Our DSL connection would degrade after a heavy rainfall. Coincidence, maybe, but when I complained to VZ they put in Fios internet and lowered my bill. They were upfront about wanting to cut the costs of maintaining copper wires. (OTOH we no longer had a landline phone that was more resistant to power outages.)
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There should be a motorcycle battery inside the ONT box. It’s intended to keep the phone lines running.
There’s a battery, but I think it’s good for a day or so. Fortunately we haven’t had any power outages close to that long, not since the 2012 Derecho.
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It does for about a day, but for Sandy we lost power to the area for over a week. That impacted the resources past the ONT box, there was nothing on the other end of the line for the local phone to connect to. Cell phone towers had the same issue.
That was when we realized that unless we wanted POTS, there was no point in having a home phone.
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Tried one of the new HD digital antennas. Having the internet, netflix, amazon, etc., it didn’t matter to me, but the family liked passive broadcast, so the antenna was my way to convince them that dropping cable would be ok. It wasn’t very good. A site online said we should be able to receive several stations in our location, but we only got a few of them and had to move the antenna around to change channels. On top of that, the artifacting was pretty bad, especially when it wasn’t a calm clear day. This is a technology that is worse than its predecessor - before the digital switch, we could receive stronger signals from more channels farther away with cheap rabbit ears, and the occasional bit of static wasn’t nearly as bad as today’s digital distortion.
Yes. I did this when Comcast bumped my bill up to an intolerable rate. By dropping TV and just keeping internet my cable cost was less than half what it had been…for awhile. When they started bumping the price back up, I got it reduced again by adding basic TV. Toggling the TV every year is the way to keep the rates from going skyhigh. It makes no sense, but I guess the churn lets them keep up appearances by saying that they’re getting new subscribers every year.
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This is precisely why I switch interneters every two or three years. It gets too high and I go for the other guy’s New and Improved rate. They don’t want my loyalty, otherwise they wouldn’t jack up the price (“Sir, that offer is only to new subscribers, not ones we have a relationship with.”), so I don’t give it to them.
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Television. How quaint.
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Good on ya.
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I’d try that if there was a ‘the other guy’. With options of 1 cable internet provider (175-200Mbps), 1 late-90s DSL provider (maybe 10-15Mbps), or 1 satellite provider (up to 10Mbps but with high latency), the offerings aren’t really comparable and it’s not exactly a buyer’s market.
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Those are ridiculous choices.
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Wow! That antenna looks just like a kid!
That’s umm, not always where broadcasts come from. In fact, if there are tall hills or mountains near by, chances are the transmitting antenna is on one of them.
Not always, but frequently. Well aware. The biggest TV station in Chicago broadcasts from all the way out in Schaumburg, IL.
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Without putting-up a 30-50-foot tower, I’d only be able to pull in exactly three tv stations…all of them the local university’s PBS channels. PBS1, local radar, and PBS Create. woo. hoo.
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