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Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

1 recommendation

Crookshanks to dustman81

Member

to dustman81

Re: This is Bob Elek with Verizon.

said by dustman81:

POTS is a dead technology.

C'mon, now you're just going to the other extreme.

Name me a single voice service that can even come close to (never mind match) the reliably of POTS. If you care about reliably then POTS is the only way to go. Got a business that can't afford downtime? Get POTS. Have someone in your house with a medical condition and can't take the risk of losing access to E911? Get POTS.

During the floods here last September Time Warner's "digital phone" product failed all over town. POTS kept running like a champ, even in those towns that were without power for more than a week. There was one small town out this way where the flood waters even reached Frontier's CO; DSL service went down in that town but POTS kept working in spite of the two feet of water in the central office.

One of my consulting customers is an insurance agency that changed to TW's phone product against my recommendation. They had no phones in their office for more than a week after the waters had receded. Guess how many customers they lost when insureds couldn't reach them to file flood claims in a timely manner? Ultimately they wound up running their business off cell phones for more than a week; hardly an acceptable solution for a 35 employee enterprise.

Oh, and guess what? In that same office there was a old POTS line attached to a DSL account that we never got around to shutting off. It STILL worked. They were able to use it for faxing and it was the one bright spot in an otherwise miserable week.

We had the POTS lines reinstalled the minute Verizon was able to schedule a truck roll. Go without your phone service for more than a week and the "savings" that VOIP offers you starts to look quite meaningless.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

BiggA

Premium Member

Verizon CDMA 1x. Seriously, no one wants landlines. No one wants another phone number, and not being able to reach people in a household directly. They are for old people who haven't made the all-wireless switch yet.

Sure, CDMA 1x can go down, but so can landlines. Cable phone is a disaster. Nowhere near the reliability of cell/POTS.

For a business, if the customers have their cell phone numbers in the first place, or if they have GV set to go to cell phone, who cares?

The savings is not VOIP. The savings is not having a landline in the first place. They are obsolete.