Comment on AOL announces September shutdown for dial-up Internet access
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I think the biggest surprise for me is that there’s still anywhere in the country with genuine actual POTS lines. I thought the Plain Old Telephone Service was dead and that those places that still had phone numbers were six feet of phone line to a VoIP converter box to an internet connection.
Just before my mother retired as a school secretary, she was telling me all the hell they had to go through to keep a fax machine running in the age of IP telephony.
nucleative@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Wire is pretty much never removed once it’s laid out and I’m sure a lot of DSL based internet connections still run over same twisted pair that would have carried POTS lines.
But you’re probably right that there’s a VoIP device keeping these up and working, maybe just more than 6 ft away and instead in some Telco box down the street.
I think POTS installations will remain for decades more in niche cases - emergency backups in elevators, security systems, hospitals, fire departments. And evidently Grandma’s AOL internet connection up until this month haha