Morpheus

Phone God

Hello Sir. It's wonderful to meet you. 

Morpheus

Welcome. As you no doubt have guessed, I am
Morpheus.

Phone God

I understand you're going to explain the PSTN.

Morpheus

The PSTN is everywhere. It is all around us. Even
now in this very room. You can use it when you look out your
window. Or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when
you go to work. When you go to Church. When you pay your taxes.
It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you
from the truth.

Phone God

What truth?

Morpheus

That you're a slave the the ILEC.

Phone God

ILEC?

Morpheus

The ILEC is the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier. What is ILEC? Control. The ILEC is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into a money-generating machine. They control the dial tone when you pick up your telephone. They maintain control by destroying competition. The phone company is a system. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around and what do you see? Businessmen, Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters...the very minds of the people we're trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so innerred, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will that they will fight to protect it. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or
taste or touch. A prison....for your mind.

Phone God

So how do they actually provide dial tone?

Morpheus

The telephone network starts in your house. A pair of copper wires runs from a box at the road to a box (often called an entrance bridge, can, or cross-connect) at your house. From there, the pair of wires is connected to each phone jack in your house (usually using red and green wires). If your house has two phone lines, then two separate pairs of copper wires run from the road to your house. The second pair is usually colored yellow and black inside your house. Along the road runs a thick cable packed with 100 or more copper pairs. Depending on where you are located, this thick cable will run directly to the phone company's switch in your area or it will run to a box about the size of a refrigerator that acts as a digital concentrator. 

The concentrator digitizes your voice at a sample rate of 8,000 samples per second and 8-bit resolution (see How Analog and Digital Recording Works for information on digitizing sounds). It then combines your voice with dozens of others and sends them all down a single wire (usually a coax cable or a fiber-optic cable) to the phone company office. Either way, your line connects into a line card at the switch so you can hear the dial tone when you pick up your phone.

If you are calling someone connected to the same office, then the switch simply creates a loop between your phone and the phone of the person you called. If it's a long-distance call, then your voice is digitized and combined with millions of other voices on the long-distance network. Your voice normally travels over a fiber-optic line to the office of the receiving party, but it may also be transmitted by satellite or by microwave towers.

Phone God

So what does this have to do with crushing competition? What do you do?

Morpheus

We have survived by hiding from them...by running from them. But they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys, and that means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them.

Phone God

So then if more people used CLEC's (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) wouldn't this bring the ILEC?

Morpheus

Sooner or later you're going to realize, just as I did, there's a difference between knowing the path...and walking it.

Morpheus. Phone Ninja.