alternative to voip gateways

Mon May 11 20:10:34 UTC 2020

On 5/10/20 6:24 PM, Mark Delany wrote:
>> wasnt there a hige shit stom in australia for their new national
>> broadband network making internet ptrimary and phone secondary, a lot
>> of aussies on forums I frequent bitch about its reliability, where
>> even their aged copper services worked fine, not to mention prolonged
>> outages due to storms and the bushfires they had recently,  lets hope
>> the world learns from australias mistakes and not go down that path.
> There are still a few complaints every now and again but fixed line
> numbers are continuing to drop off a cliff and those residential
> services which remain have almost all been converted to VOIP via home
> gateway with an FXS port.
>
> Mobile/Cell is where most people ended up. Especially since you can
> get unlimited calls/txt with some data for about ten bucks a month.
>
> It also helps that a number of the mobile providers include
> wifi-calling so mobile is a viable alternative even in weak cell
> coverage areas if you have internet.
>
> Yes, everyone knows about the reliability/power-failure arguments but
> in the latest set of bushfires whole exchanges, backhaul services and
> power distribution cables were destroyed so 8 hours of battery backed
> up POTS in a local exchange didn't help much.

California exposed one big weakness last year though: purposeful 
shutdowns of the grid. These lasted on average about 3 days which is 
probably longer than any battery backup your home voip solution can stay 
up with. The other gaping problem is that even if I have a generator at 
home (which I do because... PG&E), there is no guarantee that my IP bits 
will land on something that has power. Cable and Cellular were 
apparently especially useless. I pleasantly found out that my POTS/DSL 
provider kept the lights on during the shutdown. Lots of people were in 
for a rude awakening, and since this is destined to be our new normal 
there are going to be a lot of unhappy campers every fall.

We need to keep battery backup requirements, and expand them to all last 
mile IP bits. The need to call 911 has not gone away.

Mike