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What you quoted is VOIP most likely.
Long version below but any phone service over fibre is VOIP.
Telephone over copper is the one we are all used to. POTS (or PSTN) is what it was referred to. Works in a power cut and was used for data on ADSL. The fibre is at the telephone exchange where your copper phone line meets a DSLAM with fibre connected to it and the outside world for data.
When they decided to get fibre for data closer to the houses there are different ways to deliver the data. FTTC (to the cabinet over there) repurposes the existing copper landline. They lay fibre up to a cabinet (node) somewhere near a number of houses and then connect a new bit of copper from the node (the DSLAMs are in the node) to the existing copper phone lines at a convenient join - usually a “pillar” or pit or similar existing phone line join.the copper phone line all the way from there to the exchange is left connected so the old phone service works.
Then they turn on the fibre and the data flows through the DSLAM in the node to the existing copper line and your house.
For a while they would leave the phone line copper to the telephone exchange connected so your PSTN phone will work if plugged in to the telephone socket. However they will eventually disconnect the old copper phone connection leaving a fibre data connection to the node. The copper to the house has no phone connection and only carries the data from/to the node and the fibre.
In FTTP (FTTH) they take that fibre to each house - as they are doing for you. The original copper phone line is left as it is. A fibre data Near Termination device (NTD or basically the modem) will be installed where you plug in the a router or a device (it doesn’t look like a modem in the normal sense usually). It is a box with a number of ethernet data sockets and sometimes one or more Ethernet sockets marked for VOIP. For data you connect an Ethernet cable from a data socket there to a router or straight to a device. It depends on the type of connection your data provider uses to some degree.
(Not sure if the UK is using a seperate NTD to the wall mounted socket. If so that device is the “modem” and may still be combined with a router. Sockets marked for TEL may be Ethernet so are VOIP on the NTD as above, or old phone sockets and are VOIP from the built in ATA as below)
For the VOIP sockets on the NTD (if fitted at all) to work, the service providers have to offer the service over them. Here only one uses them - they are a different and more expensive traffic class here so most are happy to use the alternatives.
For phone over a data connection it will be VOIl and you have a choice - use your old phones or use a VOIP (IP) phone.
A VOIP Phone has an Ethernet type jack and plugs into any data socket - the router or anywhere in you wired network. It has a log in and settings which your VOIP service provider gives you or feeds in to a phone they provide or sell you.
To use your old phones you need an Analogue Telephone Adaptor (ATA). The router will have VOIP telephone sockets if it has an ATA in it. These are the old phone sockets and the VOIP provider will give you the VOIP settings or they will be your internet provider as well and maybe give you the router with the VOIP settings locked in. Or you can buy an ATA and plug it in to any data socket. It has the phone sockets and again needs the settings fed in. You plug the old phone into the phone sockets on the ATA.
Some modems/routers with a built in ATA have a old type phone socket to connect to the original PSTN phone socket. That acts as a failover so if the VOIP service goes down the original phone service passes through the ATA to your original PSTN phone plugged in. You could force calls over PSTN as well.
The original phone socket will still be there for FTTP. A PSTN phone (or failover for ATA/VOIP) plugged in there will work until the decision is made to disconnect it at the exchange.
Sorry for long post - hope it explains a bit better for you @tom 2000. |
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Author: tom 2000
2-12-2019 23:14:41
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