Do you have landline phone service?

In My Humble Opinion
81

We’ve got landline and cell.

  1. Our DSL is the only viable internet option & bundled with phone is almost the same price.
  2. Cell service is spotty at best depending on room in the house.
  3. Until recently we had more people than phones in the house. Some would have been home without a phone without the landline.
  4. My wife flat out insists on the 911 service to work. Cell phones and 911 accuracy are hit and miss around here.

Our latest home phone has one phone that will power the base for a day or two in case of power outage. It cannot be used in that case and we must use a remote handset.

82

Just by coincidence, one morning this week, our local telco had a city-wide problem:

  • all internet connections went down;

  • all cellphones on their network went wonky;

  • all VOIP phones were dead.

The only phone that was working in our office was a single old phone, physically connected to the telephone network by hard-wires. That one phone was what we all had to rely on for a morning.

83

People don’t realize how interdependent some communications are. Long ago, I had a cellphone when most people did not. My landline was unable to connect to any number beyond 50 miles, and I desperately needed to talk to Los Angeles. Aha! My cellphone would be the answer!

Then I discovered my cellphone didn’t work, either. Until I climbed onto my roof and was able to get a weak connection 50 miles away.

When the dust settled, I found out the reason for all of this was a single fiber line out of the county had been severed by a farmer’s backhoe. Cellphone towers connect to landlines, and all landlines in this area were served by a single fiber.

If cellphone towers detect a lack of landline connection, they shut down, while local communication is unaffected.

The reason I could connect by climbing to the roof was I found a signal from a distant cellphone tower that was beyond the fiber break.

84

I scoffed, nothing really fit

Technically, I have both a “landline” and a cell phone, but the landline is a VoIP. I used a cell phone only for forever. But the phone came with my cable/internet package and I have this stylish phone that I wanted to make functional.

And it even came with an awesome phone number - original area code, starts with 3 repeating digits, ends with 0.

Within an hour after installation I started getting telemarketing calls. I had some fun with a telemarketer then turned the ringer off. I’m going to get around to putting the number on the do not call list but it’s frankly easier for me just to keep the ringer off and use the cell phone. I should start using the VoIP phone for outgoing calls but i keep forgetting, and the actual phone isn’t conveniently located and isn’t wireless. And I never see my cell phone bills (I get the phone through work) so I’m not incentivized to use the new phone.

But it comes in very handy for one reason only. I use it to call my cell whenever I misplace it, which is frequently.