In today's modern times, phone companies no longer just offer telephony services, and neither do the Cable TV providers. These days both can offer any combination of Internet Access, Television and Telephony services.
Like with so many new developments, there are benefits and disadvantages to combining the three mentioned services. Let us have a closer look at the benefits we gain from combining Telephony, Internet and Television, but also the drawbacks.
Telephony: Combining all three services means you will receive them all digitally, instead of the old analogue situation, where you received each service separately. For your telephony services this means you will be calling through a system that is called Voice over IP (VoIP). The immediate benefits are cheaper phone calls, because VoIP telephony basically is Internet telephony, and the other immediate benefit is a better quality of telephony as voices will sound crisp and clear. Digital telephony means no loss of quality in sound and the signal is also not susceptible to distortions, unlike analogue telephony.
On the other hand, with analogue connections, you may have an occasional bad connection, with terrible sound, making it hard to have a conversation, but you at least have a connection. With digital telephony, you either have a perfect reception or no connection at all. There is no middle way.
Television: Digital television, delivers a much clearer signal, making HD broadcasts possible, and also enables other services, like Live Pause functionality and Video on Demand (VoD). The downside is that it goes through an Internet connection, just like your digital phone, and like with Analogue telephony, you may have an occasional bad reception with your analogue
cable connection, you at least see a broadcast. Digital TV, like digital telephony either has a perfect connection or none at all.
Internet: A cable connection which also provides your internet services, offers fast connections at often high speeds. The downside is that cable is what we call a shared medium, while Broadband Internet through your phone line (DSL) is a dedicated medium. This means that on the same cable you get your internet connection through, every subscriber in your area is also connected, and you share the available speed, so at times your connection can be very slow, to be lightning fast at other times. DSL Internet does not have that problem, as the phone line that goes from your home to the datacenter of the ISP, is yours, and not shared with anyone else.
Combining the three: Combining Internet, television and Telephony, has many advantages, like higher Internet speeds, better quality of television reception, and cheaper phone calls, but besides the disadvantages as mentioned above there is two major drawbacks that should be taken into serious consideration:
1) When the Internet connection fails, so do all other services. While with separate services, one can go down, the other keep working, if your internet connection fails, there is also no more telephony and no more TV.
2) When electricity fails the phone fails also. Analogue telephony does not require power, and a simple phone would still work even when the power is out. Therefore it is highly recommended that even when you decide to switch over to digital telephony, to maintain at least one working analogue landline, in case of an emergency.
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