PSTN (public switched telephone network) is the world's collection of interconnected voice-oriented public telephone networks, both commercial and government-owned. It's also referred to as the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). It's the aggregation of circuit-switching telephone networks that has evolved from the days of Alexander Graham Bell ("Doctor Watson, come here!"). Today, it is almost entirely digital in technology except for the final link from the central (local) telephone office to the user. 

In relation to the Internet, the PSTN actually furnishes much of the Internet's long-distance infrastructure. Because Internet service providers ISPs pay the long-distance providers for access to their infrastructure and share the circuits among many users through packet-switching, Internet users avoid having to pay usage tolls to anyone other than their ISPs.

 

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