To call us and say he is ok. The cell service goes out for days, but the copper landline still works

Fortunately the chances of the same happening here in the UK with regard to discontinuing land lines is very remote.

I'm sitting here trying to figure how a monitored burglar alarm could function without a land line.

After/during an emergency like a hurricane, a cell phone may not let you communicate.

after hurricanes.

I now have my phone bundled in with FIOS, also use MagicJack now and again.
Hate cell phones, but may get a cheap prepaid one for road emergencies.
The people really hurt by this are the people the phone company was forced to run copper wires to. I say forced, but there is so much collusion on pricing that running wires to people out in the country was the least they could do.

Last edited Sun Mar 30, 2014, 09:08 AM - Edit history (1)

New England Telephone / NYNEX / Bell Atlantic / Bell Atlantic / Verizon, I've watched the telephone industry experience wrenching changes since 1984 (Judge Harold Green).

A little background: The Justice Department needed to breakup a monopoly and the two candidates were IBM and the phone company. At the time we were in the Cold War and needed computers so the other guys took one for the team.

Verizon's first downsizing occurred in 1990 - I remember the redundants wearing Mary Alice masks walking out of the buidling. (Mary Alice was a news person who was dating the Vz Chairman at the time.) Downsizings became a regular event at Verizon; sometimes two or three times a year.

I found "the crumbling POTS" comment interesting. Did you know that it costs telephone companies $0.008 a minute to provide a long distance connection anywhere in the continental United States?

And the last time I looked, your POTS telephone bill still has a small charge for the Spanish-American war.

THE REASON THEY WANT TO DUMP POTS? UNIONS.

Really? How does one see this?

Okay, wait, it's not really true, but thanks. The telephone excise tax imposed in 1898 to help fund that war lapsed a few years later. But such excises (which became permanent after 1932) have been associated with raising revenues for wars at many points:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_telephone_excise_tax

Perhaps the infrastructure will get that significant an upgrade. I'm not closed to the idea but I would like some more information.

so yes, I'm curious where this goes too......

I live in a part of the country where we keep 3 weeks of supplies on-hand during the winter in case a blizzard comes through and closes the roads and kills the electricity. It's a quasi-survivalist thing, really; only without the deep-seated paranoia, just common sense. The landlines for our electricity are actually a weak point so we keep firewood, lanterns and oil, etc. in stock as well.

We fully expect that when we get hit by "The Big One" our house phone will be out as well.

If coverage were adequate and strong enough the non-landline system might be better. There would be no poles to topple over, no lines to snap or burn during wildfire season, etc. Again, this is contingent upon services being robust enough to provide us the requisite signal strength, but assuming they do, the system vulnerabilities may be mitigated.

the surcharge for the Universal Service Fund disappear from our cell phone bills, lulz.

Those who have no access, whether due to being in rural areas or inability to afford the monopolistic or price-fixed communications services, will be SOL.

If we had a signal based system then no one entity could claim the space. That might improve/introduce competition.

Forget that I spent too much of life with some stinken communication device bolted to my hip.
When the power goes out the land line will still let you tell somebody about it. Most times that is.

California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Ohio.
Kentucky and Colorado are weighing similar laws.

I would wonder what parts of California are buying into this.
Other than that........

Find the cost of Freedumb for living in a GOP controlled state.

only the land lines worked in many areas. My Uncle has Lifeline for medical emergencies. It is connected to his land line. In a power failure, it would still work. If he only had VOI Protocol, he would be in serious trouble.
Are any of these States addressing this.

There is also the cost of a land line vs cell phone, much cheaper for unlimited calling.

No cell service at my house and most of the area around me. Electricity goes out—no Internet.

Black outs, hurricanes, sun spots…