I wonder how long I'll be able to keep my standard 2-strand copper wire to the pole telephones?
I don't have a cell phone. Or smart phone. Or what have you.
There is a chance it will be all data wifi when I eventually DO get around to getting one, and one need a 'telephone' account through a cell tower anyway.
But it's only a matter of time before the phone company says that the wires overhead that feed my house phone are simple not being used so there is no way to use regular 80s era house phones. Unless I put some doohickey in line that will pull signals out of the air and feed THOSE to my phone. But I won't have a wire connected directly to a switching station. It simply will not be a service they will be able to offer. Keeping those wires up and energized and repaired costs money and it's easier to keep the tower nodes running.
It'll be like when my grandparents were screwed because dial service was eclipsed by touch tone only in the early 90s. Ironically, it would be easy to accept dial service now that the switches are all digitized and not so electro-mechanical...
Where am I going with this? Telephony was invented, what? 150 years ago? It is a mature technology. At age 175 it might be totally gone, the way of the telegraph and typewriters and snail mail catalog sales. But we'll still be issuing AR patterns to our soldiers. Probably.
Dial still works at Roseholme? I dunno much about this stuff compared to roomie...
ReplyDeleteIt might. Depends on what they did at your local switcher. It used to be an expense, having the stuff that could do one or another. But it's cheap and easy and costs nothing extra to copy computer code that allows for both.
ReplyDelete(Dad is an old C&P Telephone man...)
One reason you are not likely to see the wires vanish in the short term is internet access, at least what is offered from the phone company rather than the cable company, still uses that same set of wires.
ReplyDeleteIt'll all be wifi soon enough. No wires anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't bet on losing that old comforting dial tone anytime soon. Most real telcos are pushing fiber to the curb service to compete with cable service, so while yous till have two piddly little copper wires coming into your house, you have a fully digital fiber connection just inside the easement.
ReplyDeleteto you, no real difference
To them, MUCH more bandwidth, better reliability, monitoring and redundancy built in
Should have used a period: dial still works at Roseholme. The question mark refers to the fact that I don't know why, but it does.
ReplyDeleteThat's Roomie's AO. I try to stay in my lane, even though that's not very Internet of me.