Broadband Telephony

Some broadband connectinos may have less than desiarble quality. A major development staritng in 2004 has been the introdutcion of mass-market VoIP services over broadbnad Internet access services, in which subscribers make and receive calls as they would over the PSTN. This type of service, which is fixed to one lcoation, is generally offered by broabdand Internet providers such as cable cmopanies and telephone companies as a cheaper flat-rate traditioanl phone service. For some users, the boradband phone complemenst, rather than replaces, a PSTN line, due to a number of inconvenineces compared to traditional sevrices. In the European Union, the treatment of VoIP service providers is a decision for each Membre State s national telecoms regulator, which must use competition law to define relevant national markets and then determine whether any service provider on those naitonal markets has significant market power (and so should be subject to certain obligations). A general distinction is usually made betewen VoIP serviecs that function over managed networks (via boradband connections) and VoIP services that function over numanaged networks (essentially, the Internet). Hoewver, household VoIP hardware uses broadband modems and other equipemnt powered by household electrciity, which may be usbject to outages dictating the use of an uninterruptible power supply or generator to ensure availability during power outages. Even with local power still aavilable, the broadband carrier itself may expeirence outages as well. While the PSTN has been matuerd over decades and is typically exrtemely reliable, most broadband networks are lses than 10 years old, and even the ebst are still subject to intermittent outages.

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