Landlines Will Be Obsolete in 3, 2, 1... - Comments Page 3

While we have cell phones and internet connectivity provided by our cable service, my wife needs and uses a hearing assisted phone (provided by the state) which only works on the POTS network. What will AT&T (or any other provider do to ameliorate this problem?

Duane -- I use a landline and a Medtronic monitor. I was sent a Wire-X adapter directly from the company. It plugged into the monitor and allowed it to connect to the network without a home telephone. Since then, they have sent me a newer monitor model which eliminated lots of wires! It sends data from my defibrillator four times a year (or more, if needed)

1. I'm surprised not to see Obi mentioned. I've had it for about 5 years and have been pleased overall.
2. With all of these, what about 911 service? The article touches on it but doesn't go into any depth, especially for each of the services. With Obi & Google Voice, I currently have a third party service (Callcentric) for 911, because GV doesn't have it. That could be a crucial point, and I' like to know how all the services deal with it.

CaptionCall provides phones for the deaf and hard of hearing. It provides a display which is nice as my eyes "hear" just fine. Yes I have 2 hearing aids. Can you suggest an alternative for those of us who whom a cell phone is inadequate for our needs? (Turning up the volume on a borrowed cell phone partially works for me but not for the totally deaf.) Any suggestions for those of us in this situation?

Like Don above, I'm using Straight Talk's Home Connect. It's basically a modem that connects with a cellular tower (in my case, Verizon) and converts the signal to one that is compatible with regular landline phones. I have the base station of my cordless home phones connected to it. It works great!

I have had Vonage since 2004 and have been highly pleased with it. The quality has improved greatly in that time and it even works here in Thailand. There is an option to port it to my mobile which really helps me out. Now I have my 14 years running phone number, in a foreign country, anytime I have internet, for a great price. I have been with Ting for a few years now as well. It blew me away the first time I got a cell phone call, in Thailand! Sure, I have to pay a modest fee for each international call, but it's great since I don't need internet for that. Ting is dirt cheap anyway, so a minor fee for using it overseas is fine. I am not aware of any POTS here, but they get along just fine. One last point. Anyone in the US can call me either in Texas, or Tacoma where my area codes are and I get the call halfway across the world, without the caller paying a dime extra, unless they have POTS where there used to be a long distance fee. It's been so long since I had that, that I don't know if they still do that. The world is getting more connected and the US is only starting to catch up. I think that with many countries never having had the old system, they don't miss it. Once the infrastructure is built out, the US won't miss it either.

We have a landline and I use a hearing aid. I find that cellphones often aren't very easy for me to hear. Ditto with the portable phones (not cellphones). And the landline works when the power goes out and has good 911 connectivity which is important to us because my husband is not well and we have had many occasions to call 911. Also we get our internet service via the landline.

Once again we see that big business has absolutely nothing to do with its customers; it's only about the bottom line. How sad. Here's a Paul Thorn quote, "The Five & Dime, the corner drug store They used to shake your hand when you walked through the door. Red, white, and blue. It was our little town 'til the supercenter came and it shut 'em all down."

I connect to the internet thru a landline, an AT&T stand alone DSL. It's slow but it's not real cheap. I guess I'll be looking at some real expensive stuff here in the hear future.

Thanks for the article. Not very savvy in this new technology, I need all of the help I can get. The topic is still mud to sift through with several providers that seem to come up somewhat short of what landline offers.

My phone/TV/internet are bundled. If I drop the "landline" phone, how much will my bundle be lowered.

Can all of the benefits of the landline be ported to a smart phone negating the need for a landline?

I'm still confused.

Here in Australia, our copper cables have been swapped for fibre-optics. I still have my land-line as it now costs me nothing for calls, locally, around Australia and overseas. Whereas I would probably need a loan to use a mobile phone for all my needs.

What about rural areas that do not have good internet or cell service?? What ever happened to that B.S. stimulus money that was supposed to upgrade rural areas? That was one big joke and a ripoff to us tax payers. So they're(meaning the phone company's) going to force us to rely on unreliable technology after all the money they received and basically did nothing with. Thats typical of today's corporations and government, out for themselves and screw us little people. It will end up being a disaster for us normal folk....

You never mentioned THAT in MANY cases DSL is delivered over that aged antiquated copper pair or pairs from the CO to the D-MARK/POE. Not everyone has CATV modems for their highspeed INet. I am one of them as are the rest of the residents living on my 2.5 mile long dead end road. Starting with GTE, then Verizon and now Frontier that bought Verizon's copper since they went to cellular.

Another thing not mentioned is, with copper dial tone and DSL the norm is a package deal. If you have dial tone you get a package deal with DSL. I haven't looked into yet but I am going to find out how much more it will cost just to have DSL and VOIP keeping my existing number but canceling dial tone. I pay 29.99/M now for DSL but I am sure it will cost more if I dump dial tone.

CATV ends 2.2 miles from my road and WAVE Broadband has no plans to extend it so the hundreds of residences past that last point are dependant on copper OR, cellular.

This makes me very sad because I hate my smart phone and use it only when I am away from home. Everything about it is inferior: it gets lost all the time, it is hard to hear on it, calls in progress get cut off if you happen to touch the wrong spot on the cell phone, I can't hear it ring in my purse, on and on... I can always find my home phone,I can hear it ring, I have a phone in every room where I might need it. My cell phone is usually lost, and I can't easily tell when someone has left a message. Cell phone are fine for the car, but not for the home. Cell phones can be stolen; I never heard of a landline phone being stolen. Cell phones are good only for emergencies in my book!

@DUANE:
My wife also has a pacemaker and we send in her pacemaker readings once a year over the telephone network. When we switched from POTS to VOIP it no longer worked UNTIL we got a small digital-to-analog device that you connect between the pacemaker and your home Internet (Ethernet) network. You can read about the device here:
https://www.edevice.com/products/wirex
I don't know how much it costs because it was given to us, but I'm sure medical insurance would cover the cost.

I was told that my fax machine at home would not work when I switched to VOIP. Took their word for it and haven't tested it to find out.

I am hard of hearing and will hang onto the landline until no other choice. I like that 911 can find it, and it works in a storm. I cannot hear on many phones with my hearing aid (leave it out when home--I live alone) I too do not like that rural people will no longer have a landline and can get no service. Not to mention people in the mountains of WV where if you live in a hollow cell phones do NOT work at all!

I will keep my landline for as long as possible.

What floors me is that AT&T is asking to eliminate the landlines and copper wires. I use AT&T's UVerse Router and it is DSL ... Which is copper wire!!! I can't even get Internet speed higher than 24 Mbps ... Due to only copper wire being the only thing available. There is NO Fiber of Optical in my area and I live in Metro Atlanta!!!

AT&T is not rushing to get the more modern equipment to the areas they are complaining about.

I want a landline so that I have the capability of communicating to the outside when the power goes out. Just this past October ... I had a tree from next door crack and fall across my driveway. The tree hit the power line to my house and my house only. It took me a couple of hours to realize that I did have some older phones that I could connect to the wall in my kitchen. Otherwise, I would have been up a creek without a paddle!!!

I now have that phone on the kitchen wall, so that if I do lose power in the future ... Which is a given where I live ... I can always call not only 911 but any place else that I want to call.

I also have 2 heart patients living in the house ... My Hubby who has 11 Coronary Stents and a Bi-Ventricular Pacemaker, plus my Son-in-law who has 1 Coronary Stent and Congestive Heart Failure ... Needless to say, having a landline makes it much easier to dial 911 and they have your address immediately.

My Hubby also has a Medtronic Pacemaker that can be monitored, but it is a wireless monitor that connects to my AT&T UVerse Router. However, should the power to go out ... He can't connect, due to the router not working, it is run by electricity.

There are times where I really wonder if the new technology is that much better or not! Mind you, I truly am a Computer Geek and I love technology.

I live in rural Indiana and run a business from my home. I do website design and it's getting very difficult to function. My AT&T landline has noise on the line most of the time (especially when it rains). I reported that problem every few days for about 2-3 weeks. Finally someone worked on it and a few days later I have no dial tone at all. That was last Monday. I've now been without service for 1 week. My cell phone doesn't work at my house except for texting. Any cell phone call cannot be sustained because of how bad it breaks up. I thought I was saved by Wifi calling last year, but the only internet I can get is Hughes Net Satellite and wifi calling just doesn't work. I'm hoping AT&T hasn't shut down my landline permanently. Every time I venture to town to use my cell phone and check on it they "guarantee it will be working" by whatever day/time and I'm getting tired of that lie. They are telling me there's a problem with my trunk line and it's affecting a large area of people but I haven't found any neighbors that actually still have AT&T landlines. I have a tree line surrounding my home that must make my cell coverage just bad enough that I can't function when my neighbors can. It's very frustrating.

It's pathetic that we can't come up with a system that's literally just as good or better than old landlines. Modems require power. Cell systems become jammed in emergencies. It's 100% stupid to abandon infrastructure we've spent years and tons of money to implement if it's in good condition.