Are land line phones still being supported?

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JW-Retired
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Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by JW-Retired »

DW has been hanging on to our dear old land line phone, as it kept right on going when the power went off for a couple of days in 1980's from the Loma Preita earthquake.

Now, our land line phone went stone dead several days ago and AT&T says they will see us in two weeks to fix it. Will they show? A friend said this happened to them a while back and nobody ever showed up so they just had to cancel.

Anyone know what to expect?
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livesoft
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by livesoft »

Is the phone dead or the line dead? Our line is still supported by a local telecommunications company (not AT&T), but we support our phone ourselves.
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123
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by 123 »

Ours rang about a week ago so we think it's still working. Mostly the calls go to the answering machine since they're usually junk calls.
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Geologist
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Geologist »

The fact that the appointment is two weeks out with AT&T doesn't prove much. I somewhat reluctantly changed my phone with them to VOIP (for the same reason that the phone did remain working even if the electricity went out, in events much more recent than the 80's). My experience is that calling AT&T for service requires a couple of weeks for even for VOIP or Internet service appointments.

I think you will just have to report back to us on your experience.
sambb
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by sambb »

not sure, i dont know anyone with a land line at home.
jmk
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by jmk »

In my neck of the woods they are still supported. I have one!
denovo
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by denovo »

They are the absolute lowest priority. Expect costs to go up and support to go down year by year until they are
eliminated.
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whomever
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by whomever »

I still trot out my classic Ma Bell rotary dial one from time to time, to the wonder (horror?) of young'uns. I'm not sure they universally work, though. My understanding is that the phone companies are very eager to abandon the old copper network, and may have succeeded in some places.
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Kenkat
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Kenkat »

I still have one.
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AAA
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by AAA »

We still have them throughout the house and find them to be much preferable to using our cell phones.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by motorcyclesarecool »

With little kids in the house, a landline is a godsend. 9-1-1 in our area knows your address if you call on a landline. If you dial on a cell phone you’ll have to give your location. That makes a difference if you need IMMEDIATE assistance and you have a screaming kid in the background. In our area, that feature is a prime reason to maintain a landline.
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vitaflo
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by vitaflo »

denovo wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:02 pm They are the absolute lowest priority. Expect costs to go up and support to go down year by year until they are
eliminated.
Hard to believe. There are still places without fast internet or cell reception in the US. My parents house is one of them. Without a land line they'd have nothing.
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Lemonaid56
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Lemonaid56 »

Found this amusing as I have worked for the same New England phone company (though it has changed names) for the last 20 years.
I still have a land line as cell service is doesn't even work at the house (despite all those US Cellular commercials) and the land line always works when our power goes out.
I find a two week wait for service deplorable for a company as large as AT&t! I would call back and ask to speak to a manager.
That being said have you checked service at the network interface to see if it is an inside problem (your internal wiring or phones) or outside (Their wiring all the way back to the Central Office). If it works outside at the interface then something is going on inside that an electrician could fix easliy. Or maybe some retired phone guy that does that on the side stil.
Even tho some may say that landlines are dead they do work 99% of the time and have the clearest sound compared to cell or CATV lines. There are many reasons why they are more reliable than the other alternatives.
In our area it should not be more than a 2 day wait and many times its same day if you know your local repair guy!
TravelGeek
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by TravelGeek »

They should still be supported and a repair lead time of two weeks seems utterly unreasonable.

If you google for it, you will find reports about this getting the attention of the FCC and state public utility commissions. E.g.,

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... e-service/

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... aint-says/

I would research this (it was tl;dr for me) and consider filing a complaint if AT&T doesn’t agree to move more quickly on this. Make sure, though, that it isn’t your own equipment that is causing the problem.
Last edited by TravelGeek on Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ResearchMed
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by ResearchMed »

We have functioning landlines, and a two-line phone.

And it was quite useful when all cell service went out a few years ago. At least AT&T went out regionally (or semi-regionally?).

We still had WiFi, and were able to chat with AT&T to confirm there was indeed a problem.

But if we'd needed to contact 911 just then, the landline would have been it.
That was a bit sobering.

We don't use the land lines much, but it is used as the main interface with security monitoring. There is a cell phone backup, but the landline has never gone out in the 15 years we are living here.

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Invest4lt
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Invest4lt »

Try the google search “future of landlines”
Some amazing statistics here: https://www.softwareadvice.com/resource ... landlines/
Not sure what the demise of landlines would mean for those areas without access to the internet. Anyone remember pay phones? :shock:
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Arabesque
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Arabesque »

When I had repeated trouble with Verizon repairing my landline, I reported it to the FCC. You wouldn't believe how fast Verizon responded
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Dottie57 »

jmk wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 7:56 pm In my neck of the woods they are still supported. I have one!

I have one too. Cell phones don't work in my condo.
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windaar
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by windaar »

Ours are totally supported, and the lines are not at all obsolete since that’s where our Dsl comes from.
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just frank
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by just frank »

A separate question re the OP is how reliable are they in a disaster, versus cell phones. The telcos were required to provide massive (and expensive to maintain) backup power to the POTS network so it would stay on in a disaster or extended blackout. I do not know if they still are....but most 'landlines' nowadays are really just a digital modem on the cable carrier with a lame battery for backup power.

Now they are required to harden and provide backup power for cell network nodes.

In Hurricane Irma, my parents cable, power and landline went out immediately, and their cell voice and cell data stayed on for the duration. They could charge their phones of their garaged vehicles, and had news/weather/telephone/etc through the storm and aftermath.
rgs92
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by rgs92 »

FIOS has digital voice; lots of people have it as part of their TV/Broadband package.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by joe8d »

Kenkat wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:08 pm I still have one.
Me too.
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SittingOnTheFence
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by SittingOnTheFence »

I keep a landline due to it's ability to operate w/o power (I have to keep a 'real' phone handy for that case since our Panasonic portables will fail in a power loss). 90% of the calls are junk, so answering machine is a must. I provide my own support for the phone so I would only be calling phone co. if I knew there was no signal on the line. So I'm paying $60/mo for the ability to use phone in event of a major power casualty. I sometimes wonder if it is worth that. On the flip side, talking on a cell is difficult for me, I have trouble hearing the conversation. I don't give my cell number out to anyone, not even when it is requested, I give them my landline number.
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badbreath
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by badbreath »

We have not had one for 5 years. Just seemed like a extra cost that we did not need.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Dead Man Walking »

I live in a rural area that has poor cellphone service. Consequently, I kept my land line telephone until last year. Verizon sold their land lines to Frontier Communications in my area. Frontier Communications is the worst service company that I have ever dealt with. My service had so much static that Frontier representatives could not understand me when I called to report the problem. When I drove to where I could call them on my cellphone, they gave me an appointment in a few days. When they didn't show for the appointment, I called again and the appointment time was scheduled for a date 3 weeks in the future. I changed my phone service to my cable provider. Landline service is a thing of the past anywhere that cellular or cable service is acceptable.

DMW
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Carl53 »

Dead Man Walking wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:56 pm I live in a rural area that has poor cellphone service. Consequently, I kept my land line telephone until last year. Verizon sold their land lines to Frontier Communications in my area. Frontier Communications is the worst service company that I have ever dealt with. My service had so much static that Frontier representatives could not understand me when I called to report the problem. When I drove to where I could call them on my cellphone, they gave me an appointment in a few days. When they didn't show for the appointment, I called again and the appointment time was scheduled for a date 3 weeks in the future. I changed my phone service to my cable provider. Landline service is a thing of the past anywhere that cellular or cable service is acceptable.

DMW
When Frontier took over for Verizon, initially they were responsive. But as the system aged, repairs became more and more frequent with increased wait times of roughly two weeks. It also provided our DSL service. Tried to get Time Warner/Spectrum but they wanted about $12k to hook in to their system that is less than 200 feet away (by way of Great Circle). Decided to switch to the ATT unlimited program for our cells and got one of these homebase units https://www.att.com/devicehowto/index.h ... eBaseZ700A. Incremental cost is $20/month ($25+ with tax/fee) for home phone line (old number ported), 22GB of data at about 15-20MB/sec download rate vs less than 3 from the DSL. We have been over the data limit by double the amount and have not yet been restricted. Might add another box if that happened. Also added a box to our account (up to 10 lines possible) for inlaws in remote area to get internet. Usually they only get 4-9MB/sec download, but better than 15kb dialup they had on the old copper line. BTW they still kept the copper line for phone service even though it would have been no monthly charge to use the new box for phone service. The reason was they would have had to change the actual phones, too much change.
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oldcomputerguy
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by oldcomputerguy »

We had a POTS line last year, with DSL service piggybacked on it. Due to our usage pattern, we were occasionally bumping our heads on the data cap on that line. When AT&T made U-verse available on our street, I checked, and for a bit less money we could go from our existing phone/DSL line to a U-verse line with (simulated) POTS service, plus a much higher data cap (1 terabyte vs 15 gigabytes). So we switched. So far, so good, although I did have to go buy a low-cost UPS to power the box, to be able to keep phone service during a power outage (at least long enough to report it to the power company).

These days, though, about 100% of incoming calls are scam or junk calls, and I leave the "do not disturb" feature turned on throughout the day, so the only value I see to having phone service from AT&T is for 9-1-1 to be able to find us immediately (as noted elsewhere in this thread).

I will mention that AT&T was pretty aggressive in marketing this line to us; I have no doubt that they have a massive push on to get rid of all the old POTS service (although ironically this connection comes to our house over copper, not fiber).
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by gd »

The twisted pair copper wires (a.k.a. POTS, plain old telephone service) might start to fade in densely populated areas in a few decades, but more because everyone will already have better service through cable or fiber-to-the-home. There used to be lots of regulatory service mandates on the bell system, no clue if that still exists. Life is different outside the cities and suburbs, where stuff like cell service and ride sharing don't reach to every resident. I'm in the exurbs of a major city, and rely on WiFi through cable for my cell phone to work (and have no uber or lyft). As they trade off reliability for the convenience of little radios, people are slowly forgetting how spectacularly reliable the phone system was. Leastways when they still made service calls. Bell basically invented an entire field of engineering in the process.

10 years ago I tried to get Verizon to give us DSL, but they wouldn't because they'd need to snip (i.e., shorten) the copper wires outside our house to provide a proper signal for it. They had (and probably still have) a hard rule to never, ever shorten their wires. I imagine they'll still have those fat cables of too-long-for-DSL copper twisted pair intact when the last customer cancels.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by marcusb »

just frank wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 9:06 pm A separate question re the OP is how reliable are they in a disaster, versus cell phones. The telcos were required to provide massive (and expensive to maintain) backup power to the POTS network so it would stay on in a disaster or extended blackout. I do not know if they still are....but most 'landlines' nowadays are really just a digital modem on the cable carrier with a lame battery for backup power.

Now they are required to harden and provide backup power for cell network nodes.

In Hurricane Irma, my parents cable, power and landline went out immediately, and their cell voice and cell data stayed on for the duration. They could charge their phones of their garaged vehicles, and had news/weather/telephone/etc through the storm and aftermath.
The short answer, as your parents discovered, is ‘a lot less reliable than they used to be.’ The central office still has all the backup battery and generator power it has ever had, but the odds of your landline going directly back to the central office is lower than it used to be. Your line might go to a digital loop carrier (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_loop_carrier,) which has less battery backup and NO generator.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by SrGrumpy »

SittingOnTheFence wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:19 pm So I'm paying $60/mo for the ability to use phone in event of a major power casualty.
That is a lot! Time to shop around? I am at $12 in California for a basic plan (no bundling).
mouses
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by mouses »

Verizon engaged in harassment to get the people in my neighborhood to get rid of their landlines. Finally Verizon "did something" so that when there is a power failure the landlines go out as well. Then they stopped repairing landlines.

During Sandy only copper landlines in my area worked. I think losing copper landlines is close to criminal given rising safety concerns for various reasons.

But as long as mine was working I would have kept it, despite no joke 15 contacts from Verizon trying to get me to get rid of it. I learned about the no repair policy when my repair appointment was kept by a worker whose plan was to install FIOS. I sent him away.

So now I just have cell phones, but more than one so I can leave them around the house, so that if I fall upstairs a phone is nearby. This is not particularly expensive with Consumer Cellular. Still they do not have the old dependability of copper.
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Epsilon Delta
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Epsilon Delta »

The dependability of POTS had nothing to do with the copper. It is due to the expensive redundancy engineered into the system. If regulators require the providers to spend the money wireless or fiber could be engineered to the same degree of reliability. Things like VOIP even have some advantages, since you can have redundant paths much closer to the end user (Traditional copper is not redundant in the local loop).
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by jharkin »

Land lines sound quaint until you are telecommuting and half the people on the line are dialed in by cell phone in bad reception areas :(

[insert appropriate dilbert comic here]

I still have a landline. Its Verizon fiber though, not copper.
Mike Scott
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Mike Scott »

We live in a no cell service hole. Our local service provider finished their fiber optic network a couple of years ago and now a second local provider is installing a second and partially overlapping fiber optic network.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by seychellois_lib »

jharkin wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:36 am Land lines sound quaint until you are telecommuting and half the people on the line are dialed in by cell phone in bad reception areas :(

[insert appropriate dilbert comic here]

I still have a landline. Its Verizon fiber though, not copper.
That's no lie! During my last 12 mos at work (now retired) I increasingly telecommuted and it became much more evident just how many folks were cell phoned in to conference calls. Having said this, if one was not dialing in from a car or a moving space such as a train, it worked well. I have not had a land line for many years but I also found I learned a lot about my cell phone capabilities when I needed to work from the home office: conference calling, multiple calls at once, conducting net meetings and so forth. I found the communication capabilities to be surprisingly robust. I do not know this for a fact bit I would be very surprised to find that wireless companies were not improving the robustness/redundancy of their networks to reduce vulnerability to the "power outage" syndrome. I do think folks without land lines should equip themselves with one or two supplemental external batteries. These are a trivial expense nowadays and are handy, power outage or not.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by BolderBoy »

My mom died last year in her 90s. She had the same phone for 50+ years, landline of course.

You should have seen the 20somethings gather around at the local CenturyLink office when I turned it in while closing out her account.
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just frank
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by just frank »

For all the folks in poor cell reception areas....why not just use 'wifi calling' on their smart phones? Free and digital quality.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by jfn111 »

just frank wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:29 am For all the folks in poor cell reception areas....why not just use 'wifi calling' on their smart phones? Free and digital quality.
I keep a "land line" through the cable company because I can't get wifi calling to work regularly. My office is in the basement but I can get 1 or 2 bars on my ATT service. I will then often lose the single but the wifi doesn't seem to pick it up in the middle of a call. I'll try to call the person back but the phone goes back to cellular with the one bar. :oops:
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by sunny_socal »

I highly recommend porting your existing number to Google Voice and purchasing an Obi VOIP box. Then all your calls will be free. You can keep your existing in-home phone network and your existing phone/handset.

I have the Obi 202, been using it for years.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by likegarden »

Our house telephone is hardwired to Spectrum cable via a cable modem and Wifi. We are using basictalk which I bought at Walmart several years ago, costs $12 per month.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Mike Scott »

just frank wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:29 am For all the folks in poor cell reception areas....why not just use 'wifi calling' on their smart phones? Free and digital quality.
Where does the wifi come from....?
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by URSnshn »

I had an electrician at my home recently and he was telling that he was glad he had a landline especially for 911. The reason? A landline can be found - kids and adults always know where it is - unlike a cell phone.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by wfrobinette »

motorcyclesarecool wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:16 pm With little kids in the house, a landline is a godsend. 9-1-1 in our area knows your address if you call on a landline. If you dial on a cell phone you’ll have to give your location. That makes a difference if you need IMMEDIATE assistance and you have a screaming kid in the background. In our area, that feature is a prime reason to maintain a landline.
That's why I still keep mine though it's now VOIP with battery backup.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Northern Flicker »

"Land lines" are usually multiplexed with broadband service these days, so I would not assume they will function during a broad power outage moving forward.
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Earl Lemongrab
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Earl Lemongrab »

Mine still works as of yesterday. Received a couple of calls that went to the answering machine, whereupon the called hung up.
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Earl Lemongrab
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Earl Lemongrab »

jalbert wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 12:51 pm "Land lines" are usually multiplexed with broadband service these days, so I would not assume they will function during a broad power outage moving forward.
Mine did during the last power outage.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by bertilak »

Coincidentally, I just cancelled my land line a week or so ago. It was costing me $38.31 per month so that's quite a bit, especially when looking at it over a year ($459+).

Their quoted price was "only" $24.95 per month for the "package" but they added to that:
$1.36 additional charges (long distance call?)
$5.99 voice (why is that extra?)
$6.01 taxes fees and surcharges (Your Fed government at work!)

For a total of $38.31.

The only reasons I was hanging on to it was for my home security system and the occasional FAX. I upgraded my security system to cellular service and it's been over a year since I faxed anything. I guess there was another reason: inertia. This is the first time in my life I don't have a land line. That was an odd feeling for about a day!
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mouses
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by mouses »

motorcyclesarecool wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:16 pm With little kids in the house, a landline is a godsend. 9-1-1 in our area knows your address if you call on a landline. If you dial on a cell phone you’ll have to give your location. That makes a difference if you need IMMEDIATE assistance and you have a screaming kid in the background. In our area, that feature is a prime reason to maintain a landline.
I would never buy a cell phone without E911, but I know some areas don't support that automatic location feature. I once called 911 when I had been in an accident in the middle of an unfamiliar highway, and they could pinpoint where I was.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by Ged »

mouses wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:07 am
During Sandy only copper landlines in my area worked. I think losing copper landlines is close to criminal given rising safety concerns for various reasons.
During Sandy many areas lost their land line service due to flooding.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-stor ... YU20121030

Some of these areas were not repaired and now have cell or IP service only.

My personal experience was that during Sandy that both my cell and cable IP phones stopped working. My neighbor on Verizon did not lose IP service but she did lose her land line.

I am considering setting up a diversity router so I can have two cable services in case one goes down in a storm. The last time I had a land line the quality was poor and costs were about the same as a far higher performance basic internet connection.
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Re: Are land line phones still being supported?

Post by TravelGeek »

jharkin wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:36 am Land lines sound quaint until you are telecommuting and half the people on the line are dialed in by cell phone in bad reception areas :(
Yes. But on the other hand, when everyone's on our intranet VOIP system, the quality of the call is generally so much better that it ever was with POTS. FM vs. AM.
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