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."
Re:Could make sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Power failures can last several days. Parts of the north eastern U.S. and Ontario have been blacked out for several days at a time. Montreal was hit by an ice-storm that caused them to lose power for several days too.
It doesn't happen often, but the problem with big disasters is that they are big. Emergency equipment still has to run.
Copper phone line work well as a backup.
Re:Really a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
All copper lines in the fibre footprint under the Australian NBN rollout are being decommissioned, the only people who will remain are those getting wireless or satellite broadband services, for POTS usage.
Some would argue that Telstra, by keeping the copper lines active until forced to decommission them (as is the deal), makes it easier for a future opposition government to scuttle the fibre rollout.
Re:Could make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod Gradparent Up !
In some magical land, all endpoints have battery backup. In Romania, for example, they don't - a backup battery must be replaced every 3 years or so - which can become expensive. I refused to allow the local telco to install FTTH in my apartment building as all the cooper landlines (powered by the large battery pack + diesel generator at the CO) would have been replaced by VoIP over that fibre. Lousy audio quality, no battery backup, end-point equipment usually locks up during brown-outs. I'm ok with slower ADSL that works 24/7.
Way to go, Telestra ! They still have some smart people in charge.