Why you need a true home phone line

[StrangerGuy]

If you were like me in an country where telcos charges you $20/mth just for an POTS line itself excluding usage charges you will definitely say a one big "fuck you".

 

[Red Squirrel]

Only 20 bucks? It's like 40 bucks here.

 

[JEDI]

1) EMS knows exactly where you are calling from, exactly. Not so much with cell or other service
2) In power trouble, #1 becomes even more apparent, cell towers will be overloaded. My city is dealing with power outage and the damn libraries are saying "you can charge you cell phone if you must here". HELLO, car battery/charger?
3) In power outage you can always make a call with your hard line, the switches MUST stay up for 48-72 hours+ by federal law. The switches provide power to make a call.
4) Even if you do have a hard line, what use is it if you need power via cordless to make a call?

I will NEVER give up my true hardline and a real analog phone. Ever.

Think about a power outage or emergency and how useful your cell phone really is.

ding dsing diong winner!

thats why i still have my landline. i treat it as a $17/month 911 insurance.

like a fire extinguiser (or 9mm gun), i hope i never have to use it, but i'm glad it;s there

 

[Lifted]

ding dsing diong winner!

thats why i still have my landline. i treat it as a $17/month 911 insurance.

like a fire extinguiser (or 9mm gun), i hope i never have to use it, but i'm glad it;s there

LOL

Really? After reading this thread? The only winner in that case is Ma Bell as your 911 will work regardless.

 

[SMOGZINN]

When everything goes to shit you are you going to call with your land line? Anyone you would actually want to call will have a dead cell phone.

 

[Capt Caveman]

ding dsing diong winner!

thats why i still have my landline. i treat it as a $17/month 911 insurance.

like a fire extinguiser (or 9mm gun), i hope i never have to use it, but i'm glad it;s there

Obviously, you have never heard of Enhanced 911.

 

[her209]

Obviously, you have never heard of Enhanced 911.

9-1-2?

 

[ponyo]

I'll take my chance. Grandfathered Ooma. $0 home phone bill for the past 4 years.

 

[Dirigible]

Last time I called 911 I hung up in disgust after being on hold for ten minutes. In an emergency I have no faith in it working anyway. Bye bye land line.

 

[JulesMaximus]

I have a home line but our only analog phone died a couple years ago. I had it hanging in the garage on the wall. It was actually kind of nice having a phone in the garage. Must get another one.

 

[SamQuint]

Since I live in Southern California I think the only major disaster will be an earthquake. I think the earthquake will take down all phone lines and the cell towers will be down or overloaded as well. So I am screwed either way. I would rather save my money.

 

[ViRGE]

You need a hard line to get in and out of the Matrix. That alone makes one worth having.

 

[Leros]

ding dsing diong winner!

thats why i still have my landline. i treat it as a $17/month 911 insurance.

like a fire extinguiser (or 9mm gun), i hope i never have to use it, but i'm glad it;s there

You do realize that you don't need service to call 911 on a landline, right?

 

[Raduque]

Mobile phone, in the UK the police can definitely track you very accurately from your mobile.

Not if you have a Samsung Galaxy S (not 2) phone! :awe:

 

[spacejamz]

If you want an alarm system on your house you usually also need a land line. +1

This was the only reason that I was paying $30/month for my landline...$30 was the cheapest Verizon landline plan I could get...It was $15 for the plan, but after fees and taxes, my monthly payment was $28...

I was able to upgrade my alarm system to a use cellular dialer two years ago, so I dropped the landline in a new york minute...

 

[HAL9000]

Not if you have a Samsung Galaxy S (not 2) phone! :awe:

Why so?

 

[DominionSeraph]

Sorry spidey, 911 is big government socialism. Why should rich people have to pay for commoners' emergency services? Let the free market decide!

Requesting OP be banned for hypocrisy.

 

[Nebor]

In a "true emergency" where cell phones don't work, and there's no power, the last thing I'd need is a fucking phone.

 

[foghorn67]

We have a line, but no service. 911 does work on it.

 

[IcePickFreak]

Haven't had a land line since around 2000, have since gone through multiple power outages, major blizzards etc - I didn't die.

 

[Brigandier]

I'd get a real land line so I'd have a few more feet of copper to scavenge in the zombie apocalypse.

 

[zinfamous]

Cordless phone... no power... problem! Not relevant to the "why you need a true home phone line" argument.

really? you still don't get it.

maybe it's because you're a kid and probably never saw a cassette tape, but you don't need power for a dedicated, corded land line.

 

[DrPizza]

I'm going to go out on a limb and state that the OP's argument is retarded. Incredibly poor risk assessment. The odds of needing 911 services at the same time that cell towers are down is miniscule. Making the decision to maintain a land line versus spending money on dozens of other FAR more effective measures to ensure safety is assinine. Perhaps the OP is a politician who would rather make a knee jerk decision based on a few simple facts, rather than a reasonable risk assessment. (Does the OP drive from NY to California because he believes flying is more dangerous? ) Incidentally, while looking for statistics, I ran across several articles that claimed that what AT&T was doing - which is the same thing the OP is doing - is simply fear mongering.

I couldn't find any statistics on the number of people who died as a result of not having a land line when attempting to call 911 (and would have been saved if there WAS a land line); wild guess though: Under 2 dozen.

On the other hand, from an article on the use of defibrillators (and how some emergency responses are too slow to get to victims):

of the 250,000 Americans who die outside of hospitals from cardiac arrest each year, between 58,000 and 76,000 suffer from a treatable short circuit in the heart and therefore are highly "saveable."

One of those automatic defibrillators - the types that they have at a lot of schools, gymnasiums, etc., costs $1200. For $1200, plus an average of under $25 per year for maintenance (battery,pads) you can purchase a device that you're 1000 times more likely (I tried, but can't find any statistics on how many people die as a result of a lack of land line; so this is just an approximation) to need some day than a land line to call 911. So, for roughly the cost of 4 year's worth of land line payments, you can have something that will save your life.

By the way, cell phones are FAR more reliable, at least around here, than power is. Also, you don't even need a cell phone plan to be able to dial 911. So, for FREE, senior citizens can keep a cell phone around the house, charged and ready to dial 911. I live in a rural area without a lot of towers. My county dispatcher (chatted with her a few times) says she can narrow it down to the house with the enhanced 911 system they have.

 

[Ichinisan]

1) EMS knows exactly where you are calling from, exactly. Not so much with cell or other service
2) In power trouble, #1 becomes even more apparent, cell towers will be overloaded. My city is dealing with power outage and the damn libraries are saying "you can charge you cell phone if you must here". HELLO, car battery/charger?
3) In power outage you can always make a call with your hard line, the switches MUST stay up for 48-72 hours+ by federal law. The switches provide power to make a call.
4) Even if you do have a hard line, what use is it if you need power via cordless to make a call?

I will NEVER give up my true hardline and a real analog phone. Ever.

Think about a power outage or emergency and how useful your cell phone really is.

The cableco I work for is replacing all analog "voice ports" with EMTA cable modems in preparation for a DOCSIS 3.0 system upgrade. They do have a battery, though.

 

[rh71]

we have FIOS with the phone line because it's just a better value to get the triple play. I think tv + internet is already $35 + $50 anyway and we signed up for a promo for $70/mo. for all 3. It has battery backup for a few hours should the power go out, but we haven't had to use it in an emergency.

During 9/11 and the northeastern blackout a few years back, we had a copper line (before FIOS) and I plugged in an old phone that is powered just thru the phone line. Those are the way to go. Actually FIOS still gives the option of keeping a copper line, for a slightly higher monthly fee.