[OT] Vonage vs. Cox

[Gene Holmerud]

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:25:04 -0700, Kevin Brown <kevin_brown at qwest.net>  
wrote:

>> Hugh?  Are you sure Cox phone is not Voice over IP (VoIP), just like  
>> Vonage, Lingo, Packet 8, etc.?  Sure you use a normal phone, but the  
>> sound is digitized to IP packets before being put on the cable, or on  
>> receive, the sound is reconstituted (D-A) before being put on the  
>> 2-wire to your normal phone.
>
> Just because they digitize the signal doesn't mean it is VOIP.  I've run  
> phone switches at a couple of places and they were digital phone systems  
> without being VOIP.  Instead it looks like the are doing copper->fiber  
> optic conversion for the phones.

True, when broadband media is available at the switch and that media is  
networked to all the places you are going to call (e.g. Ma Bell).  Cox  
could gateway to the rest of the phone world anywhere in their system, but  
voice packets are going to be carried the same way our data packets are  
carried till they get to the gateways.  Vonage and the others have put  
their gateways around the world, and our voice packets travel the  
Internet.  Once in a while with Lingo, I get a message that says "800"  
numbers are not toll free when dialed from outside the United States.   
That means my 800 call was routed to a gateway outside the US.

The 64kb bandwidth (DS0) dates from the 1950s when MaBell first started  
digitizing.  They do 8-bit A-to-D at an 8kHz sample rate (300 to 3300Hz).   
T1 is 24 DS0's, etc.  Those systems multiplexed a number of conversations  
on a single pair of wires to save money, yet still provide "natural"  
speech.  Higher levels of multiplexing could have given understandable  
speech, but not neccessarily give you the ability to recognize individual  
speakers.

Gene

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