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Comments on news posted 2009-07-07 16:24:33: Given AT&T's traditional wired phone service is shrinking by about 10% a year as people defect to cell only or cable VoIP, AT&T has launched a new significant PR campaign (via GigaOM) aimed at highlighting the landline as the centerpiece of a safety-.. ..
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David
No,there is another.
Premium,VIP
join:2002-05-30
Granite City, IL
clubs:
 ·DIRECTV
 ·magicjack.com
 ·AT&T Midwest
1 edit | I have a land line Personally (or as least for me) it's a better value.
I find it's actually cheaper than VoIP (unless I want to consider magicjack, or other small providers). Some people pay upwards to $40 a month for VoIP service, and yet with the wife talking to her mother in Texas, a friend in Saint louis (I live in IL) and calling my parents she talked about 500 some odd minutes. Bill came to like $7 from the long distance company (uni-tel) and the land line by itself hits right at $27.
So while all those VoIP people wanted to get away from paying in excess of or at $40 for VoIP I got mine with long distance for most times right at $34-37 (highest was $37). Some months I don't even have a bill so I get to enjoy $27 for just the pots (which is only $3 over vonage!). Now true I could get vonage or another VoIP provider for about $20-30 a month. Problem is I just don't find much value in VoIP short of adding another non-critical line to a house. I only have a pre-paid cell plan (by choice of me). I took the higher cell bills and cashed them in for cell service (prepaid) that doesn't get over $25-30/avg. a month average for me and my wife's phones.
I can fax if I wish with it, or I can pay for a $24/yr fax by e-mail service (which is ok) or I can pay $0.03/per minute and use my modem in the computer. Another revalation was it was a relief in the area-wide power outage a year or two ago I could still "dial-up" to the internet locally (had a local number) and If the fridge and freezer wasn't needed, well power up the DSL modem! I had sync, surf, had dsl and phone service all working! Still have C.O. based service.
Now I do have a magicjack in the basement, but I set google voice to be a local 618 number for the wife and still have it set to forward to the magicjack. magicjack works for me as a office number in the basement. A place where Cell phones just don't do very well (when I am down there) and it works great down there. It's not a full time line and truthfully I don't need one down there. Just one so the wife don't have to beat on the floor just to get my attention.
I figure right now for all I have $70/month (including magicjack, DSL, phone, long distance) is going to work for me.
P.S. Plus who could resist them awesome Telco Powered products!
»www.sandman.com/telco.html
Sorry couldn't resist... 
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If you have a topic in the direct forum please reply to it or a post of mine, I get a notification when you do this.
Koetting Ford, Granite City, illinois... YOU'RE FIRED!!
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benc
Premium
join:2007-06-17
Glen Carbon, IL
 ·Charter Pipeline
·Future Nine Corpor..
·Callcentric
·AT&T Midwest
| I Actually Agree With This Everyone should have a POTS line of some sort. Even if it's highly basic, or local calls + a couple features.
And yes, I've even used it to call my mobile so I could hear it ring and then home in on the sound when I couldn't remember where I left it.
My experience is that it's been the most reliable utility I have ever had, ever. From what I can tell, only maybe three seconds of downtime in the two years that I've lived here. Although to be totally fair, your mileage may vary (I've heard of people having issues with Verizon POTS, particularly in Florida).
I'm not crazy about the price of course, but line power really can't be beat.
However, line power is the only reason why AT&T gets any of my money at all (there's no DSL here, just cable). If they ever stop offering traditional POTS here, I will cancel immediately.
As for price, the highest end package is far cheaper than the equivalent package in a mobile phone. My POTS is about $72/mo. That includes just about every single feature that AT&T offers. To get the equivalent service through a mobile phone, I'd have to get one of those $100 plans, which after taxes and fees would be closer to $120/mo. That and for awhile, I didn't have a mobile phone at all.
Of course, there is one thing about me, and I don't know if it's true about most people. I live alone, and sometimes a week can pass between times when I talk to family members, so if something bad happened to me it could potentially take that long for them to discover the problem. If you live with others, you could rely on their phone services to get help, or use their services to call your mobile phone, if you lose it.
Other factors include faxing and dial-up. If my cable goes out for whatever reason, it is nice if I could at least use dial-up, since it is truly better than nothing at all. As for faxing, you never know when you need it. I don't fax much, but the ability to do so really saved me on more than one occasion. | |
| | | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA
·SONIC.NET
·RoadRunner Cable
·Verizon Online DSL
| Bet your life for $20 a month? Ignoring the obvious bias in the headline, clearly, AT&T and Verizon need to revisit their landline pricing, and the taxes and fees need to be reduced and simplified.
911 Service works best from POTS. Calling from a cellphone or VOIP line is hazardous to your health. I have plenty of experience dealing with law enforcement and dispatch, and nothing less than a POTS line will get you a response when you need it. Some day, alternative methods will work, but they don't today.
Landlines also give you something that no other medium can: circuit switching. When I call my pots line, I'm 99.9% certain I will ring through to the premise. With all other virtualized, packetized, and RF-based connections, I'm at the mercy of a routing system, which means many calls just die or go to voicemail. | |
| | patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
1 edit | Re: Bet your life for $20 a month? said by elray  :Ignoring the obvious bias in the headline, clearly, AT&T and Verizon need to revisit their landline pricing, and the taxes and fees need to be reduced and simplified. 911 Service works best from POTS. Calling from a cellphone or VOIP line is hazardous to your health. I have plenty of experience dealing with law enforcement and dispatch, and nothing less than a POTS line will get you a response when you need it. Some day, alternative methods will work, but they don't today. Landlines also give you something that no other medium can: circuit switching. When I call my pots line, I'm 99.9% certain I will ring through to the premise. With all other virtualized, packetized, and RF-based connections, I'm at the mercy of a routing system, which means many calls just die or go to voicemail. »www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6V96fY9fqw&fmt=18
lol | |
| Metatron2008
join:2008-09-02
Stockbridge, GA | Cell phone that charges off of pots line power? Nobody think of this? | |
| | patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
| Re: Cell phone that charges off of pots line power? said by Metatron2008 :Nobody think of this? 3 watts of power. Almost 1 USB port of power. Thats it.
12000[ft loop to CO, an average DSL capable length , yours probably will be longer]*2[what about the return wire?]*0.02567[24g copper ohms per foot]= 600 ohms
V^2/R=W
45^2/600=3.375 watts | |
| mc5w
join:2002-06-14
Independence, OH
| Cell versus Landline My sister, my brother in law, and I have Sprint cell phones but my sister has a Time Warner landline in her alternative house where I live and my brother in law has a traditional landline. The landline from Time Warner works very well.
My brother in law has a cell phone repeater that he bought from Sprint. The only way to get a cell phone to work on the south side of Marysville, Ohio is to get this repeater rig that uses a rooftop antenna and a repeater and indoor antenna indoors on the mantle.
I have had to call my cell phone a few times to locate it. Sometimes get flat-as-a-dead-snake tired and forget where I set down phone.
I have 2 car batteries and a 750 watt inverter to get some amount of 120 volt power when having to do deenergized electrical maintenance or having to run my water pik to wash out my nose on the road. I also have 2 UPSs that I got cheap because they needed new batteries. Once I get some money I am getting 3 or 6 cheap yard tractor batteries for the UPSs. | |
| 
GlobalMind
Domino Dude, POWER Systems Guy
Premium
join:2001-10-29
Hollywood, FL
| Myth After hurricane Wilma came through South Florida, the landlines were only up a day or so before dial tone went dead. And we're got buried lines where I am.
POTS might be generally reliable, but you can't always count on it being there.
Honestly I might keep a landline but it could soon be in the form of Comcast Digital Voice because I am pretty much over AT&T.
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TheGlobalMind.com / Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go? / Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. - Ralph Waldo Emerson / Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. | |
| 
FL tech
@bellsouth.net
| Unofficial charges I agree will all you said except the 'unofficial charges'. These are government mandated fees as you say, and AT&T worked to keep them from being included in the basic rate as the Feds wanted.
Thinks like the recovery fee, 911 fee, and others are required by the Fed and state governments because it's an easy target. They are passed through and not kept by the companies. | |
| neil0311
join:2005-07-24
Marietta, GA
1 edit | The POTS lines are gone too when the pole comes down For the 15 years I lived in New England and had POTS service from New England Telephone, aka NYNEX, aka Bell Atlantic, aka Verizon I only had my service go down one time for an extended period. We had an ice storm in 2004 and we lost power overnight. Other than that, it was solid.
I switched to Comcast digital voice, and never lost it either, and guess what? The cable and the telephone wires were both run on the same poles, along with power. When we lost power, we generally lost phone and cable too.
I've been in the Atlanta area now for 2 years....never lost power a single time. We have buried utilities here. I have Comcast digital voice and I'm not the slightest bit worried about power outages. | |
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