If you are reading this article thinking that we’ll discuss cookware or the latest Rachel Ray recipe, you’ve come to the wrong place. At VoIP Tech Chat our mission is simple — we’re here to chat about VoIP. Think of it as Coffee Talk, without the coffee or infatuation with Barbara.
Sometimes, to discuss VoIP, we must discuss what VoIP is not — in this case, VoIP is not POTS.
POTS is the common nickname and acronym for Plain Old Telephone Service – you know, the “traditional” phone jack in your wall. The POTS system uses technology that is basically unchanged since the early 1900’s. The wires may be upgraded, sure there’s more features, but the telephone technology in use via POTS is essentially the same technology introduced before there were airplanes, highways, or even household refrigerators.
Background, aka Trivial Knowledge that Patrick would call Interesting
The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, who along with Thomas Edison, created a method of transferring voice over long distance through the use of connecting wires. Basically, one telephone would be physically connected to another.
Operators manually connected the two-parties together allowing the transfer of voice to occur. Human operators have since been replaced with automatic exchangers; where a computer determines the party you are wishing to talk to and making the connection. This device for automatic transfer is sometimes referred to as a telephone switch and the POTS engineers like to call their telephone network a Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN.
VoIP vs POTS
At VoIP Tech Chat, we are huge (no fat jokes please) proponents of Voice over Internet. Go Know. Of course, if we didn’t believe so strongly in Internet Telephone, then having a VoIP Tech Chat website would be a pretty stupid idea.
VoIP differs from POTS in many ways. Fundamentally, the end result is the same. In both systems you pick up a phone, dial a number, and talk to the other party. Other than that, the systems are extremely different. VoIP is digital and does not use wires to physically connect devices. VoIP works by digitzing your voice, sending it over the Internet to the destination, and then having it return to audio on the other side. (If you haven’t done so, you should really read “What is a VoIP?” by Patrick and Fred. It’s a great read and even mentions George Michael)
Like anything, both VoIP and POTS have their own Pros and Cons. Despite POTS technology remaining virtually unchanged since the early 1900’s, the reliability of POTS is unmatched. In fact the level of reliability achieved by POTS is the quintessential “five nines” reliability standard. This means, that with POTS, you can expect to have an outage for less than 6 minutes a year. (That’s why at&t and Verizon engineers make big change)
Now, let’s contrast five nines reliability to VoIP reliability. First, remember that VoIP requires a synergy of several service providers to get a dial tone. (Editor note: first quintessential and now synergy? Wow. Today must be vocab day at Voip Tech Chat) The two main players in VoIP are your Internet Service Provider and your VoIP Service Provider.
Let’s say for example that you were using Vonage as your VoIP provider and Comcast as your ISP. Comcast home Internet service has a 99.9% uptime average; which is very high for the industry. In fact, it would be hard pressed to find an ISP that provides you better than 99.9% uptime. Of course, even though 99.9% uptime is amazing, this translates to 44 minutes of downtime per month. Vonage doesn’t list their uptime average (in their defense, most VoIP companies do not list their uptime. We couldn’t find any for Vonage, VoIP.com, or Packet 8.). So, let’s assume Vonage has a 99% uptime (which is being generous according to the posts we read from users). This translates to an additional 7 hours of outage per month.
For reliability, there is no better choice than POTS. (Which is why many people keep a landline active for 911 service) But if you’re an average phone user willing to weigh Cost against Reliability, VoIP starts to look amazing. Of course, we’ll cover VoIP advantages in another article.
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In both systems you pick up a phone, dial a number, and talk to the other party. Other than that, the systems are extremely different. VoIP is digital and does not use wires to physically connect devices.
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props from Wonderful Article – http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/
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The author is a bit incorrect on a few things, first most Ips especially to the end user do not have 99.9% reliability , often times maintenance is scheduled at night and sometimes the cable modem may be out an hour or two a month depending on maintenance, sync time, firmware issues,etc.
Of course many users may say their internet connection rarely goes out, that may be somewhat true today, during the mid 2000s that wasn’t true however, due to maintenance issues.
Its not just the end Isp, its your modem, its router, its firmware, its equipment, and even small things such as a DNS server done, or failure to release/renew dhcp both on ISP and client side can affect the internet connection.
The main reason pots is reliable is probably due to 911, one would not not be able to call emergency for hours. However, cellular technology has somewhat eliminated the need for this.
Chances are both cell phone and Internet are unlikely to be done at the same time, although cell phone isn’t as reliable as pots.
Technology depends highly on your equipment also, the ISP’s equipment, whether you are connecting vi WIFI on your part (you could expect a signal down or two due to interference which is why many unversities say reliabity cannot be reasonbly guaranteed with wifi).
Power outages cannot affect things also although fios for example does have battery backup.
VOIP, while great is still off reliability, its reliability depends on the ISP, perhaps the government should mandate reliability at the ISP, similar to telephones, fiber technology at the business level sometimes includes service level guarantees, that 99.99% of the time it will be active, or even better such as no more than 15 minutes of outages per month.
In addition VOIP , may be blocked by certain countries, performance, throttling, peering disputes, etc. Many VOIP calls may need to be charged fees to connect to POTS subscribers.
In short, voip can be reliable and can be better if we do a systematic change with isp reliability and regulations, improved features and protocol standardization, allowing for new frequences to be heard over the telephone (if you notice that certain frequences are not heard over over the telephone its by nature of the design).
One last note: The Pots is exactly the same wiring as the early 20th century, however the author is wrong to suggest that sure new features and the like are all that made it different.
In the 1970s and 1980s digital switching took place via computers, that is what makes caller ID and voicemail features popular via frequency switching, the old hierachal system does not exist anymore.
A good example is tracing a telephone call, a few decades ago it would not be that instaneous as the PSTN has records via digital switching.
The regional bell telephone companies and the FCC want to swich pots to a ip based network, however wills service guarnatees come with it? Internet services are largely hands off regulatory enforcement, and the end user is usually screwed.
That needs to be changed first. Things such as firmware and Iphone apps not working, att blocking or verizon partnering for a “dumb” skype application need not be ignored.
FactChecker
27 Mar 10 at 3:24 am
“FactChecker” -
First, this article was written May 28th, 2008. Thanks for commenting, but critiquing a 2 year year old article is well… it is what it is. But here at VoIP Tech Chat, we encourage comments and thank you for your criticism. Let’s address it…
1. …first most Ips especially to the end user do not have 99.9% reliability , often times maintenance is scheduled at night and sometimes the cable modem may be out an hour or two a month depending on maintenance, sync time, firmware issues,etc.
We do not make this claim. We mentioned that Comcast Home Internet Service in May of 2008 claimed a 99.9% uptime. We also stated, “Comcast home Internet service has a 99.9% uptime average; which is very high for the industry.” And since then we have been incredibly critical of Comcast and are very public with our criticisms.
2. …The main reason pots is reliable is probably due to 911, one would not not be able to call emergency for hours. However, cellular technology has somewhat eliminated the need for this.
911 has nothing to do with the reliability of POTS. That being said, the one thing pots has is excellent e911 on a system that survives most power outages and has 5-9′s reliability. Cell phones are great, but are no where near 5-9′s. In Hurricanes for example, cellphone towers and internet go down way more often than pots.
3. …One last note: The Pots is exactly the same wiring as the early 20th century, however the author is wrong to suggest that sure new features and the like are all that made it different.
We have said: ” Despite POTS technology remaining virtually unchanged since the early 1900’s, the reliability of POTS is unmatched.” We also said ” Human operators have since been replaced with automatic exchangers; where a computer determines the party you are wishing to talk to and making the connection. This device for automatic transfer is sometimes referred to as a telephone switch and the POTS engineers like to call their telephone network a Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN.”
I simply don’t get your criticism based on the article. It simply is not something we have said here. Additionally, your arguments about regulation, etc are optomistic at best. ISPs are at best responsible for their end. They will not be responsible for the receiving end or anything in the middle. By nature of public Internet, routes, dns, carriers, etc… VoIP will simply not be as reliable as POTS. It will be great when it increases, and we work very hard (both Patrick and I work in this industry) to make failover, resilient systems that can survive multiple network and routing failures… yet still, with the public internet, there’s always an unknown. Not to mention power, home network, bandwidth consumption, and thousands of other variables.
Clearly we are supportive of VoIP. That being said, someone considering the migration needs to be aware of both the benefits and risks of switching to VoIP.
Fred
27 Mar 10 at 7:54 pm