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Finland's last analogue landline phones go silent after 150 years
- lambdaone 3mo agoSoon to be repeated in the UK, by the end of January 2027. We've now passed the tipping point where doing telephony end-to-end entirely over IP is cheaper that keeping the baseband analog PSTN going. The main network backbone, of course, has been all-VoIP for years. It's taken British telcos years to plan for this, and it's been put off a couple of times to deal with practical problems such as situations where you absolutely can't put fiber-to-the-premises in in any reasonable timescale. This time they really seem to be determined to make it happen, even if it involves bizarro products like SOGEA, and if I recall correctly a sort of exchange-hosted baseband-only single-line DSLAM for the most intractable cases such as elderly people with no access to mains power - but even then it will implement the standard Digital Voice protocols, not the legacy DSLAM stuff.
- rahimnathwani 3mo agoOver the past couple of years, my parents have had several multi-day outages with their phone line. Each time, we contacted Sky, who contacted Openreach and they eventually fixed things, but then it would stop working again months later. I guess they're just not maintaining that infrastructure like they used to. Finally my parents succumbed and now their phone is plugged into their router.
- lambdaone 3mo agoRight now, Openreach are maintaining two entirely different local loop networks, one baseband and other IP. My experience of their PON network is that it's rock solid, and that's clearly where all the effort is going - it's much easier to keep connectivity if you can link your PON headend to the exchange via multiple fibre paths so when street works sever one cable the other keeps working, unlike with legacy copper-to-the-exchange. They very much want to cut that back to one; big cost savings. And there are eventually going to be (hundreds of?) millions to be made from tearing the copper out from underneath the pavements and selling it, unless copper thieves get there first.
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- AndrewDucker 3mo agoWhat are the plans for people who can't get fibre to the property?
- ZenoArrow 3mo agoThere are multiple options, including internet from mobile phone providers and satellite internet. The affordability and speeds are good enough that it's not a major problem. That said, there are devices that depend on the old phone network that need to be replaced, such as alarm systems for vulnerable people, but the risk of vulnerable people that can't switch to VoIP services is fairly low, especially as this switchover has been known about for a long time.
- lambdaone 3mo agoIP-only != fibre. Try reading my comment above in its entirety. You can also read this for further enlightenment about SOGEA: https://www.btwholesale.com/products-and-services/data/sogea.html https://www.btwholesale.com/products-and-services/data/sogea... I wish I had a link for the other thing, but it was deep inside some Openreach site that Google don't seem to have access to.
- carlosjobim 3mo agoCell phone.
- Natfan 3mo agoand for old people who cannot use mobile phones?
- carlosjobim 3mo agoThen they can't use a wall phone either.
- Natfan 3mo agoplain not true, my grandmother can use a wall phone but not a mobile phone
- diogenescynic 3mo ago>We've now passed the tipping point where doing telephony end-to-end entirely over IP is cheaper that keeping the baseband analog PSTN going. The main network backbone, of course, has been all-VoIP for years. Is it really or is one just more profitable because you can charge more for IP than analog? I came here to ask this because it genuinely feels like a way to remove cheaper alternatives.
- roryirvine 3mo agoMandating that the analogue system be kept limping along in parallel would not be a cheaper alternative.
- diogenescynic 3mo agoI'd rather have USPS or some quasi-government org take over some of these 'obsolete' systems than for them to just disappear altogether. There needs to be a rock bottom, bare bones option to keep prices down. We need to have more competition, not less--there are only a handful of true options for cellular or local internet. This seems to just be a way to cut off legacy infrastructure that was working fine to force people to buy into more modern (i.e. expensive) options.
- rahimnathwani 3mo agoThis is an annoying paragraph: "Copper wires, the kind of cabling used in landlines for over a century, can only carry a limited amount of data. They carry phone calls as a continuous electrical signal that mimics the original sound wave, which is what makes them analogue." If someone reads this quickly, they might easily conclude that data is also transmitted as analogue sound signals (like a POTS modem) when ADSL has been around for many years and has pretty high throughput.
- lambdaone 3mo agoIt's half right (the worst sort of right) digital data is carried over ADSL/VDSL as OFDM analog waveforms, albeit with frequencies well above the audio range.
- ssl-3 3mo agoI think it's alright. It conveys what needs to be conveyed in an approachable way. It could be more accurate and/or precise, but it shares this quality with a lot of other explanations of technical things that are written for broad audiences. I'm inclined to give some slack to a journalist from Kosovo who probably did not learn English as their first language. If I were editing it then I'd consider replacing the word "data" with "information," to encompass the entire gamut. But it is not particularly egregious as-presented. > If someone reads this quickly, they might easily conclude that data is also transmitted as analogue sound signals (like a POTS modem) when ADSL has been around for many years and has pretty high throughput. If someone were to reach that conclusion, then it would be a valid conclusion. Data may come out as 1s and 0s (or digital words or frames or whatevers) after demodulation at either end, but on the copper wire between those endpoints ADSL is absolutely an analog signalling system. That's what it is designed to be.
- pdntspa 3mo agoI mean, technically it is, just the 'sound waves' are square waves of varying height/width
- rahimnathwani 3mo agoADSL is designed to use frequencies beyond the range of human hearing.
- jambalaya8 3mo agoHaving enjoyed the phreak subculture from the time I was a wee child, and truly learning so much about the way the world (and network optimization) worked through telephony over decades, this just makes me sad and sick. I am not suggesting landline service is the only thing that should exist, but this seems really just depressing (from a nostalgic standpoint) and dangerous (from a 'what was copper good for, anyway?' standpoint). But I guess noone needs reliable emergency communications. At least POTS is not totally gone in the States yet. Still remembering the Hawaiian storm that made Kauai a bastion of cutting edge telephony in the 1990s and the way people let go of landlines in NY after the Hurricane there about a decade ago. So long, weird quirky Finnish system, though I hardly knew ye.
- Sharlin 3mo agoHow is copper more reliable than fibre as an emergency communications medium? I guess 1800s technology suffices to transmit something over copper, so there's that.
- AnssiH 3mo agoFor residential users in Finland, the last-mile replacement for POTS is not fibre but cellular, at least where phone calls are concerned.
- nikanj 3mo agoFibre to the house and calling over wifi is the most typical way. Hasn’t the US moved to wifi calling? It’s such a simple win, as screaming packets to a distant 5g tower eats much more battery than talking to nearby wifi
- stackskipton 3mo agoYes, most cellular carriers have wifi calling enabled. However, my in laws have some cellular device that provides a POTS jack they plug a phone into and it’s powered from the wall. That’s is always talking to cellular network.
- nullorempty 3mo agoPity, copper made everything better.
- ProllyInfamous 3mo agoMy biggest complaint as a user of an old analogue touchtone (the classic AT&T wallmount you're thinking of right now, in red) is: fiberoptic VOIP "telephone lines" don't have the wattage to ring a classic brass bellset – which is okay if you're like me and never want your phone to ring – but sometimes you need this feature. You can't even imagine how difficult it is to even source a corded telephone locally (outside of the really expensive fax machines, with attached handset). ---- POTS was a brilliant invention; it saddens me that US Radio Operator licenses recently began requiring emails for renewals (which I legitimately don't/won't use). ...sort of thought the principle of being Hams included lowtech communications technologies (not eternal "to do" lists == email). It seems like our interconnectedness has been going backwards for at least a few decades.
- bob778 3mo agoOff topic, but how do you operate without email? Is it not essential for many government services and utilities where you are? (Here, it is technically optional for utilities but is an additional $10/month to have your electricity bill posted to you instead of emailed. The tax office requires email as does my bank though - I just checked.)
- ProllyInfamous 3mo ago>optional for utilities but is an additional $10/month Our local utility offers a one-time $10 credit for opting-out of paperbilling... most similar signups do/will require in-person verification – which I consider a 'perk' at this point in my life (for identity protection reasons). >how do you operate without email? There're a few dozen million of us non-email users; granted most are infirm in some way (whether to age or insanity). A civil court action several years ago required me to sign attensation to "no phone / email" – which at the time was still true. As I am not an attorney, they cannot refuse my access pro se to the legal system – this case eventually required me to seek representation, so this became moot.
- black_knight 3mo agoI think you can get a device to put between the VoIP and the phone which makes the bell ring properly! I think it is called a ring booster.
- usr1106 3mo agoIn Finland many news outlets had the same headline, but needed to correct it. It's the last big operator who closed their network. There are still a couple of smaller local operators that have not yet stopped. Finland traditionally had many local phone companies and a few have obviosly survived.