"Indeed, perhaps the clearest sign of the transformation away from POTS and towards a broadband future is that there are probably now more broadband connections than telephone lines in the United States," AT&T adds. And as millions of consumers migrate away from POTS, those who keep it are using it less. Many have a wireless phone, or communicate via instant messaging, blogs, and social network sites.
And that means that revenue from POTS is sinking fast. It dropped from $178.6 billion in 2000 to $130.8 billion in 2007—a trend that AT&T warns is "irreversible." But while the customer base is falling, costs are rising, the telco claims. That's because incumbents have to maintain their PSTNs over progressively skinnier customer bases. All this is sucking up money and hamstringing investment in the "other network," aka the IP broadband system.
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There is a perception that land lines are more stable and less vulnerable to acts of terror, nature and downtime due to technical problems. For example it wouldn't be all that difficult to cripple all cell phone use in a large city by taking out a few key towers. But really, if the right spot is targetted, land lines can just as easily be taken out.
So the perception isn't really all that accurate. Plus, in a real distaster scenario, 911 lines will be so jammed, and rescue teams so overloaded, it won't do you much good to call for help anyway.
But I do find it annoying when the power goes out, my VoIP phone goes out too. Minor inconvenience, since the mobile still works.
VOIP phone quality is not as good as POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines. Cell phone quality is much worse than POTS. I prefer Land Lines over Cell's just for the simple fact I can actually hold a conversation with "huh" being said every other word.
I think it is innevitable sooner or later, but not at this present time. A lot I mean a lot of America still lives where broadband is not available and only either cell phone mobile internet satellite is only available. And I know all of them use landlines. Although a lot of people I know who are in this scenario are getting rid of their landlines and switching to straight cell, they say it's cheaper, go figure.
But I do know that it will eventually happen. I don't have a landline, vonage is just as fine, albeit a little expensive compared to skype which I also use. The great thing about the VOIP phones, is I can with skype have multiple phone numbers for 12 bucks every 3 months and all in different states. So I bunch up on local numbers in areas where I have many clients and it costs me piddles. And if your broadband is good enough you don't really have a problem. Faxes are the big problem, since you cannot hook one up to vonage or skype and it costs money for online fax systems.
But I can say with certainty you will never get a sat user to switch to VOIP. I use to have directway and sat and VOIP don't work good, latency is bad enough to make it horrible with VOIP.
VOIP phone quality is not as good as POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines. Cell phone quality is much worse than POTS. I prefer Land Lines over Cell's just for the simple fact I can actually hold a conversation with "huh" being said every other word.
I disagree:
The limiting factor in VoIP quality is usually your VoIP provider and which audio codecs they've chosen to support. Lots of major call centers are 100% VoIP and nobody seems to complain about call quality.
The limiting factor in cell quality is usually the phone. A crappy phone is going to give you crappy audio. Get yourself a nice phone and enjoy crystal clear audio.
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