... but if that's what our corporarate owners want, then...

The only thing I can think of is the inability to call 911 in the event of a power outage. However, many people have already moved over to 'bundled' type of services, and there has yet to be major issues as a result.

hurricane season, it's a good safety net.

Not to mention that the laws on illegal tape recordings are strongest for land line conversations.

Possibly during a power outage, for instance?

I live next door to my parents, and they felt safe in switching to cell phones in part because they knew I still had a landline, and they wouldn't be at the mercy of cell phone battery life, or have to keep extra 'battery chargers' around in case of extended outages. Even here in town, not a 'rural' area, we've had power outages that last days, not just hours.

When it's your life, or that of your family, on the line, it becomes a 'major issue' to you, even if you're simply a statistical blip in the overall picture.

It's just I've never had a POTS line of my own (always had a cell, and the only landline I've had was through my cable company), and I never had to deal with a situation where I lost all communications. Of course that's me, and I'm sure someday I may be in a situation in which I wish I had access to a POTS line.

I don't have a cell, so if I'm ever out in the middle of nowhere, and get a flat tire, I'm screwed Heck, even if I'm on a fairly heavily travelled road, probably almost everyone that passes will simply assume I have a cell, and ignore me, not even bother to call the highway patrol to report me.

But I do wonder more about emergency services themselves, or other businesses, rather than residential customers. Fire and police, nursing homes and hospitals and clinics. I would think they probably (hopefully?) have already been considering this potential issue in depth, and wonder what they have to say on the topic.

A nursing home, hospital, etc will have generals for extended power outages, that would cover phones as well.

Not all nursing homes are always that through, especially if they don't house people who require machinery to stay alive minute by minute.

I wanted to maintain that copper pair. The primary reason was backup power. The backup capability is, at best, eight hours. I've already had power outages that lasted longer than a week.
Central office backup is not limited to such a piss poor standard. I could provide my own backup to last as long as I need it but why should I? I pay dearly for the service and really don't utilize it but I expect it to be there when I need it.

AT&T is trying to get out of having to offer landline service. I do think the 911 thing is a pretty big deal - especially in the event of a big disaster or long power outage (I can recall being without power for nearly two weeks following an ice storm).

Also, I think this will be a big problem for rural customers. There are still many places in the state where you can't reliably get a cellular signal. It is going to disproportionately affect the poor and the elderly. Here's a link to a letter that was written in opposition to the deregulation bill. It's rather wordy but if you don't want to read it all, he has a summary section just before the conclusion.

http://www.kyrc.org/webnewspro/139491470012775.shtml

Storm damage, sun spots, black outs can all take out electronic communications.

Land lines are what we have left in the case of an emergency.

that comes along without thought. In this case, it will be the shiny dollar to be gained short term.

Didn't we get at taste of systems problems on 9/11 when everything kind of stopped? I think this applies to transportation systems as well. When no planes could fly, did we have adequate alternative transport systems available?

And they also make the mistake of assuming that everyone in the nation is mashed up close enough to major urban centers to receive the same type of services.

when the only phone communications working in some homes was the landline??

The important people will still be able to call their loved ones.

If you're one of the 'other folk', well...sucks to be you.

cell phone discharged, medical emergency.
been there.
its more than possible.
it is inevitable.
thank goodness for deregulation.
none of this would have been possible
on yer own elderly America.
get used to it.

*of course, no one is being forced to save money at the expense of their own safety.
it just seems to make sense when they are robbing you blind.

We cut our cable cord, which included our home phone for $26/month and bought an Ooma box that connects to our WiFi for $99. The only charge besides the initial investment is $3.79/month tax charges. It's cheaper than the cable/phone bundle, much cheaper. We have 911 access and it's reliable.

http://www.amazon.com/Ooma-Telo-Free-Phone-Service/dp/B002O3W4LE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1396193455&sr=8-2&keywords=ooma+telo

...with free access available within a mile or two of every public trail, sidewalk, bikeway, street, road, and highway. Maybe not enough for HD video, but plenty for phone and other internet services. All while implement strong privacy laws requiring solid, get-in-a-judge's-face, signed, and very specific search warrants.

We the People ought to claw back some of the public radio spectrum that should never have been sold to giant corporations in the first place.

The big telcoms would become mere contractors, just like the construction companies that build highways.

You'd buy a cell-phone or a computer and it would "just work" via the public internet, just as you buy a car and drive it where you choose to go. No choosing a cell-phone or internet service provider unless you want special features not available on the public internet.

Buy it. it would be silly to run new copper next to the old.

And no contractors - let fed gov hire workers direct (train them) first.

This would be great transition from the miltary job opportunity.

But to make it competitive for employees - be aware - the fed gov is going to need to open its wallets. There's no way the people (now in our early 40's and older) that have a thorough knowledge of the network management and implementation and who can make it work effectively will leave our jobs for $10.10 an hour.

We survived the bubble explosion in late 2001, in some cases were out of work for several years, and clawed our way back to financial and job security. You are going to have a hard time getting someone who knows what they are doing to leave the financial security of a major carrier to implement this on the zippity skippy timeline.

And if the only thing you have to run on the battery backup is the phone. Where I am, hours long outages are actually less frequent than days-long or weeks-long outages for most of those affected.

I LIKE my landlines. I like a phone that rings when the power is out! I don't like having to worry about a "charge" in order to communicate.

Of what consumers actually buy.

is to show how badly IP telephones suck. My 80 year old mother finally cut the landline, and she's sorry she did.

The cable business is not up to prime time yet to be in the phone business. Hell, the wireless phone business has just barely gotten to a standard of reliability that landlines have had for decades.

Most of the people that message resonates with will be dead by the end of the decade.

At least the bad ones, anyway. I sometimes suspect I'm on a speakerphone (of any style) and ask the person to take me off of it if I'm having trouble, but they can't do that with an Internet connected phone that drops syllables and garbles numbers.

When they're reliable, take my landline, in the meantime, I'd like to continue to have it. I really don't need cell phone radiation for a couple of hours a day, and the vast majority of my cell phone usage is during the middle thirty minutes of my forty minute commute home, through a hands-free Bluetooth, with hands-free dialing.

What are those of us who live in rural areas suppose to do ?

We do not have access to cable.

We get our broadband service through our landline.

Will we be forced to get satellite for internet access ?

We depend on our landline during frequent power outages.