Posted on 11/21/2013 1:20:49 PM PST by ThethoughtsofGreg
merica’s traditional phone system is not as dependable as it used to be. Just last month, the Federal Communications Commission told phone companies to start . According to one estimate, as many as 1 in 5 incoming long-distance calls simply doesn’t connect.
The problem may be in the way those calls are being routed — often via the Internet, which is cheaper. It may also have something to do with the gradual decay of traditional landline infrastructure.
Dan Newhouse, a farmer in eastern Washington state, hears that decay on his home phone every day.
“We live out in the country, it’s a landline, and it’s as good as it gets,” he told me over the phone. “Anytime it rains, we wouldn’t be able to have this conversation, because water gets on the lines and it gets way worse.”
Repairmen have told him that the wires are just old, and they’re too expensive to be replaced. He says the phone company seems to be allowing the whole system to deteriorate.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanlegislator.org ...
Dead & buried by 2020, I'll bet.
We have a landline for several reasons, both of which you mentioned.
Problem is, I think it’s part of the “sweetheart deal” for some companies to obtain basically monopolies in some areas IF they spent a few extra bucks and made sure that outlying areas were covered.
When I was young, in the late 60’s, there were still a few farmhouses near us without power or phone.
We’ve kept ours because it works in a power outage when nothing else does. For awhile though I’ve been warning the missus that sooner or later they are just gonna shut it down.
Wires out in the elements don’t just maintain themselves. Entropy is a law. Somebody has to pay to keep things working and that just isn’t going to happen.
This younger generation, bah! Back in my day all we had were tin cans connected together by long strings between houses and it did just fine! It fact we LIKED IT ! WE LOVED IT! Bah, this younger generation.....bunch of whiners. /s
Everything is wireless nowdays. Why live in the stone age?
(I can’t seem to give up my land line either.)
The house was built before cable was available here & I’ve never had it. Don’t care to do business with AT&T or Commiecast. Not really that interested in dish TV either. If the landline service gets too bad, I’ll just get a 4G hotspot.
The problem is maintenance and rehab. If the technician is given the time to isolate the trouble and repair the bad section, the “old lines” become “great lines”. Telco companies like Verizon and AT&T purposely are allowing the network to fail to force the government to give them tax breaks to convert everything to fiber. I’d never thought i would see the day that someone like Randall Stephens would purposely destroy the 2nd largest landline network in the world, create an angry customer base and make technicians lie to customers just so he could save a few billion towards his yachts and private jets and world vacations.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
unless it is a loooong power outage then even thier backup power dies.
Every time a hurricane comes through here, the land line works, cell phones do not.
My phone calls fail to connect because I have caller ID.
Verizon is doing respectable business here in NJ with it’s 3-way TV/Phone/Interet Verizon FIOS bundle of services.
In that bundle, unlimited domestic land-line phone is $3X.XX of the monthly bundle cost.
However, Verizon Wirelss now has a “home phone” device offering in this area. It’s a device (not a cell phone) that connects to the Verizon Wireless cell phone service.
It takes a standard telephone in-house wire/cable plugged into a “land line” phone on one end and the other end into a standard telephone jack/receptor on the device. Service takes place over Verizon’s cell phone network.
The offer is priced at $20 flat per month for unlimited U.S. domestic & Canada calling. The device is plugged into a standard receptacle for its power and it delivers all the same functionality expected of a “land line” to the phone - including, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, Voice Mail (*86), 411, 611, 911, Last Number Callback (*69), Caller ID (number only), International Calling (with iDial feature or an international calling card).
I am curious how the companies cost for providing the service results in the price-break of this “fixed” cell phone network service, compared to monthly charges for a regular cell/mobile phone.
There are no wires or cables to the house needed or needed to be maintained (falling trees on phone lines). With the stationary setting of the device, there is no “roaming” and communication is always using the cell tower(s) nearest the fixed location of the device. One question though is whether or not the communication remains strictly in the hands of the cell phone network, beyond the point of the closest tower, or if that closest tower is ONLY passing the communication to/from it and the nearest point in the landline backbone/switches/network - or not.
As long as you have a phone directly plugged into a phone jack, you have phone service. I keep a non-cordless one just for that purpose.
If you have FIOS you no longer have a land line. A land line is a pair of copper wires with DC power running through them. FIOS is fiber optic digital transmission of voice. The box they put in your house reconverts the digital signal to voice. Your phone will last as long after the power goes out as the battery that is in the box.
We got ooma when we went through the last power outage and our landline quit on us after about two days. Our landline was connected to the box about three houses away. And when it’s battery died so did our phone. Now we don’t depend on our landline but on cell phones charged up someplace else.
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