Plain old telephone service

Plain old telephone service, or rarely publicly offered telephone service, is a retronym for voice-grade telephone service that employs analog signal transmission over copper loops.
POTS was the standard service offering from telephone companies in the United States until c. 1988, when the Integrated Services Digital Network Basic Rate Interface was introduced, followed by the development of cellular telephone systems and voice over internet protocol.
Despite the advent of these technologies, POTS remains a basic form of residential and small business connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world. The term encapsulates a technology that has been available since the introduction of the public telephone system in the late 19th century, remaining largely unchanged despite the introduction of innovations such as Touch-Tone dialing, electronic telephone exchanges and fiber-optic communication into the public switched telephone network.

Characteristics

Modern, automated POTS is characterized by several aspects:

Bi-directional communications.
Using balanced signaling of voltage analogs of sound pressure waves on a two-wire copper loop
Restricted to a narrow frequency range of 300–3,300 Hz, called the voiceband, which is much less than the human hearing range of 20–20,000 Hz
Call-progress tones, such as dial tone and ringing tone
Pulse dialing and dual-tone multi-frequency signaling
BORSCHT functions: battery feed, over-voltage protection, ringing, signaling, coding, hybrid, and test
Loop start, ground start and E&M signalling

The pair of wires from the central office switch to a subscriber's home is called a subscriber loop. It carries a direct current voltage at a nominal voltage of −48V when the receiver is on-hook, supplied by a power conversion system in the central office. This power conversion system is backed up with a bank of batteries, resulting in continuation of service during interruption of power to the customer supplied by their electrical utility.
The maximum resistance of the loop is 1,700ohms, which translates into a maximum loop length of using standard 24- gauge wire.
Many calling features became available to telephone subscribers after computerization of telephone exchanges during the 1980s in the United States. The services include voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, speed dialing, conference calls, enhanced 911, and Centrex services.
The communication circuits of the public switched telephone network continue to be modernized by advances in digital communications; however, other than improving sound quality, these changes have been mainly transparent to customers. In most cases, the function of the local loop presented to the customer for connection to telephone equipment is practically unchanged and remains compatible with pulse dialing telephones.
Due to the wide availability of traditional telephone services, new types of communications devices, such as modems and fax machines, were initially designed to use traditional analog telephony to transmit digital information.

Historical services

In countries where telephone systems were originally operated by the postal service administrations, the systems were known as post office telephone service as early as 1912 In Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom the telephone system was a government service, under Post Office control, until privatisation in the 1970s and 1980s.