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Landlines are expensive in a lot of places. Looking it up, a landline would cost me $70/mo which is significantly more than my mobile plan. I think different c

by mdasen 5y ago

Landlines are expensive in a lot of places. Looking it up, a landline would cost me $70/mo which is significantly more than my mobile plan. I think different countries have different norms around things like landlines - or even texting. In the US, people ignored texting for a very long time and preferred to call people even if it was just a short note. In terms of audio quality, VoLTE has improved that quite a bit when both sides will inter-operate with HD voice. Older stuff often used 8-12kbps and primitive codecs to encode your voice which simply a lot of compression. I know Speex has had some great results at low bitrates, but that's a far newer codec. However, I believe VoLTE's AMR-WB codec still chops everything about 7,000 Hz. T-Mobile US and Verizon have both implemented EVS which goes up to 14,000 Hz. https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-make-your-cell-phone-calls-sound-better https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-make-your-cell-phone-cal... Of course I'd find a Sascha Segan article when looking to confirm some information. It has some great recordings to compare and you can see huge differences depending on carrier implementations. The Sprint-Sprint test shows very poor quality. The T-Mobile 2G test also shows how old networks just used poor codecs with limited bitrates. You can even hear distinct differences between the T-Mobile-T-Mobile call and the Verizon-Verizon call where the Verizon call just sounds significantly less rich. Back in the day, calls used a huge amount of network capacity. Even today, because calls need a more guaranteed bitrate, networks need to leave some extra room for them. 128kbps of streaming music isn't the same as 128kbps of real-time voice because the network can deliver 15 seconds of music and then it can deliver the 16th second of music any time in the next 15 seconds. Real-time two-way communications don't have that luxury. Still, bumping up the bitrate on communications makes a big difference and networks today should be more than capable of handling it. I don't know what German operators have implemented, but cell phones have come a decent way in terms of audio quality, though carriers being lazy and interoperability problems can mean that consumers don't always get the benefits in the real world.

olyjohn 5y ago
My landline here near Seattle is around $60/mo. I don't know why... back when I first set up a land line here, it was $25/mo. The quality of the line has deteriorated so bad, there's noise on it, they won't bother to fix it. A few years ago the line had a physical break somewhere between my house and the DSLAM. They switched me to another pair of copper. I have 3 pairs of copper coming into my house, but now one is totally dead, and I will never be able to use it again. Apparently our street is at full capacity and they have no plans to repair or add more lines. The other problem with land lines is the amount of robocalls you get on them. The phone companies offer no way to truly block them. Every blocking service they offer relies on Caller ID, and with the robocallers spoofing Caller ID and randomizing numbers, the blocking is totally ineffective. I literally get 5-8 calls a day. They used to offer a call blocking service, where a machine would answer, and tell you to hang up, or press 1 if you wanted to connect. This service no longer exists, and the other call (ineffective) blocking services (they offer at least 3 or 4) each cost about $6/mo each. My belief is that they are making tons of money allowing unauthenticated calls into their network, that they have no desire to actually block any calls. Also the relatively small number of landlines left leaves a rather small audience of people to complain. So most people don't even know this is a problem.
- BuckRogers 5y ago
  >My belief is that they are making tons of money allowing unauthenticated calls into their network, that they have no desire to actually block any calls. I've been waiting for that to happen on cell and landline numbers. Authentication for the party calling. At this point, there's no other option than legislation. Just mandate how common voice services like landline and cellular operate their business. It needs to happen otherwise the only solution is to give them up and only do our own outbound calling, never to actually receive any calls at all. Other options like blocking all calls from non-contacts is risky because a call from a delivery driver or babysitter in an emergency will be missed. It's about the only option though for enduser today.

by mdasen 5y ago

olyjohn 5y ago

My landline here near Seattle is around $60/mo. I don't know why... back when I first set up a land line here, it was $25/mo. The quality of the line has deteriorated so bad, there's noise on it, they won't bother to fix it. A few years ago the line had a physical break somewhere between my house and the DSLAM. They switched me to another pair of copper. I have 3 pairs of copper coming into my house, but now one is totally dead, and I will never be able to use it again. Apparently our street is at full capacity and they have no plans to repair or add more lines. The other problem with land lines is the amount of robocalls you get on them. The phone companies offer no way to truly block them. Every blocking service they offer relies on Caller ID, and with the robocallers spoofing Caller ID and randomizing numbers, the blocking is totally ineffective. I literally get 5-8 calls a day. They used to offer a call blocking service, where a machine would answer, and tell you to hang up, or press 1 if you wanted to connect. This service no longer exists, and the other call (ineffective) blocking services (they offer at least 3 or 4) each cost about $6/mo each. My belief is that they are making tons of money allowing unauthenticated calls into their network, that they have no desire to actually block any calls. Also the relatively small number of landlines left leaves a rather small audience of people to complain. So most people don't even know this is a problem.

BuckRogers 5y ago
>My belief is that they are making tons of money allowing unauthenticated calls into their network, that they have no desire to actually block any calls. I've been waiting for that to happen on cell and landline numbers. Authentication for the party calling. At this point, there's no other option than legislation. Just mandate how common voice services like landline and cellular operate their business. It needs to happen otherwise the only solution is to give them up and only do our own outbound calling, never to actually receive any calls at all. Other options like blocking all calls from non-contacts is risky because a call from a delivery driver or babysitter in an emergency will be missed. It's about the only option though for enduser today.