by gg3 » Tue 14 Nov 2006, 13:19:40
Hmm, looking over my last posting, the line about "when I drop dead" grabs me because a week or two later I very nearly did. But I'm better now:-)
Zoidberg, you do not want wireless to replace wired. Aside from the 911 issues, aside from speech quality back to literally 1925 standards, you have what we call "local battery." Every one of those transceivers on the towers needs a power supply with a battery backup. Every handset needs a battery. Those batteries are expensive, unreliable, and become toxic waste when disposed of.
Local battery telephony was obsolete as of about 1915 to 1922, when "central battery switchboards" became common. Before then, each (large wooden wall-mounted) phone had a couple of large batteries in the box, that had to be replaced twice a year. Bigtime hassle and expense for the telcos. After that, with central battery, power came from the switchboard downtown: no more batteries in the telephones, much better reliability and much lower costs.
And last but not least those cellular and wireless handsets cannot be repaired. They are manufactured by robots and when they break they are disposed of. You can't repair them if you tried. Not possible. Case closed. The stuff my folks & I intend to build will last a century.
Lighthouse, I could go dig up the data on telephones over time, but generally a good basis for estimating is that the US in the 30s had one telephone per approximately 8 households, so if you get some census data you could estimate.
---
Meanwhile, since I last wrote, I've been in touch with a friend who's a telephone systems engineer back East, an oldschool telco guy who can do holes & poles one day and central office engineering the next, and knows more about building a working telco end-to-end than most people alive today.
He, it turns out, has literally warehouses full of Strowger step-by-step equipment, all removed from service with care, and all capable of being put back into service. And he also has a source for the old rotary dial 500 sets, in quantities of literally thousands. And best of all he's interested in building infrastructure for our communities (plural: at this point, more than one rural site is planned). That Strowger switchgear, plus those rotary dial phones, can be maintained to last a century or longer, and the underground cables will last 125 years as I mentioned earlier. So as far as communications are concerned, we are set.
What I see evolving for us (our rural sustainable communities up and down the coast) is the following:
Your day-to-day phone service will run on a modern digital PBX, with your choice of analog service (standard touchtone phone) or digital service (office type phone with lights & buttons).
There will also be a fiber network for highspeed data and audio/video broadcast (radio & TV). This may be used to provide Internet Protocol telephone service as well for those who want it.
Backing up all of that will be our "antique" infrastructure: the Strowger switching systems and rotary dial phones. This equipment will be installed, ready, and available for immediate use in the event that we run out of stockpiled parts for the digital switches. Since there is no voicemail for a Strowger switch, message handling will be dealt with by operators at an oldschool cord-board.
In the event of either a serious energy shortage or unrepairable damage to the Strowger system, the cord switchboard can be used in stand-alone mode. You'll pick up your receiver and the operator will ask for the number and connect your call. The power supply requirement for this is two car batteries or a bicycle-powered generator or equivalent. The repair parts can be manufactured in any decent blacksmith/machinist shop. Thus we can keep the cord switchboards in operation forever if we chose.
For connectivity between community sites, we intend to rely on microwave relay, which is oldschool Bell System technology from up to about the mid 80s and is still viable with new equipment. If that fails, data terminals connected via slow-speed modem operating over various radio frequencies will provide "telegraph" service for text-only messages. The equipment needed for these purposes can be salvaged from scrap as needed. Another of my colleagues is the transmission systems expert and he is handling this aspect of the project.
So in short, whatever happens to the outside world, our string of communities up the coast will have reliable communications infratructure. It may not be as convenient as what we have today, but neither are horses & wagons or much else that we all may have to come to rely upon after oil goes south and the climate goes weird.
Oh yeah one more thing. We'll also do complete installations for anyone else who is building sustainable community anywhere else in the continental US. Your choice of modern digital, oldschool rotary, older-oldschool cordboards, or any combination thereof. Though, keep in mind, doing it right is not cheap, but over the lifetime of the system, doing it right is more economical than doing it cheap.