Death knell for landlines - RANT

[3930dave]

I keep landline for 2 reasons, 911 and to call my Dad. He is hard of hearing, and can understand me better on the wired phone than on my cell phone.

I keep an old analog phone line active here, for similar reasons. Cell audio quality (meaning, at 3+bars), between cost reduced phones and network compression, is often poor.

While I'm capable of setting up other telemetry, I like the convenience of an AC powered answering machine..... checking house-power while traveling just takes a phone call.

Long-term, I think many areas will retain landlines if fibre is present locally. As covered.... many telcos are gunning to drop their copper maintenance.

Rgds, D.

 

[wcampbell47]

Well, the boosters CAN work. :laughing::laughing::laughing: Ours did not help. We just went through three cell phone companies at the end of the year. We went with a new provider because they had a cheaper plan with more data. Their map said we had good cell coverage at our house, along the roads we drive, and places we visit. The maps lied. :shocked: The company sent us a booster to try. Said booster was useless. Actually, they gave us two boosters. One was going to use our DSL connection for phone service. Ah, no. We have very slow DSL that is barely adequate now and we can't add a phone call over DSL to the data traffic.

In any case, neither booster worked so we had to go to a third company.

People should try a booster but the boosters did not help us at all.

Later,
Dan

If I am reading you right the cellular phone provider also provided the booster for you. The booster I sold and installed was from Wilson Electronics and not associated with any of the cellular services (that I am aware of). It is important to know the location of the nearest tower of your provider. I used this site to home in on the nearest cell towers for the clients service provider. CellReception | Find a better signal. I had way more success with the Wilson boosters than any of the service provider boosters. Several instances I saw the decibel level inside the home go from -100 to -68 (-68 being a great signal). It is lame for a provider to try to use your internet connection for a phone call.

Download speeds are provided at greater bandwidth than upload speeds. So if using you internet the incoming call would sound fine. On the upload side your internet connection is way slower - therefore the person on the other end of the line just heard garbage. Voice over internet Phone (VOIP) needs high bandwidth both ways to work well. Try this site for a booster that really works. https://www.weboost.com/us/ Trees, buildings, rocks and such obstacles between you and the nearest tower will affect the performance of the booster. Having the outside antennae pointed at the nearest tower is important. It can take a little time to fine tune the outside antennae position for the best signal. Hope this helps.

 

[downsizingnow48]

Seeing that you are a computer techie - a wireless network can be established using a Cradle Point wireless router that accepts a cellular modem. The booster then amplifies the modem data to the tower. The Cradle Point router can accept multiple connections and will also accept cable or satellite connection to the internet. I use an MBR 900.

I have exactly the same setup in Mendocino County works fine.

 

[MossRoad]

CellReception | Find a better signal.

Funny in my zip code, that site gives Sprint the best rating by customers and there are NO towers. It gives Verizon the worst rating and there are 26 towers. It shows there are no T mobile towers, but I know there are several. Wonder how they get their info and customer ratings?

 

[CalG]

If I am reading you right the cellular phone provider also provided the booster for you. The booster I sold and installed was from Wilson Electronics and not associated with any of the cellular services (that I am aware of). It is important to know the location of the nearest tower of your provider. I used this site to home in on the nearest cell towers for the clients service provider. CellReception | Find a better signal. I had way more success with the Wilson boosters than any of the service provider boosters. Several instances I saw the decibel level inside the home go from -100 to -68 (-68 being a great signal). It is lame for a provider to try to use your internet connection for a phone call.

Download speeds are provided at greater bandwidth than upload speeds. So if using you internet the incoming call would sound fine. On the upload side your internet connection is way slower - therefore the person on the other end of the line just heard garbage. Voice over internet Phone (VOIP) needs high bandwidth both ways to work well. Try this site for a booster that really works. https://www.weboost.com/us/ Trees, buildings, rocks and such obstacles between you and the nearest tower will affect the performance of the booster. Having the outside antennae pointed at the nearest tower is important. It can take a little time to fine tune the outside antennae position for the best signal. Hope this helps.

Are you saying theat VOIP services such as Skype and Vonage don't work? They are after all up loads for all exchanges. I wish you would have told me that years ago so I could have not made all those international calls that also included "live" camera images. ;-)

 

[k0ua]

Funny in my zip code, that site gives Sprint the best rating by customers and there are NO towers. It gives Verizon the worst rating and there are 26 towers. It shows there are no T mobile towers, but I know there are several. Wonder how they get their info and customer ratings?

Yeah Sprint was rated higher than Verizon here too. I can tell you this much in my area.. You want coverage, you want Verizon in this area. Everyone knows that. The relatives come to visit from Springfield, or St. Louis, and bring other carriers phones.. and they go hunting for a signal. Their phones work fine in the bigger city's but not down here. At least not as good.

 

[PILOON]

The phone companies would dearly love it if everybody went to cell phones!
When a problem occurs they simply go to a computer and effect a repair or have YOU return the cell phone for repair.*

With land lines they need unionized technicians driving company vans and who knows what a call will cost.
Add rental of pole space from hydro and all that damage ice storms or tornadoes cause.
Not to forget that as self employed the company no longer contributes to pension or insurance plans.

In my area they laid off techs and subcontracted to the same guys in order to unload the overhead and risks.
Naturally they hedged their costs by contracting on a flat rate per call basis.

*Recently a friendly phone technician commented as to how pleased management was to announce that they had lost XX % of land line subscribers at a meeting.

 

[dmccarty]

If I am reading you right the cellular phone provider also provided the booster for you. The booster I sold and installed was from Wilson Electronics and not associated with any of the cellular services (that I am aware of). It is important to know the location of the nearest tower of your provider. I used this site to home in on the nearest cell towers for the clients service provider. CellReception | Find a better signal. I had way more success with the Wilson boosters than any of the service provider boosters. Several instances I saw the decibel level inside the home go from -100 to -68 (-68 being a great signal). It is lame for a provider to try to use your internet connection for a phone call.

Download speeds are provided at greater bandwidth than upload speeds. So if using you internet the incoming call would sound fine. On the upload side your internet connection is way slower - therefore the person on the other end of the line just heard garbage. Voice over internet Phone (VOIP) needs high bandwidth both ways to work well. Try this site for a booster that really works. https://www.weboost.com/us/ Trees, buildings, rocks and such obstacles between you and the nearest tower will affect the performance of the booster. Having the outside antennae pointed at the nearest tower is important. It can take a little time to fine tune the outside antennae position for the best signal. Hope this helps.

Yep, the cell providers booster.

We don't need a booster anymore, we just went with a provider whose map was accurate and we get excellent service without having to play games. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Even if we could have gotten acceptable service at home, we were having problems with connectivity at work, school and on the drive home, so we had to move to cell phone service number 3.

Hopefully, your links will help others who don't have options like us.

Later,
Dan

 

[kcflhrc]

The phone companies would dearly love it if everybody went to cell phones!
When a problem occurs they simply go to a computer and effect a repair or have YOU return the cell phone for repair.*

With land lines they need unionized technicians driving company vans and who knows what a call will cost.
Add rental of pole space from hydro and all that damage ice storms or tornadoes cause.
Not to forget that as self employed the company no longer contributes to pension or insurance plans.

In my area they laid off techs and subcontracted to the same guys in order to unload the overhead and risks.
Naturally they hedged their costs by contracting on a flat rate per call basis.

*Recently a friendly phone technician commented as to how pleased management was to announce that they had lost XX % of land line subscribers at a meeting.

If this is true in your part of the country then that is indeed very sad. But don't assume your neck of the woods is the same as the whole US. Our Union Techs still have contributions to their pensions as well as non union and union members have full medical, dental and vision. We only use subcontractors to bury our cable, we don't have the machines or the time to do it anymore. If you lose landline then you lose DSL also, runs on the same cable pair unless it's fiber to the prem. And if everyone went to cell phones then the management you are talking about would be out of a job, so why would they be pleased about that? Seems like a bunch of BS to me.

 

[k0ua]

I am assuming that up where you live the cell phone company and the land line company are one and the same? Not the case down here for the most part. Back when Alltel existed and I worked for them, that was true. But Windstream was spun off in 2006 and Alltel went its separate way soon to be gobbled up by Verizon. Windstream was a landline company with no cell service. I can assure you the constant loss of subscribers was not met with glee in any boardrooms.