General > General Technical Chat
The end (almost) of an era!!
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MK14:

--- Quote from: tom66 on November 29, 2022, 03:57:24 pm ---Just two percent of UK households do not have a mobile phone, according to recently released statistics.   That's a pretty small fraction who would be unable to make an emergency call.    For those in an area without a mobile phone signal, purchasing an inexpensive UPS at the cost of two months' phone service is not a huge ask.  The elderly or financially infirm would probably come under the "vulnerable" category though I agree OFCOM should standardise this. 

To appreciate the real world risk you've then got to work out how often it is you would have a correlated emergency - in other words no phone and a need to use it simultaneously.  A power cut in itself is not an emergency for most, so there is not necessarily a need to make a phone call;  and the average power availability for a UK household is in excess of 99.9%.  You could have a fire or similar knock out power to a building, but there is no guarantee the phone line will still be working either in that case.   And a large-area disaster like a flood, or maybe in the future with climate change forest/woodland fires, will present other issues for infrastructure.  So I'm not really sure it is as big a problem as you state.

--- End quote ---

That makes a lot of sense.

I still would have preferred a solution, something on the lines of having a thin copper wire(s), running along the fibre cable (bundled together), between the street cabinet and peoples homes.  Then it could be designed to carry on working, even if there is a power cut.
IanB:

--- Quote from: MK14 on November 29, 2022, 04:07:47 pm ---I still would have preferred a solution, something on the lines of having a thin copper wire(s), running along the fibre cable (bundled together), between the street cabinet and peoples homes.  Then it could be designed to carry on working, even if there is a power cut.

--- End quote ---

I think it is not the copper wires that are the expense, it is the telephone exchange at the other end of the copper. Think a large building with battery banks and chargers and racks of equipment and so on that have to be maintained.
MK14:

--- Quote from: IanB on November 29, 2022, 04:26:23 pm ---I think it is not the copper wires that are the expense, it is the telephone exchange at the other end of the copper. Think a large building with battery banks and chargers and racks of equipment and so on that have to be maintained.

--- End quote ---

Thanks, good point.

The thing is, I suspect, some people, because of 4G/5G and future developments of such services.  Might not even go the fibre route, and may just go all mobile (and similar), at home and have no physical connection (phone lines or fibre) at all.

As the 4G/5G etc services, become much faster, cheaper and more readily available.  A shift to such services, even for home landline/broadband services, makes sense.
unknownparticle:

--- Quote from: IanB on November 29, 2022, 04:26:23 pm ---
--- Quote from: MK14 on November 29, 2022, 04:07:47 pm ---I still would have preferred a solution, something on the lines of having a thin copper wire(s), running along the fibre cable (bundled together), between the street cabinet and peoples homes.  Then it could be designed to carry on working, even if there is a power cut.

--- End quote ---

I think it is not the copper wires that are the expense, it is the telephone exchange at the other end of the copper. Think a large building with battery banks and chargers and racks of equipment and so on that have to be maintained.

--- End quote ---

This is true to a certain extent.  Open Reach, the UK network provider, inherited all the infrastructure when they took over BT.  That infrastructure was developed over many decades by the predecessors to BT, GPO telephones and Post Office Telephones.  It comprises of a huge number of exchange buildings, admin offices, engineering centres etc, etc.  So for any given area, there will be at least one exchange building, in rural area's this will be very small and unmanned, literally a brick shed with an emergency genny, back up batteries and the exchange equipment.  As the area's increase in population density then the buildings become larger with more equipment, but rarely manned.
This issue is complicated by virtue of retail service providers, like Virgin, EE, etc, etc, who will have their own exchange equipment on the racks for their customers, configured for the packages they provide, but all maintained and serviced by Open Reach who charge the retail providers accordingly.  So it's a complicated story, as always though, because of the commercial agenda, it's the consumer who will suffer the consequences of network development.  Open Reach is guilty of rolling out high speed BB at a snails pace, particularly in less populated area's where the return is much slower, and this despite pressure from succeeding governments to get the job done. Problem is with Open Reach is that they run with the hare and the hounds, providing both Infrastructure and also retail services, so they have a vested interest to prioritise their own customers and hold back competing providers.
For example, I've been on the Open Reach service update list for fibre for over 10 years!!!  And until this fault revealed that it was available in my area I was unaware of that!
This is a big problem for the UK, their policy has held us back with poor BB service and speed, whereas in other parts of the world they've had gigaspeed BB for years!!! 
So now, by the time they provide coverage for all the UK,  technology will have made it all obsolete!!  As has been mentioned, it will be 5G mobile in a short time.
If UK government had invested as heavily in communications as they have in useless and pointless green energy policy, the whole country could have had comms technology that would have actually been beneficial.  |O
IanB:

--- Quote from: unknownparticle on November 29, 2022, 06:23:03 pm ---This is a big problem for the UK, their policy has held us back with poor BB service and speed, whereas in other parts of the world they've had gigaspeed BB for years!!!
--- End quote ---

If you think it's bad in the UK, you could imagine what it's like in the USA, where it is even worse. Over here everything is driven by commercial interests, and if it doesn't generate profit it won't be provided. So both broadband and mobile phone service is expensive and has poor coverage outside big cities. What's more cable providers have a monopoly in any given geographical area, so there is little to no competition.

It's amazing how many videos I watch where the phone shows "no signal" as soon as you leave town. Even on major freeways you can lose coverage.
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