Voice of Reason
@85.195.x.x
| Re: [ViaTalk] Does it work with an ADT home alarm? ptrowski wrote, "VOIP is fun and all, and we save money there. But when you deal with your personal security, fire monitoring, etc splurge and make sure there are no issues. Keep the POTS line." Well, that's one opinion, and for some people it may be a perfectly valid one. However....
Usually when people consider VoIP, it's because they don't have millions of dollars in the bank (if they did, they wouldn't be worrying about saving a few bucks a month on residential phone service). The vast majority of us don't have unlimited funds. Some of us don't have alarm systems at all.
My theory is that absolutely NOTHING is going to make you or your family 100% safe. Even your gold plated alarm system with dedicated PSTN line is not going to help you in the event of asteroid strike, tidal wave, category 5 hurricane, strong tornado, magnitude 9.5 earthquake, etc. etc. We all decide on degrees of acceptable risk. Maybe we don't buy the most crash-resistant automobile because we really can't justify spending the extra $50,000 (or just don't have that much to spend).
So my question is, how often does your broadband go down (that includes outages caused by power outages, etc.) and what are the chances that such an outage will happen at the exact time that someone tries to break in, or a fire occurs?
And then balance that against the reliability of the PSTN line - yes, it may stay up during a power outage, but will it survive a strong windstorm? Will it be the one cable that a burglar (or someone intent on harming your family in a different manner) will cut, thinking that cuts you off from all communications?
And also consider whether there's usually a working cell phone available whenever someone is home.
For some people, the small amount of extra reliability gained by having a PSTN line isn't worth it. That's particularly true if the PSTN line is prone to outages. And remember, you may not notice every single PSTN outage (if it happens while you're not trying to use the phone, you may never know it happened) the way you would a broadband outage or a cable outage (people really tend to notice when the cable goes out for half an hour, particularly if it happens during prime time).
For other people, who perhaps have more disposable income and think that if they spend enough money they can buy perfect security, their choice may be to retain a PSTN line.
I just don't think some folks ought to be too preachy, especially people whose deity is a flying spaghetti monster.  |
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