Digital Versus Analog Phone Connections

With the revolution in communications technology came lower costs in receiving and dialing long distance telephone calls. Primarily this cost savings came about from the use of digital computer technology in space satellites and in telephone company central offices that connect to them. In your home, you have analog lines because of the many miles of existing copper wire now running under the streets.

Digital communications technology allows multiple conversations of voice and data to be carried on the same telephone lines at the same time with no loss in quality. However, this wiring is different than that of standard house connections. It is called a T-1 span connection which carries 24 simultaneous phone calls on two conventional copper-paired cables. Because of this special wiring there is no way to connect an analog touch tone telephone however, the signal remains purely digital. 

Because of the benefits of digital service, telephone companies desire a T-1 instead of a conventional phone line because because it costs them less money and resources to carry more call traffic over the same physical wires. To motivate you to invest in their T-1 service they offer attractive long distance rates generally about 4 cents less per minute versus analog at 8 cents per minute; however, the cost for you to purchase digital voice hardware will be several times that of analog and there are many limitations to T-1. This is a business trade-off.

For example, most homes now have call waiting or three-way conference calling features which use the flash-hook or receiver button. This allows you to swap conversation back and forth between two parties on the same analog telephone line. This ability can be made profitable when using VoiceStamp's TollBridge program because you can sell long-distance telephone time to consumers. However this cannot be done in a T-1 environment because there is no flash-hook capability. In fact, you would need to spend twice as much money or the equivalent of two T-1's and bridge all 48 channels to one another requiring very special hardware and software.