VoIP As a Solution To Rural Broadband 149
boyko.at.netqos recommends his article up at Network Performance Daily, which notes the recent reports that up to 30% of households do not have a landline telephone, preferring a VoIP or cell-phone based solution. What to do with the miles of last-mile phone line infrastructure already in place in almost all the homes across the country? Maybe there's a solution to rural broadband by using the high-reliability frequencies reserved for voice purely for data — and using VoIP to make phone calls. From the article: "Repurposing the broadband of 0-25kHz would result in... speeds of around 14.4 kBytes/s (or 115.9 kbits/s) upload and 28.8 kBytes/s (231.3 kbits/s) download. That's not much of a speed boost. Still, if you've been plodding along on a '56.6k' modem, at speeds of 7.2kBytes/s, this would be like an oasis in the desert. And what about those phone calls? Well, if you make the same phone calls with VoIP that you were with the standard 0-4kHz landline, it would only take about 20.8kbits/s using the G.723.1 codec — that still leaves you with 80% of your broadband capacity when on the phone — and 100% of your broadband when you're off it." Only the US FCC calls 231K "broadband," but as noted it does beat dialup.
FCC definition of broadband (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:FCC definition of broadband (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a real definition of broadband:
broadÂband adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or responsive to a continuous, wide range of frequencies.
2. pertaining to or denoting a type of high-speed data transmission in which the bandwidth is shared by more than one simultaneous signal.
[definition] [reference.com]
Hence: "the broadband of 0-25kHz" mentioned in the article.
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Why were they allowed take a well-defined technical term and re-purpose it as meaningless marketing drivel?
This mis-use of 'broadband' also has repurcussions for other terms. There are many people who thuink that baseband or narrowband means 'slower then broadband'. I'd love to see a public broadband link that comes close to the speed of my baseband network.
Re:FCC definition of broadband (Score:5, Insightful)
The main reason is called the First Amendment.
In this case, they're just Doing What Marketing Does. They use whatever words are effective in selling what they're selling. They figured out that to the public that has no clue about such technical terms, "broadband" just means "faster". So they adopted it as a marketing term.
It's nothing at all unique to Internet marketing. The same approach is used everywhere that it works. People have been complaining about marketers' misuse of words since marketing came into existence back in prehistory. There's no way we're going to change this, short of educating the public about the actual definition of the terms. And considering the general public contempt for geeky stuff that requires education, that's not going to happen any time soon.
(This misuse isn't nearly as agregious as the use of "quantum" to mean "large", when the technical definition is more like "the smallest difference possible". I'm sure others here have their favorite misuses of technical terms.
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The whole "desktop computer" metaphor and the seriously strained interactive web applications with the "Web 2.0", "AJAX", and "WebApp" monikers are ways for non-geeks to use tools that previously were used primarily by geeks. It might take geeks to make the stuff work, but it's not necessary to be a geek to use them, and that's the point.
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Take 'bandwidth' for example. It traditionally means the width of a channel, as in the difference between an upper and lower cutoff frequencies. So say you have a bandpass filter that blocks all frequencies below 1 MHz and above 5 Mhz. It's bandwidth is said to be 4 MHz.
In the digital era though, it has evolved to also mean data rate. This has come about because channel width on an analog medium directly impacts channel capacity; the wider the channel, t
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ALL real world mediums are analog. Signals reflect off discontinuities. Noise gets added and higher frequencies get attenuated. Your channel may be all the usable bandwidth of a cable or it may be only a subset of it but it is still most certainly a meaningfull figure. A differential pair has a limited bandwidth just like any other cable (it has good noise immunitiy though
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Technology evolves, and language must evolve with it. The fact is the people evolving the language aren't the ones evolving the technology; they're usually the ones selling the technology.
This looks a little contradictory. As technology evolves, there are usually new things that require new expressions. However, salespeople are making language more "narrowband" ;)
There are two very different technical concepts of bandwidth and channel capacity (aka data rate). Modern parlance makes the word "bandwith" refer to both kinds, depending on the context (technical or mainstream). This, IMHO, is not evolution in any sense. If this is the way we're going, I predict future English to have only
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What can you call a broadband transmission at 20Kb/s? It's broadband by it's very nature.
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You're right; it isn't a speed, it's a bandwidth (a broad bandwidth).
1. of, pertaining to, or responsive to a continuous, wide range of frequencies.
Note the use of the word wide (i.e. broad) in that definition.
Hence: "the broadband of 0-25kHz" mentioned in the article.
This is the part I have a problem with. While "broad" and "narrow" are somewhat relative terms, broadband is typically band
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This is largely due to
a) The fact that they largely neither know nor care what a Mbit/s is
b) Have been subject to TV advertising for so long that they just know that they need to "buy a broadband to make the Internet in their PC go fast"
Sounds cheaper (Score:4, Interesting)
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Seriously, most rural people are not technophiles. I'd suspect that 256kb/s download would be just fine if they also got to free up their telephone line.
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Re:Sounds cheaper (Score:5, Funny)
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And a fair amount of Slashdot posters are evidently urbanites who have very little experience with actual rural residents.
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Trust me, I am more than qualified to speak as someone from a rural perspective. I just have broadband because there is a switching station a few miles from my house and by some miracle I'm close enough to get DSL.
Of course there are exceptions (hell I AM one), but that's why I threw in that little word "most". M
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A city with a research university, an engineering school, a large high-tech manufacturer, a big software company, a government lab, or a military base with a specifically high-tech arsenal will have more technophiles around than the average place of the same size.
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I'm talking about people who use a computer the way most average people (not Slashdotters) used them 10 years ago: as a glorified typewriter that their kids type up school papers on. Many scoff at paying hundreds of dollars for a computer and are only getting them no
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He had to work his way through several different people on the telco's end to convince them to send him the equipment and mark his line active for DSL. He also had to sign a waiver of quality guarantees, since the official support from the CO didn't reach his house.
We're not sure, but from the speeds and the r
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I upgraded to a 2 meter dish and only when it's a insane downpour does my HD and SD tv signals drop out. and I know that works for the sat internet as well. we had 4 of them at headends at comcast in the late 90's. I had connectivity unless it was raining insanely hard (hurricane hard)
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Certainly the signal quality would degrade, but probably not as much as a minidsh connection.
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My parents go without power at least 18 hours a year, and they're only 7 miles from the closest town, with no two houses along their road
Much like ISDN... (Score:2, Informative)
Granted, the OP's proposal is somewhat different, as I assume he was referring to using DSL-like technology in the full voice band. But, there are also limitations on how much data can be carried in a given amount of spectrum using various modulation and encoding schemes.
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Some ISPs may well let you use more than two though.
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In fact, if the RBOCs sold that bundled with VoIP, I'm certain that it would be bought up handily. I know that some of my family would do so if reasonably priced
Re:Much like ISDN... (Score:4, Informative)
it failed to become main stream because durring the time frame where it would have been the first broadband that could be delivered anywhere - the phone company priced it out of existance for nearly any home user.
yes the first gen did have anissue of requiring f1 pairs.. (2 at that).. but they later changed it so it could use a single pair and also be routed accross fiber nodes..
pricing is what killed it (well more of a still birth).. but functionaly it was great (i used one for many years)
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yea there is alot of reasons it failed and it was mostly all the phone compines screw up..
i wasn't aware of the cable length problems as that never seemd to come up when places i knew ordered them.. i could see that being an issue for rural.
PRI services do thrive.. and today are in my mind the only way to go for any decent size company - but again th
IDSL uses ISDN modulation without switching (Score:3, Informative)
It gets 144kbps - ISDN has two 64kbps B channels and a 16kbps D channel, and is typically used for a 128kbps bonded circuit.
The big advantage of IDSL is distance - it typically gets about 30,000 feet, compared to about 18000 for most DSL flavors.
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There are limits though. beyond a certain frequency the attenuation will reach a point where the line is unusable. You can increase the SNR by increasing the power but unfortunately achivable data rate is proportional to the logarithm of SNR so there
Waste of time (Score:3, Funny)
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Unfortunately, in rural areas, RFC 1149 datagram carriers may be actively destroyed for human sustenance. This would further increase latency, and could pose a significant security hole. In such network regions, packet sniffers tend to be numerous and very active, working on four-pronged mobility structures, and may occasionally carry fleas.
However, within this modality, the risk of VoIP being unscrupulously wiretapped is already very low, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Dream on... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Not broadband, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Currently a fair chunk of the best (lowest) frequencies are used very inefficiantly to carry analog voice communication. That is bad if you are trying to optimise the utilty of a poor line.
forgive my potential ignorance-- (Score:2)
I know they have BUNDLES to boxes at endpoints.. why not use multiple lines for those who really need to be in the woods and need more speed?
What is this trying to solve? (Score:2, Redundant)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_subscriber_line [wikipedia.org]
Also I suspect that data has higher quality requirements then just voice, small differences in the frequencies won't affect what you hear much but I'll mess up your loss ratio for data.
Questions. (Score:2, Interesting)
And before someone says it - a lot of rural people don't depend on 911 anyway, I know (because of distance), but a lot of people us city folk would consider "rural" DO depend on 911.
And how do you IMPLEMENT this?
get every phone line set up for VoiP and train people, and then flick a switch one day? Do you stagger it so you move a chunk of people over to data, cap their speeds, and then move some more people? There WILL be holdouts - medical equipment, old credit card / check readers should w
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The "as long as your provider has your address" is the catch: a kid died recently in Alberta after the parents called 911 [www.cbc.ca] via a VOIP line and the company didn't have their most recent address on file.
While I'm prepared to believe that the parents ought to have made sure their address with the VOIP company was current, I'm guessing there must have been some paperwork to fill out when they moved, for billing purposes at le
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Your provider can screw up your address no matter who it is. Don't think that just because you're with a provider who gives you physical service at a location that they can't possibly screw it up.
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It might be a little hard to set up but it would a pretty good back up.
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This service sounds like it would need a custom modem anyway. I can't imagine building a voip analog adaptor into that box would be too expensive.
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Which E911 are you talking about? There are 3 different E911 Systems.
My understanding is that wireline E911 has been fully operation in most of the country for many years. There may be a small number of rural PSAPs that are not properly equipped, but I'm actually doubting even that.
Wireless E911 is newer and should probably be working just fine in all major metropolitan areas. How well it is actually working elsewhere I am not certain. This usually uses either Assisted GPS (allegedly phone captures raw G
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Assuming the VOIP soloution is part of the package and not a third party service I don't see why this should be a problem. The biggest problem with VOIP and 911 is when the voip is seperate from the line there is no way to tell if the user has moved the VOIP equipment without telling the provider.
You won't be able to utilize the full bandwidth of that frequency range until you get everyone switched over.
For the most part phone lines should be seperate channels. There may be a little big of cro
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It only gets interesting that VoiP providers can't provide your address for you in the event of a call if your regular phone company can. Lots of county dispatching offices are still getting the equipment financed for installation so that they can use E911. No phone company can hook up to the E911 system until the dispatch office h
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Just use ISDN (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what ISDN is good for. It's not very demanding of loop quality, and you get uncompressed digital voice, plus modest data capability.
ISDN voice handsets are common in Europe. The Swiss PTT likes them. European practice is to power them from the central office, so you don't need power at the subscriber end. US practice is to power ISDN gear from the subscriber end, which makes them unreliable as a primary phone connection. There's no fundamental reason, though, why central office power for ISDN can't be used in the US. The gear is available.
The problem is that many rural lines have analog repeaters out on poles somewhere, and those are't compatible with DSL, ISDN, or much of anything else. See Rural Telephony Workshop Report. [rural.org].
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The Real reason that ISDN isn't more popular in the rural areas is that most of the time it is priced in a really silly price-range.
I know. US Telcos really blew ISDN. (The guy who writes Dilbert used to be in the ISDN department at PacBell.) In Switzerland, ISDN and analog phone lines are the same price.
ISDN has better sound quality than almost everything else in residential telephony. End to end digital, uncompressed, with no lags.
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Not the case in the UK I'm afraid - ISDN2e (BRI 2 channels) has no CO power.
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Unfortunately it seems they recently dropped that product.
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The highway products are finally finally being retired on 30th June 2008.
Competition.... (Score:2)
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Sounds like IDSL (Score:3, Informative)
My Data may be out of date. (Score:2)
Now if we took these lines and gave people parallel connection then we may get some speed performance.
so ... (Score:4, Funny)
Hit and miss politics (Score:4, Informative)
The outside cable plant and distance to the central office is everything:
* "Wires on poles" can degrade bandwidth 10x or more, particularly if there is industrial or broadcast interference. Modern underground cable plant can provide several Mbit/s up to 30km or so.
* Loading coils, commonly used in the past to maintain 600 or 900 ohm line impedance, limit the bandwidth of the lines to not mush more than 4kHz. They must be removed which is allot of tedious labour. Once removed, POTS may not work properly. Since some lines will need them and others definitely not, this gives a great excuse to 'take forever' to install the service.
* COTS DSL-modem/routers, common in many areas, may not work on large runs. Slightly modified units can put out greater signal and have better echo cancellation. This looks like a lock-in and higher prices. Higher transmission levels, lower received levels and longer runs invite crosstalk in a big way. It may be that many systems start out really good, but quickly degrade as more subscribers are added.
* Some rural cable-plant is "hollow-sounding" with voice and will simply not work with DSL. I'm no expert on US rural phone systems, but its fair to say most will get the pitiful 256kbit/s rate. This is what can be achieved with above-ground cable-plant at 30km in a city environment. The actual case I use example is Buenos Aries.
Any cable-plant that doesn't support 25kHz should be recycled! Otherwise, most will probably do much better, so limiting service to below 256kbit/s is deceptive. All told, there are a number of technical hurdles, which can be overcome, but the politics will go on forever.
This isn't a nice comparison to make, but in England there is more 'broadband' (there is a somewhat higher standard to the definition there) in the country than the city. Of course, like most of Europe, all wires are underground.
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Not true, in many urban/suburban areas of england the final drop to the house is overhead and in some rural areas phone lines run overheaf for miles..
Cell networks for last mile (Score:2, Interesting)
Quality of our rural POTS lines? (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't your line have to be AT LEAST capable of 56k (or 53333, whatever) in order to handle DSL? Something about the distance to a central office or something? Wouldn't that affect most of rural America?
My little podunk town can't be the only one out there with no broad
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The nice thing about landlines, they just work (Score:2, Informative)
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In the northeast, going wireless is still rare.
There are other numbers in the survey worth looking at:
The prevalence of binge drinking among wireless-only adults (37.3%) was twice as high as the prevalence among adults living in landline households (17.7%)
Wireless-only adults were more likely to report that their health status was excellent or very good, and they were more likely to
Isn't this what modems do? (Score:2, Redundant)
Now, the author seems to be talking about pulling in the 4-25kHz band as well, but given that many modems can't manage to connect at even 28.8k in rural areas (I have personal experience with this) - this shows that even the 0-4kHz range is being heavily attenuated and distorted - why does he thing the 4-25KHz band will be any
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It'd be digital in both directions on both ends instead of digital from the ISP to the CO then analog on your end for your downloads and analog from you to the CO then digital from the CO to the ISP for your uploads.
The packet delivery management of TCP/IP could be used instead of the error correction built into your grandmas's $4 Winmodem's driver.
That said, it still sounds like the
Standard for consumer internet speeds? (Score:2)
56-144Kbps: standard-speed, mobile web
145-768Kbps: enhanced-speed, mobile internet
769-2047Kbps: basic broadband, mobile high-speed
2048-4999Kbps: [*] high-speed
5000-14400Kbps: [*] super high-speed
14401-51200Kbps: [*] advanced high-speed
51200-99999Kbps: [*] ultra high-speed
100-1000Mbps: [*] network-speed
1000-9999Mbps
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB7tc9pVvYg [youtube.com]
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Yes, that's true (Score:2)
The other big problem that nobody wants to talk about is this: how can you assume you even have 4 kHz of useful bandwidth to work with, let alone 25 kHz? Modern 56k modems have trouble even connecting at 56k on rural phone lines, simply because the lines suck.
The fact is, if the line cannot support more than 4 kHz, you cannot increase download speeds. The download on
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That may be though the impression I got from other sources is that the telcos often overdid it on the loading coils.
You would certainly want to get rid of them if moving the line to a modern all digital soloution. The extra bandwidth would be more usefull than a slight performance improvement for parts of the voice band
Modern 56k modems have trouble even conne
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A 56K modem is hamstrung by the device at the other end which means it can't use frequencies above 4khz at all and it has no easy way to avoid noise spike frequencies.