[Info-vax] US Broadband

[Scott Dorsey]

glen herrmannsfeldt  <gah at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>
>(snip)
>
>> Right.  The PUC has jurisdiction over the T-1 circuit that goes from you to
>> your ISP, only.  Negotiating the internet service is between you and the ISP.
>
>Yes, but as I understand it, not all telcos will lease such pairs.

If it's in the tariff, they have to provide it.

>It used to be that they were commonly used for burglar alarms (maybe
>still) and that you could ask for one of those. 

Okay, those are unconditioned dry copper pair circuits.  Those used to be
the cheapest possible circuits, and you might be able to run a T-1 over one
for a short distance.

People used to use radio loops, unconditioned pairs, and voice-grade dry
circuits (like the classic 48F 4-wire circuit) for cheap data back in the
eighties.  For the most part, these circuit types either are no longer in
the tariffs or they have been replaced in some way.

For example, if you ordered a burglar alarm circuit back in the eighties, you
were apt to get direct copper continuity from end to end, even though the 
tariff only guaranteed contact closure and some insanely low signalling rate.

If you order the same circuit under the same line item in the tariff today,
you will probably get a digital circuit that only carries contact closure, 
nothing else, and you won't have any luck putting wideband data on it.

If you order a 48F 4-wire voice circuit today, it will be digitized and then
undigitized somewhere between the two ends.

The T-1 circuit is wideband and conditioned, and you pay for that.

>Well, the case that I was interested in some years ago was where I would
>use both ends of, say, a T1 link.  Maybe home to work, or something like
>that.
>
>As I understood it (again, some years ago) the school district could do
>that to link schools to the central office, sometimes chaining through
>schools to get there.  That was an upgrade from ISDN that they were
>previously running.

When you purchase a tariffed service, the telco has to meet the performance
and reliability specifications in the tariff.  When you order a burglar alarm
circuit, the performance specifications are pretty damn low.  In the distant
past, it was not unusual for the telco to greatly exceed the specifications
in the tariff just because of the nature of the copper infrastructure.  So,
people were able to get high data rates on cheap circuits now and then if they
were willing to take a risk.  This doesn't happen anymore.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."