Are Landlines Doomed to Extinction? - Comments Page 1

Power outages are my main reason for holding out, AND holding onto my older phone that requires no electricity for operation.
One day, using that and my landline, I'll save the world!

All that may be well and good, but I live in a very small town, and I have no intention of giving up my land line. Besides, my internet signal comes in through my land land (I have AT&T). Many times, the land line is all we have.

Cell phones are not 100%. They also die a battery death, and they don't work if the signals are unavailable (as happened to us when we had a major power outage for day). You can assume that, in an emergency, you can make it to your car to recharge (though that premise has problems) but can you assume everyone has a car? The problem with getting rid of landlines is that it will cut off reliable communications for a still sizable group of people. What does someone like my brother do....he doesn't have a computer/Internet service so most of your alternatives above won't work for him.

Call me old fashioned, but I think it's a crime that the FCC would allow the telcos to abandon landlines. VoIP is okay as long as you have Internet service, but just ask Time Warner Cable customers about the outage on Sunday. *POOF* No internet for hours. Cellular service is not available everywhere, even in big cities. I use an AT&T MVNO in a large NC city and there are only 3 very tiny spots inside my house that get a couple of bars, and they disappear if I move a fraction of an inch. Going to the end of the driveway to make a call in the rain, cold and/or dark isn't going to cut it, especially if I'm calling for tech support for something located inside the house.

We have comcast for internet. It is not particularly reliable. We also live in an area where our cell phone reception is not strong. Verizon claims it because there are so many trees. We believe it is because there are not enough towers.
Do you have suggestions that would improve the current poor situation so we could drop the landlines.
Oh, and our neighbor bought a booster from Verizon and it really didn't help much.

Yes, power outages and lack of cell service where we live (in the mountains far from any large populations centers)keep us using our land line. We use cell phones when we're out, especially on road trips.

Hello Bob,

I presume that most US households have cable available to the home - usually for TV. That then allows them to use the cable for Internet access - hence VOIP is a good option to replace a landline.

In the UK relatively few areas are served by Cable TV companies with most households still receiving TV service via 'Freeview over the air' or via Sky Satellite. That limits the choice of Internet access to landline or cellphone (referred to as 'mobile phones' over here). I suspect that will mean that the percentage of households without a landline is much lower than in the USA and that the POTS service will continue to be maintained.

Getting rid of landline phones, will be more expensive than projected!

I have AT&T Internet service only, no bundling. My modem is still connected to the copper wiring of the landline phones. I do get almost 24Mbsp and that is the maximum I can get with a copper line connection. What this means, is that there isn't any Fiber Optic wiring, in my area and a LOT of areas don't have Fiber!

The cost of installing Fiber is way up there. I am not sure if, maintaining the copper is cheaper, than installing Fiber.

I have a landline, because, this is what I want. Again, I will state my husband is a heart patient and should anything happen, I want a phone that will work! VOIP is great for most people, but, not for me. My hubby could have a heart attack, at any given moment - I want to be able to get an ambulance as quickly to my house, as possible.

As our society gets older, there comes the health issues and I personally think, landlines would be better for the elderly. Believe it or not, soon the elderly will be the majority and the young will be the minority. This is due to the Baby Boomers coming of age. :)

Hmmm...this is very interesting. I have fought my Children for years that I would never own a cell phone, and would always have a landline or no phone service for any reason. I will go back to letter writing...if no inter net, I will get a string and put tin cans on each end...I have a cell phone, it only lays and gets charged. My son had an extra line on his plan, and he wanted me to have it...so?...I have a smart phone, a smart tv..still watchong only TLC and TV land channels..sigh...

Kathy has a valid point. However at $40 per month for POTS, I dropped Bell long ago. I have tried VOIP, Net Talk for a few years, but their service is about 90 per cent dependable. Have Magic Jack now but have poor quality service, echo, hum on the line, etc. Only use them to call my family in the States at no extra charge (I live in Canada) and cell phone for every thing else. I can always use my car charger during extended power loss.

I now live in an area serviced by cable and that is my internet connection. However, I have lived where the only service is land line, even cell service was too weak, and I wonder what the people that live in the rural areas will do to connect to the WWW if (when)copper lines are discontinued.

Broadband is only available to me via Centurylink DSL. No land line means no DSL.

They just don't want to fix anything, as evident by the reliability of what's to be the replacement. LEAVE MY PHONES ALONE FCC....

We dropped our POTS line in 2007 when we went with a bundle deal with Comcast. It's been very reliable and the call quality is good. It started off relatively poor until Comcast upgraded the cable in our area that they had inherited from Adelphia. One huge reason I love our Comcast VoIP service is we no longer get junk calls. We signed up for Nomorobo over a year ago and it cuts off junk calls after one ring. If a call does happen to get through, I can report it on Nomorobo's site. I wish my T-Mobile service would work with Nomorobo. That's where I get most of my junk calls.
The router that we received from Comcast didn't have a battery so I purchased an inexpensive UPS to provide power in case of a power outage. That's come in handy a couple of times.
My only concern with the demise of POTS is that internet service outside of the town where I live is spotty. There are a few areas where both cellular and internet service are poor and POTS is their only viable option for communications. If internet service in the boonies becomes as fast and reliable as in the city, I'll be packing my bags and moving!

They just don't want to fix anything, as evident by the reliability of what's to be the replacement. LEAVE MY PHONES ALONE FCC....

Say what you will about POTS service. The old Bell System, for whom I worked, offered universal service within its' territory and worked with the other telcos to insure that all had Plain Old Telephone Service available. It worked even when the power was out. If the lines were down, we were out fixing them ASAP. Now we are totally dependent on electricity & internet providers for communications unless you still have a real, wired landline & an old phone that doesn't require electricity to work. Thanks to the FCC & deregulation, you may be SOL in an emergency.

We have no intention of giving up our land line until we absolutely have to do so, but maybe at our age we won't have to do so. We do not have cable service because we don't want it, but it is available. We don't watch much TV other than news, mostly local at that. I agree--leave our phones alone.

It's obvious Bob you've hit a sensitive spot with a lot of your readers.

I can only say that if you feel you must pay such high prices for a service that you can get for 1/10th the cost with Ooma, then stay with your POTS.

Me, I couldn't stand paying Verizon so much when VoIP was available...so I made the switch to Ooma several years ago when Consumer Reports rated it as the best service for VoIP.

I'm very happy with it and even though the unit cost me (purchased mine at Costco) some initial $$, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I may not have read carefully enough but why ditch POTS? Is it because they want to get out of the "fix the telephone wires(?) infrastructure? If so, I'm presently getting DSL service over the "telephone wire" system. Howzat going to work?

I refuse to bundle, because I want my phone to work when the cable is out, or the electricity. I have a landline, and no cell or car. Fiber optics haven't reached my section of Manhattan. The landline is RELIABLE, so if it ain't broke… I hope you're wrong about my being forced away from it.

So what about the idea that all digital calls are recorded? This would include cell phone calls and voip, but are old style landline calls still 'private' without a warrant? Of course, this only works if the person on the other end of the line is also on an old style landline service, so you're pretty much S.O.L. anyway if privacy is your concern.