3 ms·
Certainly an opportunity for VOIP services and a router with a PSTN connection so you can plug in your existing phone will work out as a perfect solution. Such
by Zenst 9y ago
Certainly an opportunity for VOIP services and a router with a PSTN connection so you can plug in your existing phone will work out as a perfect solution. Such routers been around for ages, some even have DECT built in.
One avenue that could be taken by the companies to mitigate any loss of voice service. Customer would be just changing the point they plug the phone in, socket wise and that would be that.
I had a Draytek 2910vg 10 years ago doing exactly that, so very very doable. But then, that was always a solution under the existing criteria and with that, this change just allows companies to not offer that solution. Which does raise one question - will customers be able to keep their existing number and port it to a VOIP provider of their choice? That is one aspect that could of been covered in these changes. That would certainly open up the markets and in a good way.
- abalashov 9y agoTA96 rules mandate number portability. But you can't port a number outside of a rate centre. To put it simply, to port a number to a new carrier, the carrier has to be able to pick the call up somewhere, by way of the appropriate connections to the incumbent's "tandem" offices (think of it as a kind of hub for the spokes that are Bell central offices). The underlying PSTN origination supply chain for the VoIP industry consists of a small oligopoly of CLECs at this point (e.g. Level3, Bandwidth.com, Verizon Business, Onvoy and all the companies they bought, etc.) and they don't necessarily have the interconnections and footprint in these same markets — most especially not the "Tier 3" plus rural markets.
- Zenst 9y agoSo they end up locking you into a call forwarding service, which entails you end up paying for them to do very little, with any maintenance liability already covered by existing liabilities. Starting to see why they wanted the change now.
- abalashov 9y agoPretty much, yeah. For a CLEC, interconnecting in any given LATA[1] is a complex and costly endeavour—I mean the actual interconnecting, not opting into an interconnection agreement (ICA) for one purpose or another. CLECs are not beholden to any universal service obligations or similar social policy objectives, and will only connect in higher-density metro-type markets in which there is profit in doing so. The business case has to be there, and that generally comes in the form of downstream VoIP service providers having customer demand in that area. So, hyper-rural folks are deeply out of luck. We deal with this scenario all the time in my line of work: "hey, anyone know someone who can port a number in this $LOCAL_YOKEL territory out in $NEVER_HEARD_OF_IT?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_access_and_transport_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_access_and_transport_are...