A dry loop is an unconditioned leased pair of

telephone line A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or ot ...

from a

telephone company A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunicat ...

. The pair does not provide

dial tone A dial tone is a telephony Signaling (telecommunication), signal sent by a telephone exchange or private branch exchange (PBX) to a terminating device, such as a telephone, when an off-hook condition is detected. It indicates that the exchange is ...

battery Battery most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source *Automotive battery, a device to provide power t ...

(continuous

electric potential The electric potential (also called the ''electric field potential'', potential drop, the electrostatic potential) is defined as the amount of work energy needed to move a unit of electric charge from a reference point to the specific point in ...

), as opposed to a wet pair, a line usually without dial tone but with battery. A dry pair was originally used with a security system but more recently may also be used with digital subscriber line (DSL) service or an Ethernet extender to connect two locations, as opposed to a costlier means such as a

Frame Relay Frame Relay is a standardized wide area network (WAN) technology that specifies the physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology. Originally designed for transport across Integrated Se ...

. The pair in many cases goes through the local telephone exchange. ''Wet pair'' naming comes from the battery used to sustain the loop, which was made from wet cells. Many carriers market dry loops to independent DSL providers as a BANA for basic analog loop or in some locales PANA for plain analog loop, OPX (off-premises extension) line, paging circuit, or finally LADS (local area data service).

Local availability

In the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, these circuits typically incur a monthly recurring charge of $3.00 per ¼ mile (approximately), plus an additional handling fee of around ($5–10). In Canada, a CRTC ruling of 21 July 2003 requires telcos (such as Bell Canada) permit dry loop and some companies do provide this service.

Naked DSL A naked DSL, also known as standalone or dry loop DSL, is a digital subscriber line (DSL) without a PSTN ( analogue telephony) service — or the associated dial tone. In other words, only a standalone DSL Internet service is provided on ...

is currently provided by third-party DSL (digital subscriber line) vendors in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, but incurs an additional dry loop fee (often $5 or more monthly, depending on the distance from the exchange). There is not yet widespread adoption, as this extra fee often renders dry-loop DSL more costly than comparable cable modem service in most locations. A Bell Canada "dry loop" DSL connection does supply battery, but the underlying phone line is non-functional except to call 958-ANAC, 9-1-1 or the 310-BELL telco business office.

References

{{Reflist Local loop

Local availability

See also

References