Australia's Telstra Requires Fibre Customers To Use Copper Telephone 217
daria42 writes "Progress is happening rapidly in Australia, with the country's government continuing to roll out a nation-wide fibre network. However, the country's major telco Telstra doesn't appear to have quite gotten the message. Releasing its first National Broadband Network fibre broadband plans today, the telco stipulated that fibre customers will still be forced to make phone calls over the telco's existing copper network. Yup, that's right — fibre to people's houses, but phone calls over the copper network. Progress."
Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
Really a big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
POTS infrastructure is fully depreciated, lines are self-powered and system is completely compatible with all existing equipment. Even if you put a fibre-based POTS system in every exchange you'd still need to keep the copper running for non-subscribers. Seems like a reasonable trade-off if they are taking the savings and using the capital to accelerate the roll-out of fibre internet.
Interested to hear from an actual telecom engineer about how hard/expensive it would be to update the exchanges.
Re:Could make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The telco (unless it is third world) will have massive diesel generators (and a stock pile of diesel) to keep things operational in an emergency. As long as there is electricity or diesel the phones should continue to work.
That's true. Although, in reality I think 9/10 households will be using a cordless phone which will be useless in a power outage, regardless to how you're hooked into the phone network. Speaking of which, can you even buy non-cordless phones these days?
Re:progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Some bits are even older than copper (Score:4, Insightful)
Because Telstra have a monopoly on some segments and close to a monopoly on others they can mazimise profit by doing as little as possible. They are an evil beast that screws over the customer the way that only a former government body that has picked only the worst aspects of private enterprise can do.
Re:Could make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Their New Zealand subsidiary, TelstraClear, kicked up a huge fuss about over-building their docsis cable network with a government subsidised national fibre network build. They threw their toys out their cot and threatened to shut up shop and leave the country.
Last time I was on their cable network you couldn't buy internet services without a $50/month phone line.
Re:Could make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is Australia calling. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds simple enough to me: They have low moral standards and are trying to maximize profits. Welcome to the real world.
(This applies to the summary too...)
Re:Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? It's not like copper for phone calls has any disadvantages. Quality will be about the same unless wideband VoIP is deployed (almost no one has done that), and it's better for safety since the copper phone lines are powered by the CO, which usually has multiple redundant backup power supplies. If your home's power goes out - you can call 911 with copper but not with VoIP.