Posted on 03/03/2014 10:30:55 AM PST by chessplayer
The Walker County town of Carbon Hill has been selected by AT&T for a national technology trial that will help the telecommunications giant determine the best way to move all of its customers to internet-based phone services and away from traditional copper-wire landlines.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
Buy a phone system you can link to your cell phone, I just did yesterday. you can have your cell on the charger and get calls on your land line phone. most of them are Bluetooth, some even have a charging port on the base.
they are not proposing a change to “cell phone” phone service
they want to move customers to “Internet based” phone service
that’s still a “wire” to your house; most likely fiber-optic cable, Internet service and VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) phone service (like Magic Jack, Skype, Vonage, etc.)
AT&T and Verizon are saying to themselves - why sit and watch the Magic Jacks ect take an increasing % of the house-phone phone service via the Internet services they - AT&T & Verizon - have given someone - just move to VOIP as the eventual standard for everyone
in the long run there is a lot of savings in infrastructure costs for all wired services - everything is digital and everything is Internet based
fight like hell to stop them. keep your land lines.
Same here The service is fantastic for such areas since it comes from satalitte not from towers. The tech who sold me mine said eventually or in he near future we’d get wifi and all TV from the same small box.
I’ve even taken it to friends who are more remote than I plugged it in there and it worked great. It’s mobile which is another plus in my book. As long as you have a plug. (Solar packs I’m told work just fine)
If all phone service becomes web-based, then ISP’s are not common carriers WHY exactly??
don’t bet on that, they have a hundred years more experience listening in on copper and the stuff on copper ends up digital anyways.
We got rid of our landline a year ago and have not missed it at all.
Surreal looking picture. Not one person was talking to another that I could see.
I use Tmobile, they include Wifi calling on all their smartphones except for the iPhone. I live way out in the sticks, cell service is inconsistent but the phone works fine with a wifi connection. This is also true where I work, we are on the ground floor of a large building, no cell service but I can call using the courtesy wifi.
Oh boy. You are thirty years late on this one. The NSA can most certainly monitor land lines with the greatest of ease.
My home phone is a giant cellphone thru Net 10. Costs 17.99/mo for unlimited long distance, caller ID, message center and works with multiple phones. Has a battery good for 4 hours after the power goes. It is pay as you go and you can add months in advance if you wish. I no longer give a rat’s a55 what the NSA listens to me say. They have no sense and no sense of humor anyway. So fork em.
Our landline received nothing but sales so I had it disconnected anyway.
In our small town they got a grant from the Feds to build a new courthouse. They have metal detectors everywhere and bulletproof glass at every office. They take your picture with a biometric camera when you get your drivers license and have cameras covering the whole town. I know this for a fact. When you leave for work or wherever they can follow anywhere. Aint living in a police state wonderful?
Yes, you can do that now using a service like Google Voice, one number and you get to make it ring any particular phone you want. I think it is even smart enough to roll from one phone to another based time of day or if you don’t answer the first line.
I can’t tell you for sure, I don’t particularly want to receive every phone call.
I always have my cell phone and would rather talk on it than get up and get the phone. I quit giving out my home phone number a decade ago and quit answering it not long after.
We have an alarm system wired into the POTS line but one of these days I’m going to get a Magic Jack for the alarm and cut out the copper all together. When I installed the line, I told them I didn’t need long distance service and it was about $17 a month, now it’s $30. Now that I think about it, I might get around to that project sooner as opposed to later.
The land lines in most of New Orleans proper failed due to flooding and wind damage. The Mississippi coast that took the brunt of the storm surge had much the same problem. However, the cellular towers were down over a much wider area. The cellular companies couldn't restore the network fast enough; they didn't have enough portable equipment to handle such a widespread outage. For weeks, the cellular service in the 504 area code was down to text only. And I mean *text* only, no photo attachments were getting through.
In areas surrounding New Orleans, cellular service was out but land lines were okay. I think it's foolish to discontinue land line service, even as just a "test" or pilot program.
” Landlines still work in power outages in case of emergencies. Cell phones don’t. “
My cell phone still works when I have a power outage.
“This picture was taken with a 70,000 x 30,000 pixel camera (2100 Mega Pixels.) “
Uh, no. The photo is made from 216 photos taken at different times.
Same here
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