Addressing the latest “PSTN Sunset” prognostications by the media at large, Part I of Debunking the Myths of PSTN Sunset took an in-depth look at the FCC’s (News - Alert)Technology Advisory Council (TAC) commentary on this topic last week.

The TAC is a group of industry leaders and experts that provides technical advice to the FCC. The TAC mandate is to help the FCC develop informed technology policies. The current TAC was appointed in October 2010, and for the last year it has been studying several important technology issues.

This is where PSTN Sunset is being discussed. The TAC meetings are broadcast on FCC Live, and fully archived, so you can see exactly what the group has been saying about PSTN Sunset. There are a number of popular myths about PSTN Sunset, three of which we addressed last week. The actual TAC proceedings give us the information to understand the reality behind those myths and this week we discuss the remaining three myths.

Myth no. 4: There is no role for copper in a broadband future.

Millions of homes receive their broadband from DSL delivered over copper pairs or from cable systems delivered over copper coax cable. One of the legal mandates of the FCC is to encourage facilities based competition, and copper plays an important role in this. Over the last ten years we’ve seen fixed line broadband service evolve from dedicated 1Mbit/sec downstream speeds to over 20Mbit/sec today, and the trend continues, driven by increasing end-user demand for content such as High Definition video.

While wireless broadband has also increased in speed, it continues to significantly lag in the ability to deliver dedicated bandwidth for in-home broadband service, especially at competitive price points compared to fixed networks. Globally, carriers continue to pump significant investment into DSL and Cable access with an expectation that they will deliver competitive broadband services like HD video, telepresence and enhanced messaging, for years to come. The TAC has said repeatedly that PSTN Sunset does not mean removing all copper pairs from the network.

Myth no. 5: Given a choice, everyone would choose wireless.

Characterizing this as a choice between wireless and wireline, creates a false dichotomy. Each technology has its strengths and weaknesses. Wireless naturally favors a person-centric perspective; a mobile phone belongs to a person. A landline phone is more naturally associated with a location. For some residential customers, and many business customers, that has advantages. Landlines also do not suffer from reception dead zones and can provide highly reliable network power. These factors can be important to businesses, to users with disabilities, and to families.

In addition, many users, especially business users, view mobile phones as complementary to landline phones. User choice is an important consideration, and the evidence suggests that not everyone will choose wireless all the time. When it comes to delivering services like voice and multimedia, talking about wireless versus fixed may not be the point. After all, these are just the access technologies that deliver the service, not the service itself.

The service infrastructure, whether it is based on SIP, IMS, or WebRTC is agnostic to the access technology. Perhaps what is really required is greater focus on understanding the service capabilities that end-users are looking for – e.g. multimedia not just voice, coordinated family and individual user service, unified communications solutions, ties to social networking etc. Once that’s done, figuring out how to deliver the service using wireless or fixed line access will be easy.

Myth no. 6: By 2018, only 6 percent of U.S. population will still use the PSTN.

This widely reported statistic comes from a chart shown at the June TAC meeting. It creates the impression that PSTN lines will continue to decline until 2014 – and then they will go into free fall. The final data point for 2018 is labeled “6% of U.S. population.” But even a casual examination of the chart shows that something is missing. For 2011, the chart shows about 55 million PSTN lines. Another 40 million households only have wireless phone service. That leaves about 35 million households unaccounted for.

Over the top VoIP providers like Vonage (News - Alert) barely account for a few million of the missing households, so where are the rest? The missing customers receive VoIP phone service from their cable company, or from a telco digital service like uVerse or FiOS (News - Alert). Most people would consider these phones as part of the PSTN, but using a newer technology. The oft-reported chart is not showing falling PSTN lines, but falling TDM lines. It is showing network modernization.

Examining what the FCC TAC is actually saying about PSTN Sunset, and what it does not include under that banner, presents a much clearer picture. It’s all about technology evolution, and expanding the universal service objectives historically applied to voice. The National Broadband Plan lays this out clearly, defining objectives for both voice and broadband. Step by step, the FCC has been filling in the details of this transition from a voice-centric TDM network to an IP broadband network that will support voice and a range of exciting new services.

The reality behind “PSTN Sunset” is not a discontinuity; it is a continuous transition. It is a transition from the “one size fits all” network of the past, to a network that embraces many technologies; to some extent competitive, but in many ways complementary. It includes cell phones, VoIP, fixed lines, IMS, IP Centrex, mobile broadband and even satellite. The list goes on and on.

The transition does not rip out the existing PSTN; it builds upon it. The network in transition will continue providing voice to users who want it, but will also provide video, web collaboration, unified communications and integration with social networks, independent of the underlying access technology.

We call it Network Transformation. Uniquely enabling operators to navigate all stages of the IP evolution process, maximizing the value of existing investment while unleashing the benefits of IP innovation is the new frontier.