This is why I won’t give up my landline, either. Remember what happened in Maui? People totally dependent on cell service had no way to call for help or give anyone updates on how they were doing.
There are FCC requirements for cell tower backup power and they’ve been coming up with contingencies for other issues caused by heat/fires, floods, and freezing. However, we’ve seen companies doing everything possible to avoid the cost of compliance before.
At this point, my next move will be a satellite backup solution:
The last time I had a copper-wire landline was 2008. Moved and got fiber with a phone/cable/internet package. Eventually we stopped using cable, and never had used the landline, so in about 2012 we went internet-only and now rely on our mobiles.
I was googling to see if it was possible to get a copper phone line and came across this:
(On a perhaps related note, I’m the sysadmin for a system that, among other things, sends out email notifications. One of these is still typed up in a certain format, because that’s how they did it on teletype, and I guess no-one ever told them they could or should stop doing it that way.)
In our case, they offered to put in fiber and charge us the same per month that we were paying for DSL. By then, a heavy rain would render the DSL so slow as to be unusable (the lines to our house are all underground, and evidently whoever built the neighborhood thought it would be a good idea to do so on top of a spring.)
In the early 2000s I switched from traditional copper to Vonage. A few years later I moved out of state and brought my Vonage number with me, but by then I had a cell phone and used it for most of my telephony (which isn’t much), so I just left the Vonage unplugged and checked the voicemail via email. Suddenly a decade had gone by and I still hadn’t plugged the Vonage in, so I canceled it at last.
If VoIP isn’t counted, I “got rid” of it when the cable company force upgraded us all. It came bundled with the internet package, and I still occasionally used it, so I never thought of getting rid of it.
A few years back in my fair-to-middling city there was a rash of thefts of the copper grounding cables from utility poles.
As I recall, a local radio station was knocked off the air for many hours after someone managed to steal large copper conductors from the station’s transmitting tower. My Google fu seems to be weak this morning and I have not been able to find the story.
Yes. They are even stealing fiber optic cables, which have no commercial value, but they cannot tell the difference. We have specialized gangs and poor devils who steal to buy crack.
Most people turn their hatred towards homeless people who steal all kinds of things, but I don’t see anyone demanding that the police investigate who is buying this stuff.
One number was my business number, had that for over 35 years. Still have it but it’s voip now.
The sad number is a number that’s been associated with our property since phone lines came down the road. I’m guessing sometime in the 40s early 50s. This property has been in my family since 1936 starting with my grandma and her sister. There may have been a 5 digit number but no one remembers.
In 2009ish things were tough for us financially and land lines weren’t cheap for us because every penny counted to continue living indoors and eating.
We made the decision to let that number go, we really didn’t use it but the sentimental value was priceless. It meant so much to me and my wife.
I remember my great aunt picking up the receiver and asking the operator to get her party line who lived 3 houses away. Or picking up the line and hearing the party line talking. That woman’s granddaughter ended up being one of our daughter’s preschool teachers.
I know it’s just a number but sad nonetheless.
Our business number was more important.
I used a Google Voice number for years that forwarded to my business because it had better voicemail than my voip company.
I’ve been using the same voip company that I started with, early on there were weird technical issues and I could always call and speak to a live person without waiting on hold. Still that way but I haven’t had a tech issue in years.
A few years ago a bad storm knocked down the two lines that are no longer used, I cut them back to the pole and removed the box from my house. The lines are still neatly coiled attached to the pole.
The last landline I had was bundled with Internet and cable, when I got rid of cable, killed the phone too (2012?), as my cell was all that was used for communication. At one point, when shedding cable, there was a kerfuffle as they allegedly needed my landline phone number to cancel, it was in some long since discarded paperwork, and I had no phone to hook up and call myself to find my number.
