Still love your landline? Phone service providers are getting closer to phasing

[ZLoth]

I'll just share this Newsweek article where a real estate agent, when questioned by a young adult purchasing a home, was stumped by the sight of a shelving unit in the hallway and was told that the shelf was where they put the home phone and answering machine.

[mgk920]

I'll just share this Newsweek article where a real estate agent, when questioned by a young adult purchasing a home, was stumped by the sight of a shelving unit in the hallway and was told that the shelf was where they put the home phone and answering machine.

That lower shelf in the photo that accompanies the article is where the big metro area phone books (printed directories) went.


We had one of those phone nooks that was set into a divider wall between the kitchen and formal dining room, accessible from both sides, in the house when I was young. I thought that it was über-handy at the time.

Mike

[ZLoth]

I'm sure that a good electrician could retrofit that jack to carry ethernet, power, and/or the Internet line for whole-house Internet connectivity.

[kalvado]

I'm sure that a good electrician could retrofit that jack to carry ethernet, power, and/or the Internet line for whole-house Internet connectivity.

Retrofit... How? Jack is the easiest part of network setup. And unlike landline phone, most of network equipment can be out of site, not in the most visible spot of the house.
Whatever new data connection would be used, it would be entering the house elsewhere, and there are few reasons to follow old phone wires.

[kalvado]

Oh, and the story about "save button looks like vending machine, but why?" Comes to mind

[Scott5114]

Just curious, who ended up paying for fiber work?
I hear a few of similar stories, and there are different ways to cover those costs, rates are not part of the list.

Government grants. The co-op was created when the Rural Electrification Act was enacted to service areas that had not yet received electrical power, funding low-interest loans to help fund the build-out. In the late 2010s, they received grants to run a fiber build-out along its electric delivery footprint.

Which basically means a small area got commercially unviable product. Which is what the government should do, honestly speaking, but asking companies to fund that would be inefficient. Exactly as you described with copper lines. I wonder how the maintenance would be funded...
And if everyone in need of fiber would ask for a grant, that will quickly deplete available funds.

OEC did the same sort of program, and now rural McClain County OK has better Internet than Norman and OKC proper do. The part of Norman I lived in was supposed to get OEC fiber at some point, but it was the lowest priority part of the buildout since Cox already offered cable internet there. So it still hasn't been built.

[Scott5114]

Oh, but then there was AT&T's trade-in any phone-get-spiffy-phone order.  Did that online.  Still took longer than buying my car.

There was one year where for my birthday I asked my wife to deal with AT&T for me. I knew exactly what phone and everything I wanted, I just wanted her to handle the business of actually getting it for me to be the present.

I also feel about as likely to get screwed over going into AT&T as I am a slimy car dealership. So many instances of being told that X deal was being run, not seeing the promotional price on the bill, and going back in to be told that because the Europa was closer to Earth than Io at the time I signed my contract, and the date my SIM card was made was more than three days after the governor of Wyoming had last eaten lettuce, the deal somehow didn't apply to me and I was to pay full price.

[ZLoth]

I'm sure that a good electrician could retrofit that jack to carry ethernet, power, and/or the Internet line for whole-house Internet connectivity.

Retrofit... How? Jack is the easiest part of network setup. And unlike landline phone, most of network equipment can be out of site, not in the most visible spot of the house.
Whatever new data connection would be used, it would be entering the house elsewhere, and there are few reasons to follow old phone wires.

shrug I dunno. I personally have my network equipment in a closet myself as it has my AT&T Fiber Internet model, my route/wireless gateway/WiFi mesh node, a 24 port gigabit switch, and a file server running 24⨯7. Since I have a generalized photo, I have no idea what the age of the house or what type of electrical box is attached. The bottom shelf can be repurposed for a charging station for your accessories.

I also feel about as likely to get screwed over going into AT&T as I am a slimy car dealership.

I understand your sentiment, however, where I live, AT&T Internet was cheaper than Spectrum Internet for gigabit Internet and by $30 before promotional pricing. In addition, the fiber upload speeds are near gigabit verses the cable upload speeds of 35 Mbps.

[kphoger]

I'm sure that a good electrician could retrofit that jack to carry ethernet, power, and/or the Internet line for whole-house Internet connectivity.

Retrofit... How? Jack is the easiest part of network setup. And unlike landline phone, most of network equipment can be out of site, not in the most visible spot of the house.
Whatever new data connection would be used, it would be entering the house elsewhere, and there are few reasons to follow old phone wires.

shrug I dunno. I personally have my network equipment in a closet myself as it has my AT&T Fiber Internet model, my route/wireless gateway/WiFi mesh node, a 24 port gigabit switch, and a file server running 24⨯7. Since I have a generalized photo, I have no idea what the age of the house or what type of electrical box is attached. The bottom shelf can be repurposed for a charging station for your accessories.

Not having even bothered to look at the generalized photo, but working in the telecom industry...  Every house is different, and there are myriad reasons for [1] following or not following old existing lines, [2] changing or not changing the point of entry into the house (but changing it is actually relatively rare), and [3] locating a piece of CPE in this or that room (especially if the whole-house internet connectivity is provided over Wi-Fi).

[02 Park Ave]

This morning's A T & T outage demonstrated the fragility of the mobile phone system.

[ZLoth]

This morning's A T & T outage demonstrated the fragility of the mobile phone system.

I very much disagree. Unless it's a last mile, the backbone of the phone network is all digital, and it's all network routing at that point.

[kphoger]

Yeah, there are network outages all the time with terrestrial service;  it's a little annoying, but whatever.  In contrast, when a cellular outage happens, the nation practically explodes, and I think it's chiefly because it's such a rare occurrence.

[ZLoth]

Yeah, there are network outages all the time with terrestrial service;  it's a little annoying, but whatever.  In contrast, when a cellular outage happens, the nation practically explodes, and I think it's chiefly because it's such a rare occurrence.

It was the scope of impact and areas impacted that got attention in addition to how long the impact was. The FCC will want to know what happened.

[zachary_amaryllis]

This will go over like a wet fart in chuch in Colorado. Half the state has no cell service, unless you hike to the top of a hill.

I will never understand how a town like Grand Lake can get internet via cable or DSL, and it's out in the middle of bleeping nowhere. I'm 30 minutes out of the 4th largest city in the state.

The same half of the state, the only connectivity options available are satellite. If you're on Hughes or Viasat, using a VOIP phone on these is an exercise in hair-ripping. The lag makes it more of a two-way radio.

If one goes 20 miles FURTHER up the canyon from Fort Collins, DSL service is available through the telco. But, where I sit, it's satellite, 4G (from a doohickey some neighbor hooked up to theoir satellite internet, so the same laggy phone calls), or suffer with dialup.

[Rothman]

This will go over like a wet fart in chuch in Colorado. Half the state has no cell service, unless you hike to the top of a hill.

I will never understand how a town like Grand Lake can get internet via cable or DSL, and it's out in the middle of bleeping nowhere. I'm 30 minutes out of the 4th largest city in the state.

The same half of the state, the only connectivity options available are satellite. If you're on Hughes or Viasat, using a VOIP phone on these is an exercise in hair-ripping. The lag makes it more of a two-way radio.

If one goes 20 miles FURTHER up the canyon from Fort Collins, DSL service is available through the telco. But, where I sit, it's satellite, 4G (from a doohickey some neighbor hooked up to theoir satellite internet, so the same laggy phone calls), or suffer with dialup.

This reads like a message in a bottle from the 20th Century.

[Big John]

This reads like a message in a bottle from the 20th Century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMCZqKowlzM

[JayhawkCO]

This will go over like a wet fart in chuch in Colorado. Half the state has no cell service, unless you hike to the top of a hill.

I will never understand how a town like Grand Lake can get internet via cable or DSL, and it's out in the middle of bleeping nowhere. I'm 30 minutes out of the 4th largest city in the state.

The same half of the state, the only connectivity options available are satellite. If you're on Hughes or Viasat, using a VOIP phone on these is an exercise in hair-ripping. The lag makes it more of a two-way radio.

If one goes 20 miles FURTHER up the canyon from Fort Collins, DSL service is available through the telco. But, where I sit, it's satellite, 4G (from a doohickey some neighbor hooked up to theoir satellite internet, so the same laggy phone calls), or suffer with dialup.

This reads like a message in a bottle from the 20th Century.

Chunks of Colorado are pretty much a return to the past in certain ways.

[Rothman]

This will go over like a wet fart in chuch in Colorado. Half the state has no cell service, unless you hike to the top of a hill.

I will never understand how a town like Grand Lake can get internet via cable or DSL, and it's out in the middle of bleeping nowhere. I'm 30 minutes out of the 4th largest city in the state.

The same half of the state, the only connectivity options available are satellite. If you're on Hughes or Viasat, using a VOIP phone on these is an exercise in hair-ripping. The lag makes it more of a two-way radio.

If one goes 20 miles FURTHER up the canyon from Fort Collins, DSL service is available through the telco. But, where I sit, it's satellite, 4G (from a doohickey some neighbor hooked up to theoir satellite internet, so the same laggy phone calls), or suffer with dialup.

This reads like a message in a bottle from the 20th Century.

Chunks of Colorado are pretty much a return to the past in certain ways.

Yeah, I saw that Spike Lee movie.

[epzik8]

I'm surprised the amount of Americans with landlines is still more than one in four.

[ZLoth]

Chunks of Colorado are pretty much a return to the past in certain ways.

One of the maps that I like to share is this population density map of the 48 states broken down by time zone. Of the four time zones, the least populated is the Mointain Standard Time Zone with about 6.7% of the United States population as of 2015... and I would love to see an updated version.

Another interesting site is https://coveragemap.com/ which shows the coverage areas for the major providers, and the data is from December, 2023. Again, there are more coverage holes in the western half of the United States verses the eastern half. I'm actually surprised at the I-70 coverage between Salina and Green River, Utah and the ION highway.

[ZLoth]

From ABC News:

This week's cellphone outage makes it clear: In the United States, landlines are languishing
When some people's cellphone service went down for a while because of an AT&T network outage, among the alternatives suggested were using landlines

When her cellphone's service went down this week because of an AT&T network outage, Bernice Hudson didn't panic. She just called the people she wanted to talk to the old-fashioned way — on her landline telephone, the kind she grew up with and refuses to get rid of even though she has a mobile phone.

Having a working landline puts her in select company. In an increasingly digital United States, they're more and more a remnant of a time gone by, an anachronism of a now-unfathomable era when leaving your house meant being unavailable to callers.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

[jeffandnicole]

From ABC News:

This week's cellphone outage makes it clear: In the United States, landlines are languishing
When some people's cellphone service went down for a while because of an AT&T network outage, among the alternatives suggested were using landlines

When her cellphone's service went down this week because of an AT&T network outage, Bernice Hudson didn't panic. She just called the people she wanted to talk to the old-fashioned way — on her landline telephone, the kind she grew up with and refuses to get rid of even though she has a mobile phone.

Having a working landline puts her in select company. In an increasingly digital United States, they're more and more a remnant of a time gone by, an anachronism of a now-unfathomable era when leaving your house meant being unavailable to callers.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

That's probably a stretch based on a single social media post (they said it was an example, so maybe there were more):

Though as Thursday's outage shows, sometimes they can come in handy. They were suggested as part of the alternatives when people's cellphones weren't working. The San Francisco Fire Department, for example, said on social media that people unable to get through to 911 on their mobile devices because of the outage should try using landlines.

Why didn't they bring up: "If you can't use your cell phone, use a Payphone".  Or, "Locate an emergency callbox on the street corner".  Or, "Ask a neighbor"?

Technologies come and go.  There was once a time when 911 didn't exist and one had to use the local phone book to locate the emergency numbers, which were separate for Fire, Police & Ambulance.

So, yes, since landlines still exist, they're an option.  But we can't hold onto old technologies forever.

[Rothman]

Technologies come and go.  There was once a time when 911 didn't exist and one had to use the local phone book to locate the emergency numbers, which were separate for Fire, Police & Ambulance.

So, yes, since landlines still exist, they're an option.  But we can't hold onto old technologies forever.

The wheel says otherwise.

[ZLoth]

Why didn't they bring up: "If you can't use your cell phone, use a Payphone".  Or, "Locate an emergency callbox on the street corner".  Or, "Ask a neighbor"?

What is this "pay phone" that you are talking about? I already pay to use my phone. Is this something that you would put quarters into? Can't they use debit or credit cards? It is, after all, the 21st century.

Payphones do exist, but the phone companies have gotten out of the pay phone business leaving them to third party providers. New York City used to have 30,000 payphones, but the last one was removed from service in 2022. I honestly didn't even see a payphone at DFW International or Fourt Lauderdale, but I wasn't looking for one either.

[kphoger]

Why didn't they bring up: "If you can't use your cell phone, use a Payphone".  Or, "Locate an emergency callbox on the street corner".  Or, "Ask a neighbor"?

Are you implying that asking a neighbor is outdated technology?  That's exactly what we've told our boys to do in case of an emergency if using a cell phone isn't an option.