No. But it’s getting there. In business continuity we used to be advised to keep a POTS (plain old telephone service) line around because it would the last service to go down and the first one to come up. About a year ago we were advised that we shouldn’t bother. The copper lines convert to VOIP at a switch station.
Depends on where you live, I believe. But I imagine there would be some VoIP at some point if you’re calling any significant distance.
Even cell carriers in the American midwest have mostly switched over. I think partly because maintaining the infrastructure for traditional tech is costly, and VoIP has potential for higher-quality sound.
They are switching off the copper network in NZ. Suburb by suburb at the moment. But 87% have fibre, up to 8Gb/s to the home.
Uk copper network is due to shutdown by (was 2025 but I was recently informed its been pushed back to 2027) so I expect it will all be VoIP soon enough.
We’d have got rid of it in 1990 I think if it weren’t for Thatcher. The UK would have had high speed internet from day one, but that stupid bint went “nah…”.
https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
Not landlines, I don’t think. And I don’t think all cell phones either.
Re: landlines
Technically they are from the CO (central office) once they hit the carrier’s trunk.
Re: Cell phones
I’m not sure about 3G, but VoLTE (voice over LTE) is VoIP.
At our work a long time ago they switched out the phones and I think but I’m not sure it was going to voip.
I’m pretty sure landlines are mostly VoIP now, at least in Canada. Every home phone plan I could find (with picurest of old people of course lol) were VoIP based, which also allows small competitors here to at least have some phone options, because the big companies don’t have to sell bulk prices of their cellular towers to smaller competitors.
In the US my mom has some old rotary analog phones that simply wouldn’t work with her new service. Had to buy her an analog to digital converter before they started working again. Most phone service comes through your internet modem now, so if they aren’t phased out yet, they are working on it.
If I am going to interpret your question verbatim, I would feel pretty confident in saying 99.9% of phone calls will traverse a VoIP trunk when they are connected. Does that mean it’s a VoIP call?
You have to remember the Public Switched Telephone Network is a bunch of different phone providers interconnected through all kinds of different protocols. Anytime you’re making a phone call, it’s going to hit a VoIP trunk at some point regardless if you’re calling from one of the few true analog lines left.
And as many pointed out in this thread, even if you have an analog line at your home or office, the chances are pretty high it is just a “handoff” that is probably connected to a VoIP device right on the other side - whether it’s at your site or at the providers central office.
There are still true copper lines and T1s out there but providers really want to get out of that space and are jacking up the rates for these services so high that it is forcing people to move dedicated VoIP service.
Side rant: I just really wish fax machines would go away. They are a challenge sometimes to get them working over a VoIP connection…
Dude, VoIP fax is so annoying. Consumer networks are rarely capable of handling the transmissions well. Its a nightmare.
Depends on your exact question. I still have some analog phones around. But they’re connected via an VOIP adapter. And I suppose most calls are converted to internet protocol somewhere on the way anyways. I don’t think there are many analog lines and interchanges through the country anymore that’d connect you directly (without conversion) to your grandma.
For emergency purposes, no.
Just about, though.
no. POTS (plain old telehphone systems) still exists. None of that is VoIP, although it’s almost certainly encoded to digital and sent as packets. VoIP is a very specific thing, and not the same as cellular or landlines.
It’s starting to feel that way. The ISP I use that also serves telephone, only serves VoIP and I’ve had other services before do the same.
Like, why do that when I’ve gotten a Google Voice number for free to use?
