Telkom killing old landlines - How it affects call centres

Does fibre have to be installed underground? All our lines are overhead lines.

Edit answered my own question,

Aerial cable
If your copper phone and broadband services are delivered via an aerial cable, we'll install our fibre cable the same way. If your property has an aerial cable for power, then we may be able to install our fibre cable underneath the power cable.

There are a number of ways our cable may be installed:

  • Put up our fibre cable in addition to your current copper cable
  • Remove your existing copper cable and replace it with our fibre cable
  • Replace your existing cable with a hybrid cable containing both fibre and copper. This is used if you need to keep your copper for a voice service or monitored alarm.
Click to expand...

So why aren't providers in SA offering these options? This info is from a NZ provider.
 
Zoomzoom said:
Astonishingly it stays on when the power goes off. It's a safety issue.
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I solved this with a cheap UPS (for my alarm). The advent of cellphones makes the point mostly irrelevant for voice.

Edit: You do have a point though, even if it is one of those 0.1% edge cases.
 
elvis_presley said:
I solved this with a cheap UPS (for my alarm). The advent of cellphones makes the point mostly irrelevant for voice.
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cell phone towers suffer from the negative effects of battery theft, that is to say, they are unreliable in emergencies and go off. In addition if the power is off for longer than the life of the battery there is also zip zero nada cell phone service. So again, unreliable. Ditto for if there is too little time between power outages for the batteries to recharge. So again ... copper is better.
 
Zoomzoom said:
cell phone towers suffer from the negative effects of battery theft, that is to say, they are unreliable in emergencies and go off. In addition if the power is off for longer than the life of the battery there is also zip zero nada cell phone service. So again, unreliable. Ditto for if there is too little time between power outages for the batteries to recharge. So again ... copper is better.
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Back in my copper days, my copper line went down after a few hours when I assume the local Telkom exchange ran out of petrol for their generator - in my area anyway, cellphone was far more reliable than copper.

So then apart from the rare case when you don't have a UPS for your fiber and you have a power outage that lasts longer than your local cell tower's battery, and you have a competent local Telkom exchange - what does copper do better?

Edit: thinking of it from another angle - with decades of experience in this field and monitoring many lines, the amount of downtime that copper gets over fiber FAR outweighs the power failures, so although it's an advantage, on balance, I don't think that "safety and availability" will actually have copper winning over the long term.

Also, what's a bigger problem - battery theft or copper cable theft?
 
elvis_presley said:
Back in my copper days, my copper line went down after a few hours when I assume the local Telkom exchange ran out of petrol for their generator - in my area anyway, cellphone was far more reliable than copper.

So then apart from the rare case when you don't have a UPS for your fiber and you have a power outage that lasts longer than your local cell tower's battery, and you have a competent local Telkom exchange - what does copper do better?

Edit: thinking of it from another angle - with decades of experience in this field and monitoring many lines, the amount of downtime that copper gets over fiber FAR outweighs the power failures, so although it's an advantage, on balance, I don't think that "safety and availability" will actually have copper winning over the long term.

Also, what's a bigger problem - battery theft or copper cable theft?
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In my area when there was no power there was no telephone, now there is no cellphone either.
 
Lupus said:
In my area when there was no power there was no telephone, now there is no cellphone either.
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Maybe the local tower used copper? :) No jokes; the nearest tower to me is a shared one... Vodacom had a fiber connection to it, and MTN had a copper connection to it, and only upgraded it to fiber a few years ago. Apart from it having ATROCIOUS speeds on MTN, it died when the area's copper died.
 
elvis_presley said:
Maybe the local tower used copper? :) No jokes; the nearest tower to me is a shared one... Vodacom had a fiber connection to it, and MTN had a copper connection to it, and only upgraded it to fiber a few years ago. Apart from it having ATROCIOUS speeds on MTN, it died when the area's copper died.
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Nope the tower loses power completely :-(. Fibre on the other hand works, as long as I have a ups for the router.
 
mayurh said:
There's no solution for a business which has 3 landline points.. Or currently using a 3 or 4 handset cordless phones.. What do we then do? Can you transfer calls on a VoIP solution? Does anyone know
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Yes, you can transfer calls on voip/SIP

SIP Call Transferring | VOCAL Technologies

SIP Call Transferring provides a mechanism for transferring calls from one User Agent (UA) to another. Contact VOCAL for more information.
www.vocal.com www.vocal.com
 
supersunbird said:
Driving around with ladders and going into the back yard to cut it? They use jammers for cell signals used in vehicle trackers, it is known.
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Much easier to just disconnect the line at the SDC, as a lot of them are unlocked, and the door left wide open by the subcontractor who 'worked' on it.

Granted, they must be working with someone inside Telkom/Openserve, but that can be arranged easily enough.
 
mayurh said:
There's no solution for a business which has 3 landline points.. Or currently using a 3 or 4 handset cordless phones.. What do we then do? Can you transfer calls on a VoIP solution? Does anyone know
Click to expand...
I see my Huawei-branded ONT has space for 2 Analogue RJ11/POTS ports. So it is possible to integrate older devices into the Fibre-based world. But that will give you the more basic functions, not proper Cloud PBX-like features
 
RandomGeek said:
I see my Huawei-branded ONT has space for 2 Analogue RJ11/POTS ports. So it is possible to integrate older devices into the Fibre-based world. But that will give you the more basic functions, not proper Cloud PBX-like features
Click to expand...

A lot of routers have the POTS ports, but it's really better to bite the bullet and get an IP phone, they don't cost too much, and once you're over to VoIP you get advantages of having the number follow you around on your cellphone, emailing you missed calls, etc.
 
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