Skype is down

So far for those who think they can do without POTS ...

We have been mobile-only for several years. No POTS at all.

POTS is a dying technology, despite glitches in the alternatives.

I'm sure that they learnt this when their net connection is down.

I'm on my third different ISP (as I have moved around Europe) and all of them had had drop outs several times a year.

It isn't 100% reliable and any home user who expects it to be is going to be very disappointed

tim

Mobile is different. Can be ok if the system is reliable and has backup power. VoIP is what I'd consider shaky.

I disagree. It is the most reliable system, so far.

Indeed. Folks on c.a.e. should recognize a problem with forcing a real-time service over a non-real-time infrastructure.

OTOH, its those cell phones that got us accustomed to low QOS. :-)

Skype has had maybe 3 days offline in 3 years, not bad for chatting for free, less adsl rental, of course.

Looking forward to the post mortem, should be interesting

Martin

Ok, I love the idea of sending a BOM or circuit while chatting, and when I figure out how to get the White board through the firewall...

bliss,

Pity about the webcam, most people I know could do with a bit of photoshopping

If it fails, I pick up the phone

Martin

Yep. I had incoming VoIP calls where I plain could not understand what the other party was saying. And I am quite trained in noisy radio communications.

A friend of mine has to go to a certain spot near the main entrance of his house because that's where he yields one bar on the cell phone. There, he checks if anyone had left a message and calls back. Occasionally what he says is intelligible. This whole "I only need a cell phone" idea might work in a city but certainly not out here. I sure hope he'll soon get a real phone.

Just been trying to find the modem cable adaptors for the laptop, (Iran, Bush as el presidente for life, China asking for its $s etc.)

Don't know anyone with another modem though....

Martin

I do that via DSL, also during the phone discussion. An electronic whiteboard would be nice.

Webcams are IMHO of deplorable quality. Rather useless for my purposes.

Good. But I pity those folks who've ditched they POTS and then the computer crashes or the link fizzles. "Failed to connect to server...".

Even "modern" POTS technology has its pitfalls and people become blissfully unaware how far they have gone. A few years ago we had a longer power outage. At times I had the impression that we were the only house in the neighborhood that had at least some phones that would work without a wall wart. Heck, we even got one with crank and battery compartment (seriously).

I get a kick out of those ads where someone using the wrong service gets in trouble because he's disconnected. My reaction is they should have used POTS.

"We have fewer dropped calls" should not be something to brag about.

I keep a couple five dollar phones from Wal-Mart. No wall-wart, no batteries, just need a phone line.

Basically, they're pointing out that "we suck less," as if that's a good thing.

They still suck.

-a

Way to go. We also have a few rotary dial phone, no electronics in there. So if a tree falls in the storm and some juice gets onto the phone line they may survive.

That doesn't count the times your ISP was down, your computer box was on the fritz, "Windows has encountered errors and will shut down", the power was out and so on. POTS most likely sailed clear across all that.

There's more important stuff happening. Things like the earthquake in Peru. Some family and friends were in the middle of that one.

On Aug 16, 4:47 pm, Joerg

I didn't say anything whatsoever about reliability. I said POTS is a dying system. In North America, the number of consumer copper lines is [I believe] slowly shrinking; certainly the number of new installs is shrinking.

My employer makes, inter alia, devices that connect to a telephone line. The growing trend to POTSless houses is a serious business problem. We currently make POTS, GSM and direct-to-802.3-wired- Ethernet devices (and some other communicators also, much smaller volumes though).

Within ten years, it is likely the ONLY POTS-reliant devices we will make will be small volumes for legacy jobs.

POTS is the new AMPS.

My Skype connection uses POTS- for the physical layer between here and the exchange.

Other thing about POTS is that you don't need any power to your home. 'When I were a lad' we used to live out in the country, any time there was a storm the local grid was knocked out. The only thing that worked was the phone.

I seem to recall that a large proportion of local exchanges was taken up with the batteries to form a UPS....

Glyn

There's a village in the UK that was in the news beause the only place you can get a signal is standing on a bench near the village's bus-stop. Apparently callers often must wait for some time before they can have their turn on the bench.

As an aside, I was once stuck on a train in the countryside somewhere and was in a mobile blackspot. Only one person on the train could get a signal and she was using a Motorola V3. Many other people were on the same network as her but only that phone could get through. Must have a good transmitter on it.