and causing it…
@@Honeypot-x9s 2 miles is actually a long way out. That's about 10,000 feet and the limit for dsl is about 12000 max. By comparison I an about 1500 feet from the cabinet as the cable runs and i have a bonded loop. Fiber is not affected by RF or electrical interference as it is just glass and light shining down it. The switching equipment at the co would be more suseptable as would the premise equipment to power surges.
@@12voltvids that’s just the station. I’m not sure if cabinets did anything else and how it works. One not far from the house. As for fiber yea, something suspect going on with it.. the rate of connectivity issues has increased year over year right as thunderstorms reach our town.. if just rain usually not going out, if lightening then it typically does.
We still use it in our summerhouse. I get 6-7 mbps with 40 ping but... Bandwidth so low. Even someone send text messages using WhatsApp, ping peak to 300 - 400. Idk why its happening.
Copper line/ADSL here as well in the interior, I also have a collection of vintage telephones. New installation recently back in 2012 including a new terminal box outside and wires. Telus had such a backlog of work here that they brought in extra installers from Vancouver. The installer was outstanding and very friendly worked till 9PM to get me hooked up, even brought me a new modem, haven't had a problem since.
I remember the call out for volunteers. Fortunately the younger guys were chomping at the bit to go on loan as they could make big bucks. That created OT opportunities here for the rest of us.
This stuff is always very interesting to me. I have new equipment, but I also have legacy equipment too just in case if I want to fall back onto it. Sometimes, analog is better than digital too.
It's nice to see a telephone company actually take care of their systems. In rural WV, we generally have Frontier. Frontier bought out all the mom and pop services, never fixed anything, and everything has gone to shit. DSL is still a very viable broadband technology, BUT ONLY WHEN IT IS MANAGED CORRECTLY! You'd never see above 10-15Mbit downloads on their systems.
We are phasing out copper here too. Over the next few years it will go I am sure, but I still install copper. I did a tv copper install yesterday and 2 last week. There are some buildings that have not granted permission to put fiber into and there is the farm land that it is just too costly for the few residences. Some of those will use LTE (farms) but the apartment and condo that have not proceeded with fiber will remain on copper until they do comply and allow the building to be retrofitted.
Wow, it must have been a lot of work twisting all that thick wire. JK. In the home it should work fine without twisting the pair. But for long distances it really does need to be twisted.
i'm served off an DMS switch, And i'm on copper all the way to the CO, And one thing that i like about my POTS line is the GOOD O Hummy sounds coming from the Copper wire. it sounds beautiful and relaxing.
I have all rotary phones but have not had a copper line since 2009. Running Asterisk with a channel bank and there are 23 extensions, Got some pay phones as well. Phone is Google Voice, other VOIP, Magic Jack and a bluetooth cell dock. The home phone went to 44 dollars a month with no long distance. ATT frustrated me so I dumped the line and it was the best decision ever!
Really cool to see! I am telecom engineer in the Netherlands and just because there are differencs it's in big lines the same. Line sharing is no longer available here. If you want a analoge telephone line you got epots on the second pair. Fiber is rolling out here really fast this year but the most people in towns and city's got DSL from FttC with 100Mb (DSL vectoring) or bonded DSL Vectoring (2 pairs combined) of Vectoring plus. 200Mb on a single line. Because also a lot of people are going over to fiber (GPON of AON) there are a lot of crosswires unused and also a mass in streetcabinets you said. Only big differences is here that all the wires are underground. So if there is a shortage underground and no second pair and no fiber we need to call a groundwork team. :) Again nice to see!
That is pretty good speed for DSL. I have never seen DSL go over a few Mbps in the states and few people I know still using DSL are only getting around 5 Mbps and less than 1Mbps for upload.
it's VDSL, the fibre goes to the street cabinet, in the UK they market this as "fibre" means they now have to market the actual fibre services as "full fibre"
Telus (phone provider in western Canada) uses bonded VDSL2 or VDSL2+. With 2 pairs, you can get very impressive speeds. The last year I was in Canada, I switched to Telus (2 pair bonded VDSL2) from Shaw (Cable DOCSIS 2 at the time) and was getting better speeds, especially uploads, than cable (not because of a technical limitation of DOCSIS2, but just the speed tier plans they had), and paying less, and with no bandwidth cap, AFTER I had a tech come out more than once to fix similar issues with my phone line pairs. There was a bridge tap on one of my pairs. Not only was it connected to the cable going to my house, but it was also connected in parallel to somewhere else, probably going into someone else's house, and that causes endless problems for DSL. The tech also discovered that someone else's phone was connected to the 3rd pair on the drop cable into my house! Never even bothered to fix it, just left it that way. Shortly after I moved to the US, they rolled out the FTTH offering, and where I moved to in the US, I also have FTTH now. After having gig fiber for years, it would be very tough to go back to anything less, but VDSL2 is no slouchy technology, when your loop is relatively short, and doesn't have impulse noise, or bridge taps! The problems people have with DSL is their provider never deployed VDSL2, AND their copper infrastructure is a mess with cross connections and weird crap all over the place.
I find the old phone system fascinating. I like watching some of the old Bell Telephone informational films on RUclips from time to time. When I was a kid I had a scanner. I remember being able to hear my neighbors cordless phones. I could even pick up the McDonalds drive-thru on my scanner.
I have watched the phone network transition from dial up internet through dsl. Then dsl from street cabinets to 10gb fiber optics. I'm on a 10g fiber port now myself even though my internet is only 150.
Question why can't you keep both copper line and fiber just for internet. Also could you explain a bit the digital voltage line thing i got a bit confused. Thanks
Super Fascinating video! Nice to see a behind the scene of our Phone/Cable/Internet provider! Have to admit, we still have a copper phone in the house that we have for emergencies, but everything else is on fibre.
Fascinating....I kept a land line as long as I could...maybe till 2006, but could no longer justify wasting $20 a month and never using it. Also a dsl user.
@@lesd40 That and the alarm is basically the only reason I keep it. I really don't like using cell phones though. I know someone that lost their son to a brain tumor, and I remember his son living with a cell phone glued to the side of his head day and night. He was a salesman, and carried 3 phones with him and was constantly on it. Coincidence?
My house has had a land line with the same exact number since 1973. It's not that hard to do. And my phone and internet is bundled at $100 a month. I never used and do not want a retard-0-phone.
My mom has this exact problem on her line and we have confirmed its the underground line coming from their box to the box onr her house but they refuse to do anything about it, They ended up burying a ground cable all the way over to the power line after the box was blown off the side of our house from a lightning strike (something they told us was impossible and basically called us liars when we reported it) and every since then the static has been present and gotten to the point the phone is unusable when it rains and the internet speed never gets over 12 kbps. This is why Centurylink is one of the lowest rated services in Missouri.
The "outside plant" is a mess everywhere, here in Ohio lawnmowers and varmints have taken their toll, you hardly ever see a pedestal with a cover or standing horizontal. The poles look like shit, every carrier has been up there and made a rats nest out of things. i'm an old geezer bell guy but i switched to Spectrum coax for everything .. works great.
I have started to notice a pattern on the new Fiber. When there is a power failure, (doesn't affect me as my ONT and modem are battery backed up so they keep running and I have internet when my neighbours are all out) as soon as the power is restored and all the ONTs in the neighbourhood start hammering the servers for an IP everythng gets flaky for several hours. Cant even watch tv for the rest of the night as it freezes and breaks up for several hours as everything gets back online. Happened now twice after a power failure.
@@12voltvids The fiber is only the highway from the prem to the service provider's point of presence, and not the cause of service slowdown, unless there's shared bandwidth. When an area recovers from an outage, there exists a rush for service by end users. This crush of users results in a bottleneck that has a ripple effect with service, typically IP based systems.
@@NYCMNYBY the fiber goes back to the splitter cabinet where the feed is split optically 32 ways. Each ont has a 1 / 32 time slice. The feed runs back to the olt, optical line termination. A big router that has all the line cards in it which then goes back to the uplink server. The pop or point if presence would be the only edge service router.
that's because the wire is thicker gauge and more impervious to overheating and environment. Little cheap fiber lines are so thin they get destroyed very easily. Could tear them up with your teeth alone.
It's always interesting to see how it's done in Canada or US. Here in the middle of nowhere in France, copper lines are still used for DSL service and as for yours no more maintained as we're soon supposed to get fiber optics. However, most here have relatively low results on a single copper pair that could have been installed in the 70's. We also encounter different wire gauges, long distances to DSLAM, and we still have mixed analog and digital services on the same line as DSL service provider has not done the local technical installs to get digital only services... Mostly because lack of space in technical spaces dating from 50 years +! In my Burgundy village, I had the best baudrates available with a typical 14/1Mbps ADSL2, untill a severe storm have destroyed the local DSLAM and all my modems and home ethernet appliances (PCs Mainboards, DVRs, IP cameras...). One of my friends lives in a farm with a 17 km line, wich gives a 512kbps down rate only the best days; he had the same thunderstorm problems, and now even the phone is a mess when it rains (and he has to pay for an intermittent service), the only way to get any decent service is via satellite (mobile doesn't work in it's valley!). With new modem and phones, I also have noises coming from external aerial copper lines I suspect coming with severe multiple insulation failures and leaking connection boxes. But when there is 3,2 km lines to change, they don't care, and I have to manage with lower results, and crippling noisy analog phone line. And as I don't work for the national company line nor have clearance to tamper with phone lines (I don't have the keys), I bought a 4G data router modem (I have a no limit data handy line with spare PIN cards) wich gives a pretty interesting symmetrical baudrates around 75Mbps for a "local" antenna 18km away (with direct view!). My latency delay is about the same... And this solution is also interesting as I have no visible antennas nor fiber nor copper lines anyone can tamper for security uses, and no supply risk with a battery backup. This "radio solution" is now also available on most recent security panels, lift supervising appliances, aged people surveillance... I've also partly replaced the ethernet copper lines with fiber optics, as you can have relatively cheap professional switches with fiber management and mode converters. This is also perfect to electrically insulate servers and different home security services. As I also worked on private network services, I also noticed you use different tools that those I know, with the same result, but I suppose it has some "historical" reasons as we work on larger modules arrays (norms?). I've also worked on wrapped arrays and other specific connectivity, and everytime using different tools. Needless to say with fiber optics it's probably the same, as technologies evolved. Back in 1992, we used hot glued classic ST connectors and had to polish cleaved ends by hand... So I guess you also have a fair collection of special tools, crimpers, special screwdrivers, line identifiers and line checkers (my phone tester is yellow but does the same...without batteries).
I think the UK is in a similar position with FTTC, still using copper for the last leg of the journey with street cabinets up to a kilometer away and beyond in some cases. There's talk of full fiber everywhere by 2025 but you know how that sort thing goes!
I had the same issue long ago (like, over a decade and a half) and the ding-dongs at AT&T couldn’t find out what was wrong. My line did the same damn noise, it was weird, it was clear at first then started to garble and crackle and my DSL speeds were horrible and my modem kept resetting. Finally an old tech came to my house and removed some “filter” and that resolved it and I was getting over 6mbps on my DSL line and my DSL modem stopped resetting all the time (it would lose sync and re-establish constantly). What a mess.. I dealt with that for like 2 years…
I had same issue at my business for 20 years. Finally got a executive from Centurylink to expedite a proper repair... after 20 years and 75-100 tech visits "changing my twin pair" would that be called "expeditious". It tool a trencher, two bucket trucks and one service truck, total crew of 7 to dig the cross street and replace the damaged-long-ago line that went under the road to the pedestal opposite side of street. They started at 7:30AM, and wrapped up the job at 7:00PM Wow, I used to have a DSC panel. I did not know how to make it compatible with new monitoring station, had to replace with a First Alert POS panel. Definitely Legacy equipment. I threw away 2 NIB/NOS DSC panels last year, while getting rid of old electronics piling up in my basement. Even had a full road of lead window foil. For 911 locating, it sounds even worse. Please expand on this issue. I have cell phone with defaults set to use wifi at home and work.... does GPS on phone data pass forward, or will it display as 30 miles away ? I bet noone really knows of the issues you enumerate on. This should be on a cable channel 24/7, with PSAs on all channels monthly to link to. People have no idea.
Some fiber companies still support pulse dialing, sadly not Xfinity though. It's also too bad that they won't let you use fiber for internet and copper for phone
Verizon FIOS in New Jersey supports pulse dialing if you get the phone service with net. Problem is that Verizon's FIOS based phone service is stupid expensive. I have FIOS just for net, 200 Mbps for $45/mon. I bought an Ooma VoIP adapter and now pay $10/mon for two home phone numbers with unlimited calling in the US. Sound quality is very good, and the service has been reliable.
I had and still have a similar problem at my house. Connecting to the master socket my line works fine, if I connect up the faceplate distributing the phone line to other sockets in the house I get noise and internet disruption (as I discovered at the start of UK lockdown this time last year so great timing on that). I work in IT for a living but I don't work much with phones, so I tried the only thing I could which was check and re-terminate all the sockets in my house (same as with an RJ45 socket, but only have do deal with 2 wires instead of 8), which didn't fix it. At this point I reported it to my landlord (who's responsible for repairs on the house), and naturally they don't care so I ended up running a long RJ11 from the master socket across the room to the router (I've got a hardwired NAS with a UPS connected to my router, and there's no space for all of these devices by the master socket). What joy it is to live in an old village. I get that external aesthetics are important to the community in the UK, but it baffles me why the insides still have to be stylised with the same 200-year-old aesthetic when it's wholly inadequate and impractical for the 21st century. But that's a rant for another time. Great video, thanks for sharing.
17:00, but why not run it, set it up just to take advantage of the faster speeds *JUST* for web surfing and keep using the copper for everything else, including your legacy equipment. Who said that you have to remove the copper in order to be able to use the Fiber optic? Why not use both at the same time and enjoy that speed boost for when you surf the web, *JUST* for the web/computer use purpose.
About the same time as the running time. Then ur takes RUclips and hour or more to process the video. Some have to be uploaded again because they sit at 0% for hours.
I feel ya on the rotary phones. I mostly switched to my mobile but I love those things for long conversations and for getting rung by family. As you say, it’s the sound of the bell. And the ergonomics of the whole experience. I live somewhere with FTTB but I use my own router, the company’s only supports tone anyway, but I researched which specific VoIP adapters supported pulse and had the juice to properly strike the bells. That way I can also have the nice long single ring instead of the two short rings in succession that we used to have. I prefer those, but perhaps only because that’s not what I grew up with: two rings in succession just conjure memories of school or the doctors office to me, but one long ring sounds like the movies.
I had the same but it turned out one of my cats had decided to pee on the telephone socket. Removed, yuck, cut back 20cm of corroded wire and installed new style socket.
@@12voltvids Yes, the OLD stuff sometimes has hidden advantages. The old copper coated steel was stronger but "cloth drops with rubber outer sheath " would corrode open and leave black chalk residue . I like running a newer 3 or 6 pair copper drop with the steel support strand and quick drop cinches. I would terminate an extra loop to a dead unused F2 in the aerial terminal for a backup plan. This way I would only need to tone out the spare span to the FX and move the jumpers. It always helped to carry a throw-down butt set in the car or toolbox when on the road. Hurricanes along the Gulf Coast would knock out electrical power for days and anything on A/C digital or battery back-up from the PG huts would fail and copper to the CO would still operate. Yippie. JwgK
as a 00s kid those landline noises are awfully familiar lmao they use to creep me out so much now it’s nostalgic to hear the old landline noises! i remember the phone guys coming out to the house to use there butt set to test our line
phones use wifi & GPS for location. lets say ur out front of your house, your phone can get GPS + it can see your WIFI SSID & MAC (does not need to connect to it) + it can see the wifi nextdoor. your phone secretly puts that info in an online database. next time someone's phone tries to find its location, it will check the nearby wifi, if it can see the same SSIDs & MAC addresses it knows where it is without GPS.
I have a device hooked to my old rotary phone that turns pulse dial to a modern DTMF tone that works perfectly over my VOIP line. Also I live with someone who has heart issues and work at a homeless shelter. Both places have VOIP as the phone line and I have better luck calling 911 on my cell phone. 911 has failed to locate me several times on the VOIP lines even though they are setup with the location like that is required in my area. On my cell phone I have to remember to turn off WiFi calling if I am connected to WiFi as this has only one 911 location. I am currently in the middle of my house an connected to 20 GPS satellites with an accuracy of 3 meters on my cell phone. Rev George
I have a fax machine, and sending and receiving faxes over the old copper phone lines is so much better than over VOIP. Using a VOIP phone line, there will be times where your fax won’t go through.
that depends on which FTTC you have, a 17A profile is a 80/20 link which is normally set in either 1 of two modes, the restricted one or the more expensive faster speed boost that you pay more for. you either have a 40/10 or an 80/20 the 40/10 normally gives you around a 36/37Mbps connection at full speed. the 80/20 gives you around 77Mbps at full speed.
3:58 We've had more AT&T landline outages than we've had cellular outages. Just a few days ago we had a 911 outage that only affected landlines. Cell phone carriers where not affected. One great thing about cell phones now when it comes to locations, is if your phone is connected to WiFi and WiFi calling is enabled, they will know the EXACT address you have set at that current time, problem with that though is if your say 7 hours away connected to someone elses WiFi and WiFi calling is enabled it will pull that address you have set and not where your actually at. But anyway copper is a big heck no here. 768K DSL vs 940mbps Cable. Long ago the line running to my house went dead 100% so we just ditched the landline and went cellular for it. Any enjoyed the video! Usually on the coax/CATV side of things so nice to see something different.
I had this problem where the static was just as bad as the beginning of this video. Had a few engineers sent over and its still not fixed, albeit not as bad. Apparantly the rain leaked into the line and soaked it. I get the strong feeling its still leaking into it because there is still noise.
Kudos good sir for still rocking a Pioneer LaserDisc player. Also at my old place we still used copper cable for telephone. Back when we had Prodigy (you young ones can go look that up) the local telecom ran a "cleaning pulse" down the lines that pretty much blew out the external modem, serial card, motherboard, and PSU that our first 80386 had. Despite physical damage (modem exploded, burnt the power socket it was in, and board damage) the local telecom denied they had caused the damage. Later after many upgrades and new PCs I never got past the 26.4 baud bottleneck when attempting to access the internet via dial-up. Never did the local telecom replace the paper wrapped copper lines that fed my neighborhood. 20 years ago they offered DSL. And my father happened upon a DSL modem. We were ready. And just .75 miles out of max range for DSL at the time. Cut to Adelphia offering cable internet... (Again you young folks do your Google thing) and 17 years later had stable cable internet under Comcast. Kitchen remodeling had uncovered 900 feet of connected on one end coiled coaxial cable in a closed off crawlspace above our kitchen causing a plethora of issues for the neighborhood. Once that was removed internet was rock solid. Upon moving out the home was still with the paper wrapped copper telephone lines serving it. And Consolidated Communications is a joke as a service. TWO MONTHS it took them to resolve an accidental disconnection. Gave us a "temporary number" to use while they re-assigned our main number back to us which rang to nowhere. That was two weeks into the ordeal. The rest trying to tell them the main number was still disconnected. Did the same thing where I work. Only instead of over a month and a half only took 7 hours to fix for a HOSPITAL I applaud the use of landlines. A physical location tied to the number assigned. These should be everywhere since I can count on the number of thumbs on fish the number of times the landline was taken out by ice storms. Even not in use for incoming or outgoing calls at least have them available for emergency use. Sure cellular phones are great, but with the GPS being accurate to within the confines of a tennis court that could mean any of the 4 other condo units around me as well.
is that a 604 area code? I grew up in 807 (the last private phone exchange in Canada). When DTMF came online, the touch tone phone would output the multi tone and then the exchange converted it to digipulse. I used to whistle a 2600hz tone, and use a telegraph key to dial! Ah, the good old days :)
My grandmother had a starlight phone that the dial lit up on. Electroluminescent display. Used a 120 to 120v isolation transformer 120 volts on the phone cord.
Hey that looked like my old test Phone. I used to work as a Phone tech years ago. PSTN and ISDN fun stuff. Weird plints though. Not like the German Krone plints we used ,(punchdown blocks) I guess you call them. That static sounds like moisture in a splice somewhere yes. Copper, dirty wather and 54 volts does that. Hey, thats 1980's stuff.
Here in New Zealand we have the British telecom plugs and sockets. Oh God they go so noisy in winter. Pins too close and green crusties tracking noise. Fix is to rip nearly every jack point out and replace. Grease every connection in back of every jack or noise is back next week
Great Vid , Thanks , The Telcos in the uk are trying to force us onto fibre as the theyve sold all the telephone exchanges and now lease them back . They are trying to close them all and force us onto fibre where we provide the accomodation and power to run theyre "Junk" boxes cluttering up our living spaces . Also i myself have Dial ( Rotary ) Lagacy telephones and small switchboards so i,m fighting it! , Wish me luck! Cheers from uk .Im guessing the older people will really struggle when POTS are finally ceased . Pity no one cares!
I live in Mexico, and the biggest phone company (Telmex) gave me a Nokia G-240W-G ONT about 4 years ago for my optical fiber upgrade from VDSL. A few days ago, I tried to connect some rotary dial phones and they work! This modem actually interprets pulse dial! I tried a 50s? LM Ericsson and a local brand INDETEL. All antique phones here are only from those two brands afaik.
@@12voltvids yeah! Well, haven't measured voltage, but I even connected 2 phones in parallel and both ring loudly (I'm not sure if up to spec, I'm too young to remember haha, but sure they're loud inside the house). But I'm not quite sure if the pulse dial compatibility is firmware default, or it's a special TELMEX mod. It's the hardware version 3FE47555AABA and software 3FE47959HJIJ86
@@cesaralfredotrejo I guess I will find out soon enough as copper is scheduled to be sunset next month. Been so busy switching over the stragglers like myself.
I live in an Area that was used for fiber optic testing, so we've had fiber since I believe 2008/9 don't even remember what our ADSL+ was like, I've heard plus read, that they should still use the copper lines aswell, because they can offer the same connection speed etc
I'm served off of a Fujitsu built remote switching unit which itself is connected to a DMS-100. Every 6 months or so it seems like my line card becomes un-programmed, it will lose dial tone, but have DC and will appear to a calling party to ring when in actuality it does not.
Great Video, I had noise on our old ADSL line here that sounded like that after a good week of rain. 64Mpbs on DSL?! that's insane, I live in Australia and we only used to get around 4mbps and now that we are on Fibre it's still only 53mbps. I didn't know about the mobile/cell phone GPS in emergency though. I guess I'll tell my grandparents to keep their landline just in case. Great work Mate!
I really enjoyed this video. I'd love if you did more phone line videos! Weird how you could hear the DSL on the line. I thought you can't hear it. Fascinating stuff.
A smart person could easily use a arduino with some phone interface chips to trigger your alarm system when service is down and also enable full functionality of the old phones... I could even see some additional functionality added to the old phones but who has time for all that programming
In Vz, a least in NY, metallic (Copper) cables fed services are being retired. Circuit switching and SONET transmission equipment found on Special Services (DS1, DDS, Private Line voice) circuits are being removed as customer circuits based on legacy TDM technology demand goes away. With fiber based transport technologies, on a FiOS FTTP ONT for example, the copper line has been reduced to a couple of feet at the RDT. The rest is customer owned and maintained inside wire (IW). The next step in the total replacement of copper T&R telephone line replacement will be in IP based technologies. I have see the network evolve from manual ringdown circuits, to VoIP.
Copper is being sunset here too. The CO i work out of is scheduled to be shut down next year once all services are migrated to fiber. I've been part of the greatest build in the history of the phone company. I'm working on a 3.4 gig circuit as I type this, on the phone with support desk due to a stuck order.
This is quite neat to see. In my area in West Virginia, our Frontier lines are still old school copper lines at least for the most part. So you can still get copper landline service in my area no problem. I still see technicians working on these boxes quite often. The DSL speed I don't think is anything like that though. I do not use the service though. We just use Suddenlink cable for our stuff. I don't bother with landline phones since I grew up on a cell phone. I encourage my grandparents to keep the landline though for the simple reason that they are probably more likely to be able to call 911 from a landline in an emergency, despite the ones on my dad's side having e911 set up for WiFI calling at home on their cell phones. They use Suddenlink home phone service though which is not perfect in a power outage. Internet is stupid here since you can either pay an arm and a leg for Suddenlink or have garbage service through Frontier. I'd be happy with those DSL speeds, but we don't have anything like that I believe. It is sad though how many people here in WV are still forced to rely on Frontier or something even worse.
That was interesting what you mentioned about alarm systems. Now you're making me want to hack together some kind of solution to set off my alarm when my internet connection goes down.
We are still connected to copper that comes from across the road, from a dilapidated old box. Every time there is a heavy rain, it usually gets that static on it. It's been working good for a long time now since the last time they fixed it. Knock on wood. So is that vault supplied from the lines on the pole, or the other way around?
Somebody with a landline in 2020, oh DSL yep. No not your day off anymore but at least you have the tools to fix it. I lived out in the middle of the nowhere and was the last of three houses on the line they had two Spurs running off from our Pole where the trunk line ended. I learned how to fix phone problems pretty quick but this was back in the end of the dial-up era. RUclips algorithm actually gave me something good? I have since moved and I finally broke down and bought myself an x-link I kept tripping over my phone collection going I really wish I could use that unfortunately at the same time I also managed to get myself a phone line with the cable provider it was way cheaper bundled. Their device doesn't support pulse dialing but did support ringing for some reason but I put everything behind the x-link anyway paird it with my phone. It's a great translation device. I wish I could afford to have copper as well. I just sent a fax the other day talk about crazy. Although it is nice to be able to put in your own service call I'm sure.
Can't you have both? I. E. Telephony over copper, and Internet over fiber? Also the 911 thing isn't due to some magical property of copper, its due to the registry, if the phone number is registered to the property then they know you're there. Only point I agree on for the maintaining the copper is your legacy alarm system and phones. While you could theoretically upgrade your alarm system and get a pulse to tone converter, I can understand not wanting unnecessary expenses.
Fibre optics the way to go, its good to see you know what ya doing fixing the old line, not too many techs that good around nowadays, i think theres a converter box someone made for old rotary phones to run via fibre optic
Don't want to make it too comfortable for my 21 year old. Have to have something to encourage him to get out on his own. Internet speed is one he complains constantly about. For my use, the speed is just fine. I keep the copper going till it is shut down. I keep getting pressured to change. Get the weekly calls to upgrade, but there are reasons to keep copper. My alarm system, and the fax machine I still are 2 of them. We have actually migrated a few people back to copper for that reason for their phone. The big reason I am not changing is I am grandfathered on an old TV package, and I will have to change if I upgrade to newer service. That means channels I currently get are in different packages I have to add. It won't save me money, it will cost more. The rotary dial out is not the big issue, as I use that phone mostly for answering incoming calls. It is the supervised alarm that it the big one. If the phone line is cut when the alarm is active, it triggers the siren. On fiber, if the fiber is cut, the phone doesn't work, but the voltage from the ONT remains, and the alarm knows nothing about that. Also, updates go to the ONT in the middle of the night. This causes the ONT to reset, and you guessed it, the voltage drops during this time, which causes an armed alarm to sound in the middle of the night waking up all the neighbors whom don't appreciete it. I know I certainly don't like it when my neighbor across the street's alarm goes off at 2AM on a work night. Then I have to listen to them bitch and complain, and do it on facebook about how shitty the new fiber service is. Yes there are solutions, change out my alarm system, but that's not going to happen. Yes fiber is faster.... that is all it is. Faster. No more reliable or anything else. Faster, period. If you don't need all that speed then there is no advantage, none whatsoever to switching.
@@12voltvids Wow, they screw you over with that BS even when you work for the phone company? That does sound about right, TV is a giant ripoff no matter what provider you get it from. I haven't had TV in years, and don't miss it. Fiber is more reliable, mostly because the infrastructure is newer. You're not going to have waterlogged splices introducing impulse noise on fiber! And no bridge taps, and the other selection of problems that plague the old copper plant.
@@gorak9000 it's the box rental fees. Currently i don't pay any, as they used to be free. Now there are rental fees. As soon as i change I pay the fees. I still have basic cable. I can get some OTA stations but they all cut out in bad weather as i am far from transmitter. Netflix and Amazon keep raising their prices and have nothing to watch. Internet is the big cost. My tv and phone is 50 bucks. The internet on the other hand about 90.
@@12voltvids Dave, when you do that, make a video even showing the CO main frame , CO vault / basement cable runs and old battery racks if they still exist.
They are pulling the copper away here in the netherlands, forced alott of people over to either Cable (TV) or Fibre. There are tricks with electronics to make your old phones work on modern networks I think. rotary to DTMF converters and well, power can be added aswell. also the modem thingy should have phone connectivity. But I understand, ol analog telephone is just so awesome to keep working. sadly I moved twice in the last 10 years and all 3 places sofar got fibre upgraded and disconnect the copper. My now latest place is where I live with my spouse, the phone cables lay under all houses, like, what? nobody can go find a fault this way. fiber is coming in from the street, so im kinda happy about that.
I have the same thing of conversion but from ISDN which is phased out and this year the final connection will be cut. We were pressed to make the changeover as the price for ISDN was rising high and adsl a fraction of that. Last year they dug out the old lines and replaced everything with fiber, we are going to switch to fiber from adsl this year. We already lost the 'legacy' from giving up the ISDN.
My Aunt loses her DSL whenever it's hot and humid. Truck after truck will roll with excuse after excuse as to why the trouble is occurring. She finally had enough and snapped at one of the techs and said she knew he was lying. He made a snide remark about how she would know what the problem was. She said 'Because there's a paper wrapped trunk line in poor condition on which gets saturated by the humidity and starts shorting the pairs. How do I know that? I was the field engineer who wrote up the work order to have that line installed over 30 years ago!'. I'm told the look on his face was priceless as he said 'oh, so you do know what you're talking about'.
Ignore any incorrect terms for the trunk type, as this was 7-8 years ago and my memory is crap, I just know she said it had something to do with the sheathing wrapped around it being a paper-based material and not a newer material.
Nice story
Paper based cable and we have tons of it still in the field is pressurized with air from the co so moisture should not get into the paper cable. I thing that was stelpath, then there was the alpath which was a dry plastic insulated and finially cellfill which is a greased cable. Paper cable will short out if it gets wet but that should never happen as there is about 9psi of air pumped into the cable which prevents any water getting into the cable. We have paper cables in manholes that are full of water. About a 15 years ago a contractor that was pulling in fiber for our remote dslam. They dropped a ladder in and hit the pressure stem on a splice case breaking it. Splice lost pressure. Pressure alarm went off but the pressure guy thought it was a falses alarm. It wasn't. Cable got wet. Took 1200 people out of service. Had to pull in new 1800 pair cable about 1km from one manhole to the next. Took us 4 days to fix. I was a cable splicer back then and worked on this outage swinging customers from the large damages cable to a smaller one just to get the lifeline customers back online. It was a disaster that could have been prevented had the pressure guy that was ready to retire had bothered to go out and investigate rather than leave it for the next day. He retired abruptly.
@@12voltvids It's a legacy local carrier system, passed off to SBC (then AT&T after SBC bought them and re-branded), now run by Frontier. Frontier maintains NOTHING that they own. There's likely a constant alarm from the pressure drop going off that they just ignore. They simply do not care.
Now THAT is epic. I've met many former employees or family members of retired employees in the past 14+ years as a contractor. I LOVE the history of the PSTN, but it's been in such a sad state as long as I've been doing this, that when an opportunity came to jump ship, I just had to. Been doing cable I&R for the competition for almost 2 weeks, and I'm so glad I did.
@@grabasandwich It's a lot more than I&R for me. I do much security work too as we own ATD and Alarmforce so plenty of security jobs.
Here in NJ, copper phone lines are no longer being maintained. You can still use one, but if it ever has a problem, the "repair" that Verizon does is to switch you over to fiber optic, with an Internet speed of only 5 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up -- but that's still better than the DSL I had, which due to my distance from the central office was limited to only 3 Mbps down / 768 kbps up. Now I have FiOS (with 100 Mbps down & up) and the ONT does support rotary dialing, but the battery backup they supplied never worked, so every time the power goes out, the phones go dead.
Here the copper is also not being maintained either. They want to switch everyone over. Fortunately I work for the company, so if I have a problem I just go fix it. I shouldn't say "Not" being maintained. It is discouraged. I did a copper install a few weeks ago.
@@12voltvids In NY we have the same thing, Copper is phased out and that was even more phased out when Sandy hit in 2012. I myself along with a few others liked the way copper sounded during a phone called compared to Fios IP Phones which sounds like too much of a digital echo like a cell phone! Dave being that you have both worlds running to your house, couldn't you use fiber for internet purposes only or TV if its available and keep using copper as is for everything else (legacy) which in term making them coexist? Also to @VWestlife , I enjoy your legacy electronics videos as well!
@@Hi-Tech-Ray no once you switch everything switches. Even people with no internet or tv are being switched just for phone. There are other reasons i don't want fiber. IP changing every 24 hours is another. Wrecks gavick with things that require a fixed up. As I said I have legacy equipment i have no intention of upgrading.
In my country copper (with VDSL) is not only maintained but also installed. They sell you VDSL at 100 or 200Mbit as fiber to the cabinet, which clearly is not fiber.
Also the new VDSL lines doesn't have analog phone service, I mean that the phone service still is VOIP and the copper line is only for the data. To me is not a problem, I dismissed the home phone years ago since the only calls that I did receive were spam calls and I have unlimited phone calls on my mobile phone so.
@@alerighi
We still do copper for people that don't want drilling or for apartment that is too costly to update.
It is fiber to the cabinet. The dslam is fed with fiber. VoIP could be done over the DSL modem but the gtd5 is still in operation. I have a VoIP line as well for business.
The advantages of working for the phone company.
then some karen will complain that he accessing phone company boxes on his own time and not dispatched
love working for the phone company :)
@@aedgvv6095 how would that karen even know tho?
@@TricksterRad i live next to one and i work in telecom, when ever i try to work to work on my own telecom stuff (my own infrastructure) she asks a million questions. makes life hard. these western white karens need their brain resets
@@aedgvv6095 by my own infrastructure, you're talking about stuff you own, or stuff the phone company owns that connects to your house? Either way, I'd probably politely ask the lady to leave me alone while I'm trying to work. It's not like she has any business being there asking you questions.
9:05 The moment when I realized I gonna see what's inside the telephone cabinet for the first time.
It's pretty boring. The fiber cabinets even more so.
@@12voltvids Is there electronics? Or it is only a patch to derive the lines to the consumer house?
What's the main carrier cable upwards to the network?
@@swilwerth the cabinet has the VDSL ports in it. They are fed with fiber. Power to power up the dslam is 48 volts. The battery voltage at the co 52 volts is stepped up to +192 and -192 with respect to ground. 384 volts potential and 25 pairs of 26 gauge copper is used for this. High voltage low current. In the side panels contains the power supply cooling fans and VDSL ports. This cabinet has 384 total ports. 192 on each side. That can feed 384 single loop DSL or up to 192 bonded which uses 2 ports. This cabinet is about 1.6 km from the main central office and about 600 meters from my house. If fed from the co directly i might get 6 megs but cutting that 1.6km (1 mile) off the cable allows each line to hit about 50 megs, so I can get 100 meg service over the copper line. I only pay for 75. More than fast enough for my needs.
@@12voltvids Awesome answer! Thank you!
It is great how the modulation schemes improved to get near fast ethernet speed over a 600m copper pair.
@@12voltvids what is the 380volts DC used for?
With my cell provider they make you enter your home address whenever you set up Wi-Fi-calling, I think most providers do this. This means if you’re connected to your home Wi-Fi and dial 911 from your cell phone they will know you’re home and get your home address right away just like if you were calling from a landline. Pretty neat!
Is that something that resides on the phone itself? Because if the phone were lost or stolen, any unscrupulous person would then have your home address.
@@stanpatterson5033 I'm pretty sure it's stored within my carriers servers but even if it isn't I'm not worried about it. The phone is a modern encrypted iPhone locked with a password that the police seem to have trouble breaking into. In the world we live in, anyone who knows my name or yours for that matter can figure out where I or you live within minutes.
@@stanpatterson5033 For my cell carrier the user entered home address is stored on the account on the carrier's servers. I can easily edit this address at will. I believe this is required by law for e911 purposes.
If you're not home, but on someone else's wifi, then they get sent the wrong address.
@@timramich Sure. But here we are talking about how to have a reasonable replacement for a fixed landline. That's why this address is clearly indicated as the home emergency address, and why 911 operators understand and are trained on such things with mobile phones. The other location mechanisms such as cell tower and GPS may provide additional context for other locations. When out and about it should be understood that with the convenience of mobility may come more onus on the mobile caller to assist with location identification. The mobile technology is getting better and better at reducing this onus introduced by the mobile convenience, but it's a moving target (literally and figuratively). :-)
Sure someone didn't just leave the phone off the hook, next to a bowl of Rice Krispies?
There is one in every crowd.
@@12voltvids
Totally awesome buddy I love those old phones because I'm older I'm like 69.
Keith
Jesus, that's some FAST DSL
He mentioned that he has Fiber already capped in the home so it's a safe guess that he has FTTN, fiber to the node. Fiber makes 99% of the journy to the box on the street and only communicates with your DSL modem between your home and that node. Very modernized version of DSL, good for rural areas where it can be 100m-5km between homes and digging fiber would be too expensive.
I have a friend out in the farmlands with 250Mbps DSL and actually gets his full speed during peak times because his node isn't overloaded like it is in the city.
I get 98/25 on my dsl connection. Just recently got this upgrade, before was max 40/10. Im amazed at the speed possible from these old phone wires.
Were i live my DSL is capable of 200/60. Bonded dsl tho, so 4 pair going into the modem. But i use the coax cable with 500/40
It's VDSL2, the speed is pretty standard.
normal for fibre to the cabinet with the copper part less than a few hundred metres.
My granfather who was a Vietnam Veteran started working for Centel in the late 70's or early 80s (which eventually became Sprint and then Embarq by the time he retired) and I remember seeing him work with telephone lines like this from time to time. I was always amazed at how many wires and tools/equipment he worked with every day. He passed away the day before Thanksgiving of 2020 and I couldnt help but smile when I saw the thumbnail for this video. Thanks for posting this! I have no idea how any of that stuff works but it reminded me of spending time with my grandfather and I really needed that today!
I read the whole thing to learn of the relevance to him being an Vietnam Veteran. There wasn't any.
@@johncoops6897 I should have included that he was drafted into the navy and was a radio operator that handled messages to direct the gunmen on where they needed to fire. He was there from 1965 to 1969 on a battle ship and I am sure this influenced his decisions in life.
@@DDFJ1230 - thanks. That makes the story complete! Cheers.
Lots of army communications guys go into domestic communications when they leave the military.
I still have a copper line coming into the house and an old phone hooked up. Where we are on the island we lose power quite a bit during the wind storms. Nice to have an old phone and phone line that still works even when the power goes out. It’s also more reliable than cell service.
starlink and a generator?
@@-Good4Y0uStarlink is not yet available worldwide and it's rather expensive
@@rodpadev The beta is pretty broad now. It's not so bad, $99/m is only $15 more then my gig internet and unlike mine starlink could be used on a moving object. I think that is nifty. Being on an island you would be a prime beta candidate
@@-Good4Y0u 99usd a month is a looot of money for some people, my 50/5 DSL is 8usd a month and i have the fastest internet out of all off my friends lol, and thats in a fairly big city
@@ondrejbrandejsky5592 99 USD isn't a lot of money in the US for internet. The cheapest plans are usually around $40. SOME states are trying to limit pricing, but NY State for example is being sued for just that right now.
Glad I found this! My landline primary phone is doing the same thing with the static, since we had heavy rains the past couple days. Unfortunately, AT&T no longers service landlines -- so guess that means we do our own fixing. We have cell phones, but landlines are definitely MORE RELIABLE with power outages
We no longer repair copper here either. Copper in my area is due to be phases out at the end of this year. It's fiber everywhere now.
Yes thats what AT&T told me and suggested I get set up with using cell phone instead, but I'd like to hold to my landline as long as possible, which is why I searched in what to do. Thanks for the upload!
Pretty neat to see behind the scenes like that. We had this happen at my parents house a few decades ago. Buried line, would crackle a few days after it rained. Same solution, they just switched with the unused second line.
Please note: GPS often times works inside as well. For example, at my work I can submit clock punches on my phone, BUT I must be within a work location, and for the most part, it just works. Unless you have +3ft of concrete in-between you and the satellites the GPS function will work just fine. In major downtown areas with large buildings and in parking ramps will generally be the areas where you will have problems, also on lower floors of some apartments. Note that if you connect to WiFi, you can also get location information from there, that EMS technicians can pull from your phone. Sometimes even more accurately than a simple landline, ie. what part of the building you are in and which floor. Also, when you call emergency services, you are always broadcasting them your location so they can know where you are.
Yep...tho my one experience calling 911 in a real emergency I was standing OUTSIDE stopped for a car that flipped in a median and they insisted I was in a different county than I was...not convinced they actually use GPS, I think they just use the tower location.
@@matthewmiller6068 I am going to say that your situation was probably an infrastructure issue. Unfortunately throughout the US many emergency response services are under-financed so they may be using 5-10 year old technology with only the required components, like computers and OS's, updated, and sometimes not even them. So their systems are unable to receive/read that data.
Yup. I work in an interior office, on the 2nd floor of a 9 story building that was an old Montgomery Ward retail store - ALL concrete, wood, and steel. My gps still works on google maps just fine
@@matthewmiller6068 What? I find that very hard to believe
This is possibly the coolest video you have ever made
"...because I have legacy equipment."
You're a good man.
I bet you'd like to hear about my Otari MX5050 reel to reel tape deck!
I always wanted to be a phone man. I collect 1A2 systems now.
Excellent video!
Phone co 2nd career for me. Finally changed over to glass here because copper is being decommissioned.
When I switched to fiber I bought a VoIP adapter and hooked it to a Panasonic digital/analog hybrid PBX. Now I've got a mix of rotary phones, touch-tone and digital phones all hooked up to in various parts of the house.
for the old phones: get a SIP ATA with pulse dial support. (like most older Grandstream models)
Get a current one, no need to get the old shit. For example the HT812/HT814/HT818 are current models, very good and can enable pulse dialing support in the configuration.
@@geraldh.8047 hm 🙄 good to know! Will HT812/HT814/HT818 work w/ any SIP provider (is it "easy" to set up)?
@@geraldh.8047 Indeed, I have an HT814, and it works great, but I don't have an old rotary phone to test it with.
I was going to say the same thing, grandstream ata supports pulse
Yup, that's what I do. Look for a devices that specify a REN load, which is the number of analog phones on a line....
incredibly good speed through the telephone line! Before I only got 8 mbps through telephone cable even though the line was set to 20 mbps. but it's almost 15 years ago if not longer. Now I have fiber
and I will never go back!
DSL can be good, especially if the run to the DSLAM is relatively short, and the cabling is in good condition and not a mix of cable types. Worst is aluminium cables, they are terrible over longer distances, and the skin resistance does a lot of attenuation. Funny enough century old paper sleeved oiled copper cable is pretty good, well controlled all the way.
I remember working on the phone lines at my work. Tip & Ring ! I enjoyed doing this!
Thank you for this video. I work in Dispatch for CenturyLink and it was very interesting to see what a tech would do in the field for repairs and troubleshooting.
Y'know, I really think service for customers would be improved if the call centre, dispatchers etc. could go out and spend a day or two with the guys in the field, talk to the customers etc. and vice-versa. I tried to push that idea where I worked but management wouldn't go for it.
Probably because the churn rate for call centre staff is too high
Dave,
I've got copper lines as well for my DSL and landline. I've got a Western Electric 302 with a date code of 1946. It's a metal bodied phone that's never been restored. I use it all the time and it still works wonderfully well. Very heavy, you could drive nails with it!
Watching this from Germany, where pretty much at least 75% of those lines are still copper to this very day!
Same. This video is making me cry.
Also here in Switzerland we still have a lot of copper local loops. Mine is copper too.
Actually in Germany it's worse, at least east of the former german-german border. There the (copper) phone network was from the 1940s at best when DSL took off, and Telekom (which after the reunification got a whole lot of new customers) was required *by law* to deliver basic DSL (only 786/128 if I remember correctly) to every phone customer, whereever they are. But when the 1940s copper lines were replaced, they didn't put new copper in, that would have been crazy. Instead they pulled fiber, but terminated in a box just outside your house that converted that to copper, with a 1-customer-DSLAM. Then the customer connected his/her DSL modem on the inside and you had all of a few meters of copper where they got DSL as required by law. SMH.
@@hinzster That's what happens here too. The telephone network until the final distribution cabinets where all the DSLAMs are located is all fiber optic, then there's the twisted-pair local loop reaching the customer's permises. That's the situation with my line too. But as the distribution cabinet is near my home, I have a 100/25 mbit VDSL2 which is pretty stable and reaches the rated speeds quite well, and according to the test that can be done online on the telephone company's website, my Internet connection could reach speeds of about 400/90 mbit, which is really good for it being on a copper line. Actually I'm happy with my Internet connection despite it being on copper, and right now I don't feel the need for a fiber optic connection.
Anyway since some years telephone companies are working to bring the fiber optics directly to the customers and there are cities where such connections are already available.
@@mima85 You forgot one thing. Telekom Fiber from the the early 90th is not the same as today. This was an OPAL-Network. You could not change this to modern FTTH. It was never the goal to bring this direct to the customer. The new network works in an other way, with other fibers.
Worked at a 911 center as a radio tech. I was tasked with troubleshooting phone line troubles and interfacing with the telephone techs. Had a problem with a 4 wire line used to tone out a fire station. Went to the station and checked the line with my butt set. Lo and behold I hear Vietnamese voices! There was a crossed line in a splicing pedestal. This was in a Vietnamese residential area. Nobody believed it until they heard it for themselves. We also had lines from remote receivers to central comparators. A quirk in Motorola Comparators is that they would vote to a noisy line. We also had to sweep and adjust the lines once a year because they went through concentrators as opposed to being end to end copper.
When i was on business i dealt with concentrators, amplifiers, over line talk groups, ISDN and t1 carrier. Before cell sites were fiber fed they would have 10 t1 circuits bonded which gave the site 15 megabit up and down. This was in the old CDMA days.. i didn't do the cell equipment, i just dealt with terminating the copper and testing. That was about 14 years ago. I moved back to residential as i have my own territory and don't have to travel anymore. Been spoiled now working 1 mile from home.
Very interesting. Thanks for giving us insight into POTS lines.
WI bonded/twisted pairs are not being maintained either - many, many homes still use it, gotta love a cabinet and terminals. too cold here for me to pop up 20 ft every 5 seconds. love this, working backwards to the clearest unit - lmao yessss the fiber is primed too.. love the legacy sir. lets go!
I about shit myself when I saw him pull down 65/20 on copper frickin’ wire. Unreal. Good ISP!
I just tested it now. Just got 74.2 down and 19.8 up and there is a TV running in the other room.
Never have a problem with speed here, and that is why I am reluctant to change anything.
Also I can pull multiple open IP. The guys on fiber get 1. That's no fun. I run multiple routers with their own public IP, so I can run open ports for things like cameras and stuff all the while the IP I use for my computer is totally different.
@@12voltvids Yup, that’s worth keeping. But if the fiber was symmetrical gigabit, that would be worth the trade offs for me.
@@brothertax it is symmetrical gigabit but that still won't sway me at all. Even if it was the same price which I currently pay i would stay for the reasons listed above.
Gigabit internet causes me the most headaches at work because of brain dead customers expectations. The speed is only as fast as the slowest server. Also I have yet to see a single wireless device they can achieve more than 500. Most wireless devices especially Apple top out well below even 500. This is due to the expected long battery life, manufacturers put in slow wireless cards so it's not to drain the battery quickly and this generates trouble calls for slow internet. I show up plug my laptop in get 1.1 GB prove that the speed is there and the bottleneck is their equipment and then have to bill them a diagnostic charge which pisses them off and now I'm the bad guy. Can only guarantee that type of speed over hardwired connection and to a PC that's not running antivirus or VPN software as these are going to slow the connection down substantially but people don't understand this which drives nuisance trouble calls.
@@12voltvids How many public IPs do they give you? Do you utilize them? What kind of router do you have? Or do you just use the residential gateway?
@@brothertax
I am only running 2 at the moment.
Bought my new home in 2003 and requested a home phone line. A copper line was installed and it worked for the most part except when it rained. So noisy that it would not pull a dial tone at times. Call in a trouble ticket and they swapped pairs and it was fixed until 2005 when fiber came in. I ended up switching over to fiber for everything. The downside is that I am now the CO providing battery so if there is a power problem my battery kicks in and keeps my phone alive but disables my TV and internet. Its a cost but not a very big problem. Worked in crypto in the AF and spent some time in vaults in West Germany tracing cables. Also spent many hours in the tunnels under Washington DC tracing problems for the DC Subway. Any way blue, orange, green, brown ,slate to you.
your phone will most likely have an emergency mode when you dial 911 or other emergency services. that makes sure the GPS is on and updating.
Still only works if it can actualy get a signal.
Not to mention, most phones now (smartphones) use Wi-Fi scanning to get an accurate location, too. This means you can be polled at almost EXACTLY where you are, even inside your house without a GPS signal, as long as your phone has reception from towers and Wi-Fi networks nearby.
With android, location services can use your wifi location to determine where you are. That's for apps, if enabled. That doesn't mean that the phone will necessarily use that for emergency services. Google used to go out and map the location of various wifi things. There was an amount of controversy surrounding it. Speculation: it may now also use your wifi history and correlated that with your GPS to work out where your wifi access points are.
I have very mild Raynaud's phenomenon basically my hand can feel normal but be a bit colder.
so touch screens sometimes don't work for me because fingertips are too cold.
mobile phones may be harder to dial if you are tensing up and cant do the unlock code
@@nullvoid564 it isnt based on temperature, just moisture which changes the capacitance of the phone, so if you have thick dry skin or gloves they touchscreen wont work. but yea touchscreens arent as reliable as a physical button. Thats why iPhones have an emergency mode by pressing the power button 5 times. not sure about android.
Thankfully you have a second copper pair to swap to, i have just one copper pair and adsl.
The problem i have is getting the company to look into faults, my modem loses the connection around 9 oclock at night and jumps in and out of connection.
Loverly old phones, my mate has a few old rotary ones that still work, he has one that was an old emergency phone in it's own pole mounted metal box.
The rotary mechanism worked so well.
my parents house is still on dsl and they get 1mbps down and 0.3mbps up, excellent for 360p youtube videos
Sure if they are way out on a long loop. I am relatively close to the fiber fed dslam, so I get very fast service. I could get 150 down 40 up if I wanted to pay an extra 10 bucks a month.
@@12voltvids I was very close to the station that served my area for DSL (Verizon) and best they could offer was 3mbps down and 1.2mbps. The station’s facility (a closed small telephone station from forever ago) is only 2 miles from the house. No matter who came out to fix it after a storm (always dropped after a thunderstorm, noisy AF line) they couldn’t fix the line or make it faster. What I find odd though is we switched to fiber since and while reliability and speed are much improved it still oddly vulnerable to thunderstorms… I’m thinking some shared equipment further upstream from me is hella leaky or a complete RF nightmare. I know fiber shouldn’t be impacted by RF probably some equipment in a box that’s terminating out and causing it…
@@Honeypot-x9s 2 miles is actually a long way out. That's about 10,000 feet and the limit for dsl is about 12000 max. By comparison I an about 1500 feet from the cabinet as the cable runs and i have a bonded loop. Fiber is not affected by RF or electrical interference as it is just glass and light shining down it. The switching equipment at the co would be more suseptable as would the premise equipment to power surges.
@@12voltvids that’s just the station. I’m not sure if cabinets did anything else and how it works. One not far from the house.
As for fiber yea, something suspect going on with it.. the rate of connectivity issues has increased year over year right as thunderstorms reach our town.. if just rain usually not going out, if lightening then it typically does.
We still use it in our summerhouse. I get 6-7 mbps with 40 ping but... Bandwidth so low. Even someone send text messages using WhatsApp, ping peak to 300 - 400. Idk why its happening.
Copper line/ADSL here as well in the interior, I also have a collection of vintage telephones.
New installation recently back in 2012 including a new terminal box outside and wires.
Telus had such a backlog of work here that they brought in extra installers from Vancouver.
The installer was outstanding and very friendly worked till 9PM to get me hooked up,
even brought me a new modem, haven't had a problem since.
I remember the call out for volunteers. Fortunately the younger guys were chomping at the bit to go on loan as they could make big bucks. That created OT opportunities here for the rest of us.
This stuff is always very interesting to me. I have new equipment, but I also have legacy equipment too just in case if I want to fall back onto it. Sometimes, analog is better than digital too.
It's nice to see a telephone company actually take care of their systems. In rural WV, we generally have Frontier. Frontier bought out all the mom and pop services, never fixed anything, and everything has gone to shit. DSL is still a very viable broadband technology, BUT ONLY WHEN IT IS MANAGED CORRECTLY! You'd never see above 10-15Mbit downloads on their systems.
We are phasing out copper here too. Over the next few years it will go I am sure, but I still install copper. I did a tv copper install yesterday and 2 last week. There are some buildings that have not granted permission to put fiber into and there is the farm land that it is just too costly for the few residences. Some of those will use LTE (farms) but the apartment and condo that have not proceeded with fiber will remain on copper until they do comply and allow the building to be retrofitted.
I had to fix my phone line with 14gauge electrical wire and worked great.
Wow, it must have been a lot of work twisting all that thick wire. JK. In the home it should work fine without twisting the pair.
But for long distances it really does need to be twisted.
i'm served off an DMS switch, And i'm on copper all the way to the CO, And one thing that i like about my POTS line is the GOOD O Hummy sounds coming from the Copper wire. it sounds beautiful and relaxing.
We have a dms here uaed for Centrex and gdt5 but it's all being phases out. Everything is going fiber in this area. Copper is being retired.
Believe me your 3M JWI (Jumper Wire Interface) is clean than most 3M JWIs in Montreal.
I have all rotary phones but have not had a copper line since 2009. Running Asterisk with a channel bank and there are 23 extensions, Got some pay phones as well. Phone is Google Voice, other VOIP, Magic Jack and a bluetooth cell dock. The home phone went to 44 dollars a month with no long distance. ATT frustrated me so I dumped the line and it was the best decision ever!
I work at a CLEC in the US- I love seeing this from the other side.
Really cool to see! I am telecom engineer in the Netherlands and just because there are differencs it's in big lines the same. Line sharing is no longer available here. If you want a analoge telephone line you got epots on the second pair. Fiber is rolling out here really fast this year but the most people in towns and city's got DSL from FttC with 100Mb (DSL vectoring) or bonded DSL Vectoring (2 pairs combined) of Vectoring plus. 200Mb on a single line. Because also a lot of people are going over to fiber (GPON of AON) there are a lot of crosswires unused and also a mass in streetcabinets you said. Only big differences is here that all the wires are underground. So if there is a shortage underground and no second pair and no fiber we need to call a groundwork team. :) Again nice to see!
That is pretty good speed for DSL. I have never seen DSL go over a few Mbps in the states and few people I know still using DSL are only getting around 5 Mbps and less than 1Mbps for upload.
Here in the UK we can 330mb down and 60up on DSL, it's on a short loop tho.
thats about 3.5 -4 km away from exchange
it's VDSL, the fibre goes to the street cabinet, in the UK they market this as "fibre" means they now have to market the actual fibre services as "full fibre"
Telus (phone provider in western Canada) uses bonded VDSL2 or VDSL2+. With 2 pairs, you can get very impressive speeds. The last year I was in Canada, I switched to Telus (2 pair bonded VDSL2) from Shaw (Cable DOCSIS 2 at the time) and was getting better speeds, especially uploads, than cable (not because of a technical limitation of DOCSIS2, but just the speed tier plans they had), and paying less, and with no bandwidth cap, AFTER I had a tech come out more than once to fix similar issues with my phone line pairs. There was a bridge tap on one of my pairs. Not only was it connected to the cable going to my house, but it was also connected in parallel to somewhere else, probably going into someone else's house, and that causes endless problems for DSL. The tech also discovered that someone else's phone was connected to the 3rd pair on the drop cable into my house! Never even bothered to fix it, just left it that way. Shortly after I moved to the US, they rolled out the FTTH offering, and where I moved to in the US, I also have FTTH now. After having gig fiber for years, it would be very tough to go back to anything less, but VDSL2 is no slouchy technology, when your loop is relatively short, and doesn't have impulse noise, or bridge taps! The problems people have with DSL is their provider never deployed VDSL2, AND their copper infrastructure is a mess with cross connections and weird crap all over the place.
I find the old phone system fascinating. I like watching some of the old Bell Telephone informational films on RUclips from time to time. When I was a kid I had a scanner. I remember being able to hear my neighbors cordless phones. I could even pick up the McDonalds drive-thru on my scanner.
I have watched the phone network transition from dial up internet through dsl. Then dsl from street cabinets to 10gb fiber optics. I'm on a 10g fiber port now myself even though my internet is only 150.
Question why can't you keep both copper line and fiber just for internet. Also could you explain a bit the digital voltage line thing i got a bit confused. Thanks
Super Fascinating video! Nice to see a behind the scene of our Phone/Cable/Internet provider! Have to admit, we still have a copper phone in the house that we have for emergencies, but everything else is on fibre.
Fascinating....I kept a land line as long as I could...maybe till 2006, but could no longer justify wasting $20 a month and never using it. Also a dsl user.
Until you need to call 911. Saved my dads life when he had a stroke, and again 5 years later when he had an aorta dissection and needed urgent care.
@@12voltvids Good point
@@lesd40 That and the alarm is basically the only reason I keep it. I really don't like using
cell phones though. I know someone that lost their son to a brain tumor, and I remember his son living with a cell phone glued to the side of his head day and night. He was a salesman, and carried 3 phones with him and was constantly on it.
Coincidence?
My house has had a land line with the same exact number since 1973. It's not that hard to do. And my phone and internet is bundled at $100 a month. I never used and do not want a retard-0-phone.
My mom has this exact problem on her line and we have confirmed its the underground line coming from their box to the box onr her house but they refuse to do anything about it, They ended up burying a ground cable all the way over to the power line after the box was blown off the side of our house from a lightning strike (something they told us was impossible and basically called us liars when we reported it) and every since then the static has been present and gotten to the point the phone is unusable when it rains and the internet speed never gets over 12 kbps. This is why Centurylink is one of the lowest rated services in Missouri.
Yup same with us. We have copper too. When it rains theres static on the lines for 5 days. They burried our lines years ago.
The "outside plant" is a mess everywhere, here in Ohio lawnmowers and varmints have taken their toll, you hardly ever see a pedestal with a cover or standing horizontal. The poles look like shit, every carrier has been up there and made a rats nest out of things. i'm an old geezer bell guy but i switched to Spectrum coax for everything .. works great.
When it's not raining, the greatest Telephone Repairman in the Sun!!! Dry cables at splice points...
I have started to notice a pattern on the new Fiber. When there is a power failure, (doesn't affect me as my ONT and modem are battery backed up so they keep running and I have internet when my neighbours are all out) as soon as the power is restored and all the ONTs in the neighbourhood start hammering the servers for an IP everythng gets flaky for several hours. Cant even watch tv for the rest of the night as it freezes and breaks up for several hours as everything gets back online. Happened now twice after a power failure.
@@12voltvids The fiber is only the highway from the prem to the service provider's point of presence, and not the cause of service slowdown, unless there's shared bandwidth.
When an area recovers from an outage, there exists a rush for service by end users. This crush of users results in a bottleneck that has a ripple effect with service, typically IP based systems.
@@NYCMNYBY the fiber goes back to the splitter cabinet where the feed is split optically 32 ways. Each ont has a 1 / 32 time slice. The feed runs back to the olt, optical line termination. A big router that has all the line cards in it which then goes back to the uplink server. The pop or point if presence would be the only edge service router.
Your "legacy" copper is providing a higher speed than we get here in Australia on our brand new national broadband network.
eewww
that's because the wire is thicker gauge and more impervious to overheating and environment. Little cheap fiber lines are so thin they get destroyed very easily. Could tear them up with your teeth alone.
It's always interesting to see how it's done in Canada or US. Here in the middle of nowhere in France, copper lines are still used for DSL service and as for yours no more maintained as we're soon supposed to get fiber optics. However, most here have relatively low results on a single copper pair that could have been installed in the 70's. We also encounter different wire gauges, long distances to DSLAM, and we still have mixed analog and digital services on the same line as DSL service provider has not done the local technical installs to get digital only services... Mostly because lack of space in technical spaces dating from 50 years +! In my Burgundy village, I had the best baudrates available with a typical 14/1Mbps ADSL2, untill a severe storm have destroyed the local DSLAM and all my modems and home ethernet appliances (PCs Mainboards, DVRs, IP cameras...). One of my friends lives in a farm with a 17 km line, wich gives a 512kbps down rate only the best days; he had the same thunderstorm problems, and now even the phone is a mess when it rains (and he has to pay for an intermittent service), the only way to get any decent service is via satellite (mobile doesn't work in it's valley!). With new modem and phones, I also have noises coming from external aerial copper lines I suspect coming with severe multiple insulation failures and leaking connection boxes. But when there is 3,2 km lines to change, they don't care, and I have to manage with lower results, and crippling noisy analog phone line. And as I don't work for the national company line nor have clearance to tamper with phone lines (I don't have the keys), I bought a 4G data router modem (I have a no limit data handy line with spare PIN cards) wich gives a pretty interesting symmetrical baudrates around 75Mbps for a "local" antenna 18km away (with direct view!). My latency delay is about the same... And this solution is also interesting as I have no visible antennas nor fiber nor copper lines anyone can tamper for security uses, and no supply risk with a battery backup. This "radio solution" is now also available on most recent security panels, lift supervising appliances, aged people surveillance... I've also partly replaced the ethernet copper lines with fiber optics, as you can have relatively cheap professional switches with fiber management and mode converters. This is also perfect to electrically insulate servers and different home security services.
As I also worked on private network services, I also noticed you use different tools that those I know, with the same result, but I suppose it has some "historical" reasons as we work on larger modules arrays (norms?). I've also worked on wrapped arrays and other specific connectivity, and everytime using different tools. Needless to say with fiber optics it's probably the same, as technologies evolved. Back in 1992, we used hot glued classic ST connectors and had to polish cleaved ends by hand... So I guess you also have a fair collection of special tools, crimpers, special screwdrivers, line identifiers and line checkers (my phone tester is yellow but does the same...without batteries).
I think the UK is in a similar position with FTTC, still using copper for the last leg of the journey with street cabinets up to a kilometer away and beyond in some cases. There's talk of full fiber everywhere by 2025 but you know how that sort thing goes!
You get better internet than me and I'm on fibre optic lol! Interesting stuff, man!
If anyone could bootleg some cable, it’s this guy!
Not these days. Perhaps 40 years ago.
@@12voltvids lol
@@robdawg1017 phone freaker more like it. it's not as easy to get away with it now.
Always thought noise in the line was just something they told you so they didn't have to explain things
And if your phone is humming it's because it doesn't know the words!
I had the same issue long ago (like, over a decade and a half) and the ding-dongs at AT&T couldn’t find out what was wrong. My line did the same damn noise, it was weird, it was clear at first then started to garble and crackle and my DSL speeds were horrible and my modem kept resetting. Finally an old tech came to my house and removed some “filter” and that resolved it and I was getting over 6mbps on my DSL line and my DSL modem stopped resetting all the time (it would lose sync and re-establish constantly). What a mess.. I dealt with that for like 2 years…
Ah ye olde Buttinski. I remember getting a chuckle out of a customer when I told my trainee to "go stick your butt on the frame"
I've also got a but from when I stated in Australia, no push button rubbish, mine has a rotary dial.
I had same issue at my business for 20 years. Finally got a executive from Centurylink to expedite a proper repair... after 20 years and 75-100 tech visits "changing my twin pair" would that be called "expeditious". It tool a trencher, two bucket trucks and one service truck, total crew of 7 to dig the cross street and replace the damaged-long-ago line that went under the road to the pedestal opposite side of street. They started at 7:30AM, and wrapped up the job at 7:00PM
Wow, I used to have a DSC panel. I did not know how to make it compatible with new monitoring station, had to replace with a First Alert POS panel. Definitely Legacy equipment. I threw away 2 NIB/NOS DSC panels last year, while getting rid of old electronics piling up in my basement. Even had a full road of lead window foil.
For 911 locating, it sounds even worse. Please expand on this issue. I have cell phone with defaults set to use wifi at home and work.... does GPS on phone data pass forward, or will it display as 30 miles away ? I bet noone really knows of the issues you enumerate on. This should be on a cable channel 24/7, with PSAs on all channels monthly to link to. People have no idea.
Some fiber companies still support pulse dialing, sadly not Xfinity though. It's also too bad that they won't let you use fiber for internet and copper for phone
you can buy modules that will do the conversion
Verizon FIOS in New Jersey supports pulse dialing if you get the phone service with net. Problem is that Verizon's FIOS based phone service is stupid expensive. I have FIOS just for net, 200 Mbps for $45/mon. I bought an Ooma VoIP adapter and now pay $10/mon for two home phone numbers with unlimited calling in the US. Sound quality is very good, and the service has been reliable.
I had and still have a similar problem at my house. Connecting to the master socket my line works fine, if I connect up the faceplate distributing the phone line to other sockets in the house I get noise and internet disruption (as I discovered at the start of UK lockdown this time last year so great timing on that). I work in IT for a living but I don't work much with phones, so I tried the only thing I could which was check and re-terminate all the sockets in my house (same as with an RJ45 socket, but only have do deal with 2 wires instead of 8), which didn't fix it. At this point I reported it to my landlord (who's responsible for repairs on the house), and naturally they don't care so I ended up running a long RJ11 from the master socket across the room to the router (I've got a hardwired NAS with a UPS connected to my router, and there's no space for all of these devices by the master socket).
What joy it is to live in an old village. I get that external aesthetics are important to the community in the UK, but it baffles me why the insides still have to be stylised with the same 200-year-old aesthetic when it's wholly inadequate and impractical for the 21st century. But that's a rant for another time. Great video, thanks for sharing.
17:00, but why not run it, set it up just to take advantage of the faster speeds *JUST* for web surfing and keep using the copper for everything else, including your legacy equipment. Who said that you have to remove the copper in order to be able to use the Fiber optic? Why not use both at the same time and enjoy that speed boost for when you surf the web, *JUST* for the web/computer use purpose.
Why would you need > 75Mb for websurfing?
God have I been down that road before! 6 phones in the house, 1980s tech, corrosion, fun times.
Serious question how long does it take you to upload say a 20-minute video on DSL
About the same time as the running time. Then ur takes RUclips and hour or more to process the video. Some have to be uploaded again because they sit at 0% for hours.
I feel ya on the rotary phones. I mostly switched to my mobile but I love those things for long conversations and for getting rung by family. As you say, it’s the sound of the bell. And the ergonomics of the whole experience. I live somewhere with FTTB but I use my own router, the company’s only supports tone anyway, but I researched which specific VoIP adapters supported pulse and had the juice to properly strike the bells. That way I can also have the nice long single ring instead of the two short rings in succession that we used to have. I prefer those, but perhaps only because that’s not what I grew up with: two rings in succession just conjure memories of school or the doctors office to me, but one long ring sounds like the movies.
I can understand. Instead of being a mundane thing, it is an experience, so-to-speak.
I had the same but it turned out one of my cats had decided to pee on the telephone socket. Removed, yuck, cut back 20cm of corroded wire and installed new style socket.
Cat and tech do not mix. I have many office cats and house panthers who do not care if something is live when they want to leave a calling card..
Really like that great example of a now rare working Automatic Electric Monophone 35 at the beginning.
Since I'm living in Germany, I also have copper lines and I also have some problems with my DSL
Watching other people using a landline phone makes me very happy 😂
Wife spent about 3 hours on the land line today. Use it all the time. My cell usage is about 10 minutes a month.
I love these telephone troubleshooting videos! You made another video similar to this one where you were on the job right?
No, not on the job. On my days off.
Just remember that TELEPHONE drop lines are CCS (Copper Coated Steel) lines!
@@Hammerhea64
No they are copper. Perhaps 50 years ago they were copper plated steel, but not now.
@@12voltvids time marches on
More than 50 years ago was when I first found out.
@@12voltvids Yes, the OLD stuff sometimes has hidden advantages. The old copper coated steel was stronger but "cloth drops with rubber outer sheath " would corrode open and leave black chalk residue . I like running a newer 3 or 6 pair copper drop with the steel support strand and quick drop cinches. I would terminate an extra loop to a dead unused F2 in the aerial terminal for a backup plan. This way I would only need to tone out the spare span to the FX and move the jumpers. It always helped to carry a throw-down butt set in the car or toolbox when on the road. Hurricanes along the Gulf Coast would knock out electrical power for days and anything on A/C digital or battery back-up from the PG huts would fail and copper to the CO would still operate. Yippie. JwgK
Nice to see a real old school Telus/BC Tel Tech. I hate having to deal with tear 1 support, I try dealing with tear 2 when I have problems.
Oh yes, I also have a KX-T30865 door phone. As well as the door latch opener.
as a 00s kid those landline noises are awfully familiar lmao they use to creep me out so much now it’s nostalgic to hear the old landline noises! i remember the phone guys coming out to the house to use there butt set to test our line
Almost a distant memory. I actually have a copper install to do today. Happy times. No hopefully I can remember what to do. 😃
phones use wifi & GPS for location. lets say ur out front of your house, your phone can get GPS + it can see your WIFI SSID & MAC (does not need to connect to it) + it can see the wifi nextdoor. your phone secretly puts that info in an online database. next time someone's phone tries to find its location, it will check the nearby wifi, if it can see the same SSIDs & MAC addresses it knows where it is without GPS.
I have a device hooked to my old rotary phone that turns pulse dial to a modern DTMF tone that works perfectly over my VOIP line.
Also I live with someone who has heart issues and work at a homeless shelter. Both places have VOIP as the phone line and I have better luck calling 911 on my cell phone. 911 has failed to locate me several times on the VOIP lines even though they are setup with the location like that is required in my area. On my cell phone I have to remember to turn off WiFi calling if I am connected to WiFi as this has only one 911 location. I am currently in the middle of my house an connected to 20 GPS satellites with an accuracy of 3 meters on my cell phone.
Rev George
What an interesting video!
I have a fax machine, and sending and receiving faxes over the old copper phone lines is so much better than over VOIP. Using a VOIP phone line, there will be times where your fax won’t go through.
Yes that's another reason i am keeping it. Sending and receiving fax on VoIP or derrived voice is hit and miss. Usually miss.
That moment when you find out this guy's DSL is faster than my Fibre (granted, it's FTTC, but still)
that depends on which FTTC you have, a 17A profile is a 80/20 link which is normally set in either 1 of two modes, the restricted one or the more expensive faster speed boost that you pay more for. you either have a 40/10 or an 80/20 the 40/10 normally gives you around a 36/37Mbps connection at full speed. the 80/20 gives you around 77Mbps at full speed.
3:58 We've had more AT&T landline outages than we've had cellular outages. Just a few days ago we had a 911 outage that only affected landlines. Cell phone carriers where not affected. One great thing about cell phones now when it comes to locations, is if your phone is connected to WiFi and WiFi calling is enabled, they will know the EXACT address you have set at that current time, problem with that though is if your say 7 hours away connected to someone elses WiFi and WiFi calling is enabled it will pull that address you have set and not where your actually at.
But anyway copper is a big heck no here. 768K DSL vs 940mbps Cable. Long ago the line running to my house went dead 100% so we just ditched the landline and went cellular for it.
Any enjoyed the video! Usually on the coax/CATV side of things so nice to see something different.
43 dislikes from Darren Entwistle
I had this problem where the static was just as bad as the beginning of this video. Had a few engineers sent over and its still not fixed, albeit not as bad. Apparantly the rain leaked into the line and soaked it. I get the strong feeling its still leaking into it because there is still noise.
Kudos good sir for still rocking a Pioneer LaserDisc player.
Also at my old place we still used copper cable for telephone. Back when we had Prodigy (you young ones can go look that up) the local telecom ran a "cleaning pulse" down the lines that pretty much blew out the external modem, serial card, motherboard, and PSU that our first 80386 had. Despite physical damage (modem exploded, burnt the power socket it was in, and board damage) the local telecom denied they had caused the damage.
Later after many upgrades and new PCs I never got past the 26.4 baud bottleneck when attempting to access the internet via dial-up. Never did the local telecom replace the paper wrapped copper lines that fed my neighborhood. 20 years ago they offered DSL. And my father happened upon a DSL modem. We were ready. And just .75 miles out of max range for DSL at the time.
Cut to Adelphia offering cable internet... (Again you young folks do your Google thing) and 17 years later had stable cable internet under Comcast. Kitchen remodeling had uncovered 900 feet of connected on one end coiled coaxial cable in a closed off crawlspace above our kitchen causing a plethora of issues for the neighborhood. Once that was removed internet was rock solid.
Upon moving out the home was still with the paper wrapped copper telephone lines serving it.
And Consolidated Communications is a joke as a service. TWO MONTHS it took them to resolve an accidental disconnection. Gave us a "temporary number" to use while they re-assigned our main number back to us which rang to nowhere. That was two weeks into the ordeal. The rest trying to tell them the main number was still disconnected. Did the same thing where I work. Only instead of over a month and a half only took 7 hours to fix for a HOSPITAL
I applaud the use of landlines. A physical location tied to the number assigned. These should be everywhere since I can count on the number of thumbs on fish the number of times the landline was taken out by ice storms. Even not in use for incoming or outgoing calls at least have them available for emergency use. Sure cellular phones are great, but with the GPS being accurate to within the confines of a tennis court that could mean any of the 4 other condo units around me as well.
I have many lazydisk players and a few boxes of movies. A few hundred disks.
Thanks for this ! Wish I could fix mine . I like copper because when the power goes out the phone still works !
That's why i kept mine as long as i could. Now I have to have a battery backup.
is that a 604 area code? I grew up in 807 (the last private phone exchange in Canada). When DTMF came online, the touch tone phone would output the multi tone and then the exchange converted it to digipulse. I used to whistle a 2600hz tone, and use a telegraph key to dial! Ah, the good old days :)
I remember my grandmother had an old 1970s trimline phone and the buttons would light up. The buttons would light up.
My grandmother had a starlight phone that the dial lit up on. Electroluminescent display. Used a 120 to 120v isolation transformer 120 volts on the phone cord.
Hey that looked like my old test Phone. I used to work as a Phone tech years ago. PSTN and ISDN fun stuff. Weird plints though. Not like the German Krone plints we used ,(punchdown blocks) I guess you call them. That static sounds like moisture in a splice somewhere yes. Copper, dirty wather and 54 volts does that. Hey, thats 1980's stuff.
Yes moisture in a splice for sure. Corroded amp connector most likely on the tip side.
Here in New Zealand we have the British telecom plugs and sockets. Oh God they go so noisy in winter. Pins too close and green crusties tracking noise. Fix is to rip nearly every jack point out and replace. Grease every connection in back of every jack or noise is back next week
Great Vid , Thanks , The Telcos in the uk are trying to force us onto fibre as the theyve sold all the telephone exchanges and now lease them back . They are trying to close them all and force us onto fibre where we provide the accomodation and power to run theyre "Junk" boxes cluttering up our living spaces . Also i myself have Dial ( Rotary ) Lagacy telephones and small switchboards so i,m fighting it! , Wish me luck! Cheers from uk .Im guessing the older people will really struggle when POTS are finally ceased . Pity no one cares!
I live in Mexico, and the biggest phone company (Telmex) gave me a Nokia G-240W-G ONT about 4 years ago for my optical fiber upgrade from VDSL. A few days ago, I tried to connect some rotary dial phones and they work! This modem actually interprets pulse dial! I tried a 50s? LM Ericsson and a local brand INDETEL. All antique phones here are only from those two brands afaik.
Does it generate a high enough ring voltage. We use the Nokia g240 and x250.
@@12voltvids yeah! Well, haven't measured voltage, but I even connected 2 phones in parallel and both ring loudly (I'm not sure if up to spec, I'm too young to remember haha, but sure they're loud inside the house). But I'm not quite sure if the pulse dial compatibility is firmware default, or it's a special TELMEX mod. It's the hardware version 3FE47555AABA and software 3FE47959HJIJ86
@@cesaralfredotrejo
I guess I will find out soon enough as copper is scheduled to be sunset next month. Been so busy switching over the stragglers like myself.
I live in an Area that was used for fiber optic testing, so we've had fiber since I believe 2008/9 don't even remember what our ADSL+ was like, I've heard plus read, that they should still use the copper lines aswell, because they can offer the same connection speed etc
I'm served off of a Fujitsu built remote switching unit which itself is connected to a DMS-100. Every 6 months or so it seems like my line card becomes un-programmed, it will lose dial tone, but have DC and will appear to a calling party to ring when in actuality it does not.
Sounds like they need to change the line card
Great Video, I had noise on our old ADSL line here that sounded like that after a good week of rain. 64Mpbs on DSL?! that's insane, I live in Australia and we only used to get around 4mbps and now that we are on Fibre it's still only 53mbps. I didn't know about the mobile/cell phone GPS in emergency though. I guess I'll tell my grandparents to keep their landline just in case. Great work Mate!
I really enjoyed this video. I'd love if you did more phone line videos! Weird how you could hear the DSL on the line. I thought you can't hear it. Fascinating stuff.
I would like to however the employer would most certainly frown on this.
A smart person could easily use a arduino with some phone interface chips to trigger your alarm system when service is down and also enable full functionality of the old phones... I could even see some additional functionality added to the old phones but who has time for all that programming
In Vz, a least in NY, metallic (Copper) cables fed services are being retired. Circuit switching and SONET transmission equipment found on Special Services (DS1, DDS, Private Line voice) circuits are being removed as customer circuits based on legacy TDM technology demand goes away. With fiber based transport technologies, on a FiOS FTTP ONT for example, the copper line has been reduced to a couple of feet at the RDT. The rest is customer owned and maintained inside wire (IW). The next step in the total replacement of copper T&R telephone line replacement will be in IP based technologies. I have see the network evolve from manual ringdown circuits, to VoIP.
Copper is being sunset here too. The CO i work out of is scheduled to be shut down next year once all services are migrated to fiber. I've been part of the greatest build in the history of the phone company. I'm working on a 3.4 gig circuit as I type this, on the phone with support desk due to a stuck order.
This is quite neat to see. In my area in West Virginia, our Frontier lines are still old school copper lines at least for the most part. So you can still get copper landline service in my area no problem. I still see technicians working on these boxes quite often. The DSL speed I don't think is anything like that though. I do not use the service though. We just use Suddenlink cable for our stuff. I don't bother with landline phones since I grew up on a cell phone. I encourage my grandparents to keep the landline though for the simple reason that they are probably more likely to be able to call 911 from a landline in an emergency, despite the ones on my dad's side having e911 set up for WiFI calling at home on their cell phones. They use Suddenlink home phone service though which is not perfect in a power outage. Internet is stupid here since you can either pay an arm and a leg for Suddenlink or have garbage service through Frontier. I'd be happy with those DSL speeds, but we don't have anything like that I believe. It is sad though how many people here in WV are still forced to rely on Frontier or something even worse.
That was interesting what you mentioned about alarm systems. Now you're making me want to hack together some kind of solution to set off my alarm when my internet connection goes down.
We are still connected to copper that comes from across the road, from a dilapidated old box. Every time there is a heavy rain, it usually gets that static on it. It's been working good for a long time now since the last time they fixed it. Knock on wood. So is that vault supplied from the lines on the pole, or the other way around?
The cabinet is powered with HV that comes on on phone lines underground but some are Ariel fed.
Somebody with a landline in 2020, oh DSL yep. No not your day off anymore but at least you have the tools to fix it.
I lived out in the middle of the nowhere and was the last of three houses on the line they had two Spurs running off from our Pole where the trunk line ended. I learned how to fix phone problems pretty quick but this was back in the end of the dial-up era.
RUclips algorithm actually gave me something good? I have since moved and I finally broke down and bought myself an x-link I kept tripping over my phone collection going I really wish I could use that unfortunately at the same time I also managed to get myself a phone line with the cable provider it was way cheaper bundled. Their device doesn't support pulse dialing but did support ringing for some reason but I put everything behind the x-link anyway paird it with my phone. It's a great translation device.
I wish I could afford to have copper as well. I just sent a fax the other day talk about crazy.
Although it is nice to be able to put in your own service call I'm sure.
Hello from Calgary great video. We have problem all over the city when someone gets wholesale DSL techs disconnect the DSL ports so often .
Can't you have both? I. E. Telephony over copper, and Internet over fiber?
Also the 911 thing isn't due to some magical property of copper, its due to the registry, if the phone number is registered to the property then they know you're there.
Only point I agree on for the maintaining the copper is your legacy alarm system and phones. While you could theoretically upgrade your alarm system and get a pulse to tone converter, I can understand not wanting unnecessary expenses.
My parents still has telephone and VDSL2 over copper. They get 60/12 mbit that is max on that line through swedish isp Telia. Nice video Dave.
Fibre optics the way to go, its good to see you know what ya doing fixing the old line, not too many techs that good around nowadays, i think theres a converter box someone made for old rotary phones to run via fibre optic
Don't want to make it too comfortable for my 21 year old. Have to have something to encourage him to get out on his own. Internet speed is one he complains constantly about.
For my use, the speed is just fine. I keep the copper going till it is shut down. I keep getting pressured to change. Get the weekly calls to upgrade, but there are reasons to keep copper. My alarm system, and the fax machine I still are 2 of them. We have actually migrated a few people back to copper for that reason for their phone. The big reason I am not changing is I am grandfathered on an old TV package, and I will have to change if I upgrade to newer service. That means channels I currently get are in different packages I have to add. It won't save me money, it will cost more. The rotary dial out is not the big issue, as I use that phone mostly for answering incoming calls. It is the supervised alarm that it the big one.
If the phone line is cut when the alarm is active, it triggers the siren. On fiber, if the fiber is cut, the phone doesn't work, but the voltage from the ONT remains, and the alarm knows nothing about that.
Also, updates go to the ONT in the middle of the night. This causes the ONT to reset, and you guessed it, the voltage drops during this time, which causes an armed alarm to sound in the middle of the night waking up all the neighbors whom don't appreciete it. I know I certainly don't like it when my neighbor across the street's alarm goes off at 2AM on a work night. Then I have to listen to them bitch and complain, and do it on facebook about how shitty the new fiber service is. Yes there are solutions, change out my alarm system, but that's not going to happen.
Yes fiber is faster.... that is all it is. Faster. No more reliable or anything else. Faster, period. If you don't need all that speed then there is no advantage, none whatsoever to switching.
@@12voltvids Wow, they screw you over with that BS even when you work for the phone company? That does sound about right, TV is a giant ripoff no matter what provider you get it from. I haven't had TV in years, and don't miss it. Fiber is more reliable, mostly because the infrastructure is newer. You're not going to have waterlogged splices introducing impulse noise on fiber! And no bridge taps, and the other selection of problems that plague the old copper plant.
@@gorak9000 it's the box rental fees. Currently i don't pay any, as they used to be free. Now there are rental fees. As soon as i change I pay the fees. I still have basic cable. I can get some OTA stations but they all cut out in bad weather as i am far from transmitter. Netflix and Amazon keep raising their prices and have nothing to watch. Internet is the big cost. My tv and phone is 50 bucks. The internet on the other hand about 90.
Very interesting video!! I like to see you working on a telephone exchange.
I go into the exchange to work on the frame regularly, but I won't be shooting any videos in there. Perhaps on my last day I will.
@@12voltvids Probably any day you do it will be your "Last Day". Thanks for a look inside the box.
@@were_all_fact6026
Well I was referring to when i retire 😂
@@12voltvids Dave, when you do that, make a video even showing the CO main frame , CO vault / basement cable runs and old battery racks if they still exist.
They are pulling the copper away here in the netherlands, forced alott of people over to either Cable (TV) or Fibre.
There are tricks with electronics to make your old phones work on modern networks I think. rotary to DTMF converters and well, power can be added aswell. also the modem thingy should have phone connectivity.
But I understand, ol analog telephone is just so awesome to keep working. sadly I moved twice in the last 10 years and all 3 places sofar got fibre upgraded and disconnect the copper. My now latest place is where I live with my spouse, the phone cables lay under all houses, like, what? nobody can go find a fault this way. fiber is coming in from the street, so im kinda happy about that.
I have the same thing of conversion but from ISDN which is phased out and this year the final connection will be cut. We were pressed to make the changeover as the price for ISDN was rising high and adsl a fraction of that. Last year they dug out the old lines and replaced everything with fiber, we are going to switch to fiber from adsl this year. We already lost the 'legacy' from giving up the ISDN.